The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 91. Food Bloggers: How to Utilize SEO & Keyword Research to Grow Your Blog with Natasha Levai

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

Are you a food blogger who wants to learn more about SEO? Today we are joined by Natasha Levai, a food blogger in the gluten-free niche. She has a blog called Natasha’s home. She is also a stay-at-home mom living in Eastern Hungary with her husband and daughter. In today’s episode we are talking about the importance of SEO in blogging and how it can benefit your business. Natasha shares more about her story of starting her blog and finding her niche in the competitive word of food blogging. She also shares the basics of keyword research, more about themes, backlinking, the plugins she recommends, and important things to include in your recipe blog posts. Natasha provided so much value today and we hope you enjoyed today’s episode!Thanks for listening! Connect with us on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsCheck out Cooking with Keywords  HERE!  Use code UBP10 for 10% off!Check out Restored 316's Templates here!Check out the show notes (link below) for more information including links and resources mentioned in today's episode!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode91

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper. We're on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you're just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we're excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success and your own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging

and work from home life all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. Welcome back to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. So SEO is a really hot topic when it comes to blogging and something that a lot of people feel a little bit overwhelmed by. But it's something that Jennifer and I want to continue to share about and help you learn that SEO is actually something that can work for you and your business. And today we have Natasha Levi on the podcast to talk about exactly that. Natasha is a food blogger in the gluten-free niche. Her blog is natashashome.com. And she's also a stay-at-home mom living in Eastern Hungary with her husband and daughter. So welcome to the Ultimate Blog

Podcast, Natasha. Thank you. It's very fun to be here. I'm excited. It's been a long time that I've been looking forward to it. Yay. Well, we are really excited just to share you with our community because you are in the gluten-free niche. That right there is already a little bit more niched down in regards to food blogging. Food blogging can be like this broad scope. And it's a highly competitive area of blogging. And so you've kind of niched down. So if you'd like to share a little bit about your blog to get started, I think that would be awesome.

So yeah, my blog is in gluten-free niche right now. But when I started, I started about one and a half years ago. blog is in gluten-free niche right now. But when I started, I started about one and a half years ago. And when I started, I didn't know what niche I will be in, but I decided to try everything and see what sticks for one and also what I enjoy doing. I was following Farmhouse on Boone. It's large site that has everything. She has recipes and, you know, homemaking, fermenting, or I don't know, making creams, homeschooling, everything. And I was looking for a niche. It wasn't even food at first because I really was inspired by her example. And I, at first it's called, my site is called Natasha's Home because I wasn't even thinking that it's just going to be, you know,

in my kitchen. And as time went on, I realized that in order to cover everything, I would have to do so much work that I simply don't have time for. If you want to have food and homemaking and creams and cleaning supplies and homeschooling, you have to post regularly in all of those topics. And it is overwhelming. So I decided to stick with recipes because that's what I started with. It was easier to manage for me. That's something that I had more knowledge in rather than anything else, because I just got married at that point. We moved into a new house and our house didn't even look pretty yet. So there was nothing to blog about yet.

And I started sourdough, regular sourdough. My husband has celiac disease, so he has to eat gluten-free. I was doing some gluten-free recipes because of that. And kind of I was thinking, I, of course, followed some Facebook groups that were recommending niching down. They were saying, you will probably find success if you have very specific niche. And I was thinking that I could be gluten-free because that is something that I kind of have to do because of my family, but I really didn't want to because it is complicated

and I was still learning how flour works, the binders and how to keep bread from exploding or deflating and things like that. And so I really didn't want to do gluten-free at first. And as I was doing sourdough, I was curious about gluten-free sourdough. So I had a gluten-free sourdough starter and made a bread once. It was hard as a rock and I couldn't even cut into it. So I threw it away and decided I will never do a gluten-free sourdough at all.

And definitely not for my blog. But I think I came back to it just enough to make a post about it. Maybe like a year later from making my first loaf, I came back to it and made a decent loaf that you could actually cut into, posted it and just forgot about it and thought, okay, it's there. But interestingly, I was struggling with having any traffic because I didn't really know what SEO is. I knew some things about blogging, but not much. And I just noticed that this gluten-free sourdough recipe, even though it wasn't even so good, now that I look back at it,

I realized it wasn't even a good recipe. It wasn't even a good bread, but it had more traction than any other of my recipes. Like on Pinterest, I wasn't having much traffic from Pinterest either, but that was the one that the pin was shared and saved all the time on YouTube that probably had like a couple thousand views where all my other videos, they probably had like maximum 100 or something views. And I was

discouraged by it because I really didn't want to go into gluten-free sourdough niche. But with time, I think I kind of warmed up to it. And I realized that really, I'm not seeing so much success. So I need to do something. I need to change something about my blog. And I just took that step of faith and decided to delete all of my or redo all of my non-gluten-free recipes. I didn't have so many posts, but now I had even less. And eventually, I started making more and more gluten-free sourdough recipes. And now that's where I am right now. So I have half of my traffic comes from Google, from search. But half of it actually comes from my Facebook group and other Facebook groups that are focused on gluten-free bread and gluten-free

sourdough bread. And I am one and a half years in, so I'm still kind of in the beginning. That's incredible. I think a lot of people would be scared to do what you did and really go all in on a topic like that. And especially, like you said, you were just learning as you were going too. Do you think that has helped you as you're creating new content? Because you can kind of put yourself in the shoes of your reader who's just now learning how to make these things. I think I would feel like from your perspective, you're almost in a better spot because instead of being the professional who knows how to do things, you're the person who's

learning. So you remember all the different steps involved and you're able to walk another person through those steps. On one hand, yes. On the other hand, it's intimidating because once you just have like, while you just have a blog, you don't really face the people that come to your blog and look at your recipes. But once you start having a Facebook group where people post a link to your recipe and say it didn't work and then thousands thousands of people you know they see it and then there's a bunch of comments on it and people recommending other recipes like that is a little bit discouraging and sometimes people you know post questions that i don't really have an answer to they say like your bread didn't work and this is my problem and And I don't ever, I'd never had this problem before. And they say they did everything

as I told them to do in the recipe. And sometimes it is a bit, you know, it's hard, but where I know some other bloggers that are in the same niche and they have more knowledge. So they'll have more to say about it because they actually been doing this for years. On one hand, it does help me because it is still fresh in my mind. And right now I am making a little, like a tiny welcome course to gluten-free sourdough baking. And I was just thinking that how helpful it is that I still remember the mistakes I've made. And I could list five mistakes that I made making my first gluten- free sourdough bread. And it was still so fresh that I think it does help to some degree, definitely. Yeah, I think it does. Anytime we get negativity or pushback,

that's hard. Whether it be with a recipe or anything with blogging, actually, because you really are putting yourself out there in a really vulnerable way. And I know that some people, if you're not a food blogger, you might not think that putting a recipe out into the world is vulnerable, but it kind of is. Because when we put things out, you want people to love it, obviously. You want them to rave about it and share it with their friends. And if they don't, you're like, Ah, that was not how I wanted to feel. So that is brave to do that. But I think that you said something really important there is that it is still fresh in your mind. And so you're using that knowledge to then create another stream of revenue in your business, which is now creating a welcome course that can help people troubleshoot making gluten-free sourdough from the get-go.

So I love that you're taking something that could be seen as a negative and you're turning it into a positive in a way to better serve your community because that's important too. And they're going to continue to come back because you're not just like, well, sorry, that didn't work out for you. You are actually continuing to show up for them and add value to them. And I think that that's a big part of being a blogger is as we have questions coming in, turning that into solutions that we can provide to them, whether that be in a blog post or something that we're sharing in email or in a Facebook group or whatever. I think that that's like a really positive thing that we can do as a blogger. Yes, definitely. I think that is something also that can win people over sometimes is that you

you're trying to help them even if you don't have all the answers, you're still trying to help and you're still suggesting that maybe you could you know change this or that work and actually recently I even updated my main gluten-free sourdough recipe and I just posted on my group saying that based on the feedback I got I decided like you know to change a few things and people tried it and it worked and I think that also shows that you know I'm learning along with them sometimes I feel that I will never be able to do as good as some other bloggers that, you know, have the first spot on Google. But I just remember that if I continually do it for years, I actually might learn to

do it just as well or even better because, you know, it's just the fear. But there's so much more to explore in this world. I think that's such a good, healthy mindset is that long term mindset when it comes to blogging. And you're just taking it day by day and step by step and creating that content that you know, is going to be helpful. And not only are you creating the content, but you're going back and you're improving it. And that is what's really, it's going to help you and it's going to help the people that are coming to your blog in the future. As you're creating new content, and since you are so niched down, I think future. As you're creating new content, and since you are

so niched down, I think one of the questions that people might have, and honestly, the pushback that we get when we tell our community, when we tell our students that they need to niche down, they're not even niching down as specific as you are. But one of the common fears is, am I going to run out of ideas for creating new content? Do you ever feel that way? No. And the reason for that is keyword research. When I am making a recipe for one thing, I go into my keyword tool, I'm using KeySearch, and I type, let's say, a keyword for it. And then I go on Google and look at what other people are doing. And somehow, always, there's a new keyword that's related to that topic that pops up. And I have actually so many keywords in my spreadsheet that I don't even have time to

get through all of them. And you also sometimes analyze competitors and you see what they're also ranking for. It might not necessarily be always in gluten-free sourdough. Gluten-free sourdough in itself is a super low search kind of a keyword maybe you will get like maximum of like 56 000 views if every single person who searches will go on your site which is impossible so it's not so it's not even gonna get you to like you know media line which is a big ad company that will you know give you a better revenue so you need to have something else but it's okay i think to have a couple of

niches or maybe three different niches that you have but what is important is have topical authority in something so which means that if you have one recipe and you know that something else relates to it it's good to post on it so if i have a gluten-free sourdough bread and i have a gluten-free sourdough starter i actually like research and see that there's also searches for a starter with a teff flour. There's also a search for a starter with millet flour, with sorghum flour. There's a bread with this kind of bread. And that helps me constantly come up with new ideas. And analyzing your competitors is also a good way to do that.

I love that you had that answer just right there, ready to say, Nope, I don't because I do keyword research. I think a lot of times people feel like keyword research or SEO is going to hold them back. And I want to challenge that thought today. And I think you're the perfect person because you just said it. We didn't even have to ask you. You just said it so effortlessly. ask you. You just said it so effortlessly. So was that ever a fear that utilizing keyword research was going to prevent your creativity? Or was your goal always to build a blogging

business? I know that question seems interesting. But I think a lot of people start out as a hobby blogger. And they don't maybe believe in themselves enough to grow to be earning revenue. believe in themselves enough to grow, to be earning revenue. And so when you started, was the goal to build a blogging business or was the goal to create a hobby? The goal was to build a business from the get-go. Because I watched that masterclass by Farmhouse and she actually shared how much she's able to make with it, how she's able to bring her husband home and how there is a family there, you know, living their life together. And I was inspired by that. There was already a desire for me to have some sort of hobby.

And I've tried so many different things, but it always kind of hit a wall in some way because I could never take it, you know, further. It was always just in my own little circle. And now when she gave me this inspiration that you can actually take something you like and you, you know, you know how to do, and then you can also make money with it and make it into a potential job. Actually, I live in a country that is not my own and I'm not allowed to work here because I have such a visa that only allows me to do volunteer work. And once I got married, everybody around started asking me

when I'm going to get a job because I apparently have nothing to do right now. I mean, not right now, right now I have a baby, but at that moment, I wasn't doing any volunteering work. I wasn't involved in any organization at that moment because we were in a transition. And so I thought that blogging actually could be a great way to make money without having to go through all this struggle with paperwork and everything, because I can still have my citizenship and work from there

and all the details of that. Yeah yeah so it was a business from the beginning and keyword research wasn't scaring me so much i think what did scare me was that you have to pay for all these things you have to pay for a tool you have to pay for plugins for a thing for hosting and i was afraid to invest in it and then see no return and i think at first I didn't even use a keyword tool. Yeah, I just used Google. There are a couple extensions for Google that are free, but it didn't work. It was a terrible idea. Google gave me suggestions, what people also search for that nobody searches for. A good example was cinnamon rolls with peanut butter. They told me that people look for gluten-free cinnamon rolls with peanut butter. And I made a post about it. I had no idea about actual volume, search volume. And I don't think

there was like one person who ever found it. And there is no other person who ever posted about it. And I had plenty of posts like this. Some of them ranked for whatever reason. I just happened to hit that good keyword and did something right. But it was a bad idea to not go with the keyword tool. KeySearch actually is very cheap. They give you a discount. It is, I think it's like $13 or $17, I think it is, for 200 credits, which is more than enough a day. And then you can get a discount to pay $13 a month and they keep you at that rate. You don't have to pay $17 the next month

and it's super, super cheap. I think that investment is worth it. KeySearch is also known to be one of the best tools, even though they are one of the cheapest because they are using Google's API, which means that they pull information from Google. And it is not 100% correct, but it is closer to what Google's numbers

are than, let's say, maybe other tools. At least that's what I've learned. We recommend KeySearch as well. That's what we use in our business and use that as well. We also find it to be pretty user-friendly because some of them are very complicated to do keyword research. And for somebody, let's say like this is somebody's very first episode listening. Will you explain to them what keyword research means? Because they might be kind of confused just listening to that. So like, let's just take this to like a basic level. So if somebody goes in key search, what are they looking for? So when you are creating a post, you want to create a post on a topic that somebody is already looking for. On one hand, you are providing value to someone else.

On the other hand, you're creating potential for traffic, for making money with your blog. Because if you create a recipe that not one person on this earth ever is looking for, it is absolutely pointless. It is just your own little notebook where you put your recipe. But how do you know what other people are looking for? You don't always know. Of course, there are certain recipes like potato soup or a borscht recipe that probably everybody's looking for. But the problem with that is that if you make a recipe on a chocolate chip cookie or a potato soup, that there are probably hundreds of thousands of other bloggers that already made a post on that recipe. And you will probably never be found either because the competition is just so big. So in order to be successful with your blogging, have traffic, and eventually make

money with your blog, you need to make recipes that people will find that you will be able to rank for on the first page of Google. And to do that, as a starting out blogger, you need to find such topics that are low in competition and still have some search volume, meaning some people are still looking for this recipe. The reason why as a starting blogger, it's hard because your site doesn't have authority in the eyes of Google. Authority is counted by the amount of backlinks, partially, that you have from other sites linking to you. And if you are new, then probably nobody's linking to you yet. So you need to find such keywords. Keywords are basically topics you are writing about that are not as competitive. So to do that, you will go

into, let's say, KeySearch tool, and you will just type in a keyword, for example, I don't know, gluten-free sourdough, gluten-free sourdough recipe, and you will see how many people are searching for it and the keyword difficulty. Well, keyword difficulty is a bit tricky. That, you know, KeySearch ranks keyword difficulty from, I think, 0 to 10 as light blue, from 10 to 20, or maybe from 0 to 20 is blue, from 20 to 30 is green, and so forth. And it says that if it's like, let's say, 40 or 50, it's too hard, you shouldn't write on it.

But it's not always true. Key search counts the difficulty of a keyword by the domain authority of the pages that are ranking on the first page of Google. And if a certain recipe, like let's say Gluten-Free Sourdough, wasn't as competitive, there are, let's say, only three posts on Gluten-Free Sourdough, but Google is still pulling some other posts that are not directly related to Gluten-Free Sourdough. And those pulled posts are from very high authority sites, you will see the keyword difficulty as very high. But if you

actually go on Google and type in gluten-free sourdough, and let's say you only had three posts that were about that, and the rest seven were about something else, but Google thought this is the most relevant one because there's no more recipes on this, then you will actually be able to outrank those seven sites, even though they have a DA of, I don't know, 100 or 70 or 60, because you will be more relevant. So when you are looking for a keyword difficulty,

you have to do a little bit more work than just checking the score. Actually, I had one time a story with that. There was a keyword, I had one time a story with that there was a keyword, I think it was Biscoff cake, that was super low in keyword difficulty. And I was so excited to make a post about it. I made a post on Lotto's Biscoff cake. And then I went on Google after I already made that post. And there are pages and pages and pages and pages of bloggers making the same recipe. And it still shows as super low to rank for.

But I think mine was buried in, I don't know, like 10th page. And it never came up. I think I ended, I think maybe I still have it, but I'm going to delete it. And I'm not hoping for it anymore. Because sometimes, I don't know for whatever reason, Keysearch will show you that it is super easy to rank for. But when you actually go on Google, you'll see that there are actually so many posts on this. And maybe it's not the best idea to try and rank for it. So when it comes to keyword research, you need to do a little bit extra work. And you use a tool like KeySearch.

And then you go to Google to compare what it kind of shows you. It's kind of in a nutshell, there's so much more. There's actually a great course that I really want to take. I haven't taken it yet, but I heard a lot of great things. It's called Cooking with Keywords. And she goes into great detail, but I've listened to a lot of her podcasts

and a lot of things that she shares. And so there's really a lot to say about keyword research, but that's the basics that you really need to know what you're writing about and why and who are your competitors. I think you've spelled it out in a way that we've never really talked about. And that's not only are you doing the keyword research, but you're doing like the

real world research. You're actually going out for yourself, opening up your Google browser and seeing what else is out there. And that's going to be what makes the difference for you. Because like you said, don't discount it just because it says one thing or another. If you can go out and you can look and see, and you know that your post has a good chance of ranking because you're more relevant or whatever, it's a great, great opportunity for you to go ahead and put yourself out there. And that's the only way you're ever going to grow is if you really take advantage of those opportunities in a really mindful way. Yeah, yeah. It's very important to go to Google and do the real world research because that will save you time eventually. Yeah. If you're a blogger who's looking to increase your organic search traffic using keyword research, we have an excellent resource that we are really excited to share with you. If you struggle to find the right keywords, maybe you're unsure of your rankings, or you're just plain running out of ideas. What if I told you that you can learn how to find the

right keyword that will rank competitively on Google. Aleka Shunk is the keyword research guru and we highly recommend her courses if you are ready to do a deep dive into keyword research. She has two courses that we'd recommend to start. Cooking with Keywords is for food bloggers and Blogging with Keywords was created for others who aren't in the recipe niche. This is not a beginner course, but if you are ready to tackle keyword research, this is the best thing for your buck. To learn more about Aleka's keyword courses, click the link in our show notes and become a keyword research guru. And you were talking about domain authority. And I know we probably don't want to dive into this too deep because that is a very complicated topic. But one of the things that

I think can impact domain authority sometimes is links like people linking back to your site and things like that. Now, do you implement any kind of a linking strategy or a way to get back? Or how do you feel that that impacts your ability to grow your domain authority and start to rank for different posts? I think it is one of the most complicated and difficult topics. And I hated this topic of backlink building at some point because I had no idea how to do it. And I was doing a lot of guest posts at first because I was a bit easier from Facebook groups, people networking with each other. And then lately, I saw an update saying that some guy from Google, don't remember his name, he's super famous Google guy,

that said that guest posts actually just are ignored by Google. Google doesn't count any links that come from guest posts. So backlinks, there are some good ways to build them. And there are some pointless ways to build them. For example, guest posting links exchange. Google can see if let's say I found out that Jennifer has a gluten-free site and we decided to swap links today. And Google will probably notice that, hey, those two sites link to each other at the same time and probably would

ignore those links because it is something intentional. Google wants for links to be built naturally that someone else thinks that your content is worth linking to and it will do everything it can to discard those links that are unnatural for it so if you ever see i still see sometimes in facebook groups there are people requesting you know to fill out the form if you want to be a part of our group that are going to link swap it's better to avoid those because google like it's absolutely pointless waste of time what is good build links is, if you are a food blogger, is to be in Facebook groups that have roundup posts. A roundup is basically when you have a post with a lot of recipes.

If somebody is looking for 12 best gluten-free peanut butter recipes, then you can post a request for gluten-free peanut butter recipes on a Facebook group. And all those bloggers that have something fitting that request will drop a link and you can link to them in your roundup posts and then they will get or gaining backlinks they will not link back to you because you know that's not good and you will link to them because they helped improve your content and then you can drop your links for other people's requests that is one of the easiest ways to build back links. Then another one is common podcasts. That's why I'm here today. Because actually, podcasting links somehow are good. I don't understand why because it is kind of like having a guest post. But for some reason,

from the sources that I'm learning, they're saying it is good links. So if you are a food blogger, there are plenty, plenty of podcasts that you can contribute to probably. Sometimes not necessarily even in food niche. There were other podcasts that I was a part of that had some other different topics that I, let's say, have some knowledge in. So another one is I discovered that by accident. One time a guy contacted me on Facebook and he said, hey, I saw that you're using a stock photo in one of your recipes. I know that it was free.

I downloaded it from, I think, Unsplash or something that they say that all photos are free. You don't have to give credit and you can just use it. And he contacted me and said that I know that it's free. You don't have to link back to me, but if you wouldn't mind, could you please link back to me? And I thought, sure, why not't have to link back to me, but if you wouldn't mind, could you please link back to me? And I thought, sure, why not? I can link back to him. And so that's a great way to build backlinks. You can actually submit your pictures to Unsplash or Pexels or whatever other sites that are sharing stock photos.

A lot of bloggers use them. I don't use stock photos often, just very rarely when I go back to my old posts and see the pictures are terrible and I don't have time right now to reshoot that post. I just will download some stock photo and put it there until I have time to go back to it. But mostly I take my pictures because that's the best practice. But sometimes, yeah, so you can try doing that if you have good pictures that you're not using on your blog that you just took and then you decided not to use, you can try submitting them and then maybe reaching

out to people who used it. And maybe you'll have some luck because I actually linked back to him and I thought maybe other people would do the same. And to find who downloaded it, you can just go into Google image search and you can drop your image that you submitted to, let's say, Unsplash. And then it will show all the blogs that use that image. And if you find the identical picture, then you can try to reach out to that person. Then another one is you can go in Key Search and see your backlinks. Sometimes backlinks that people will give you are nofollow links,

which a nofollow means that you don't get anything for that backlink. And for whatever reason, they decided to nofollow you. You can reach out to that blog if it's just another food blog that included you in some roundup or mentioned you you can reach out to them and ask if they would change it to a follow link and because sometimes that happens yeah so that is my strategy for now i mainly focus on podcasts and facebook groups link swapping and sometimes

just you also can be creative sometimes like, I created a post on pierogi. And then I saw that another site was, they had posts on different fillings for pierogi. And she said, if you have any ideas of new creative fillings, you can reach out to me and I'll add it to the list. And so I just wrote her on Facebook and said, hey, I have another recipe that has a different filling that you don't have listed on your post. You can link to it if you want. And she linked to it. And I just wrote her on Facebook and said, hey, I have another recipe that has a different filling that you don't have listed on your post.

You can link to it if you want. And she linked to it. And I just got a backlink just like that. Because sometimes you'll find opportunities that are not in the book and you should try to take advantage of them. I love your mindset. You are on the lookout for opportunity. You can just hear it and what you're sharing.

And I think that that is such important advice for anybody who is blogging is that, yes, blogging is sitting down and creating content and doing your keyword research. But it is also this networking community that you can learn from, that you can utilize to benefit us all, truly. When we're back linking to each other, when we're collaborating, when we're having each other as guests on our podcast, things like that, that is the way that we build this industry and this community. And I mean, when one of us is successful, it helps all of us. And when we use our expertise, then we all grow. So I love that we're talking about backlinks. We've literally never talked about that on the podcast at all. So I think that that's something that we need to talk about more, quite honestly, because we don't talk about it. And it

is something that can help build your domain authority. And I mean, anytime that somebody shares a link of yours, it's great. I mean, that's just... It just helps further your reach. So as a food blogger, what are some other important components of your website that you think, like let's say it's a new food blogger or somebody who's just starting out, or maybe they're already blogging and they're not quite sure that they need to have on their site

in order to start generating that domain authority? Yeah, so basically for Google to see you as a healthy site and to rank you, you'll not only have to have the right keywords, you also need to have site speed and yeah, your site needs to rank you, you'll not only have to have the right keywords, you also need to have site speed. And yeah, your site needs to be healthy. For that, you need to have certain plugins, you need to have certain hosting, certain theme that will be fast and up to date to Google's latest updates. So for example, when you start a website, some people don't know this, but you need to actually have self-hosted website, which means you will pay for your hosting. There are a lot of platforms that will let you start a site for free. And that's not good. If you want to monetize your site, you should have independent WordPress site. I mean, WordPress is not a must, but that's what most people use. I use that too.

That's what most people use. I use that too. And BigScoots has good reputation. I think it's one of the best. I know there is some other hosts that I don't remember the name of, but BigScoots tends to be, I think, one of the top two best hosting companies. And the best is to have managed hosting,

which means that you're on a server with other WordPress sites, which means that your site will be faster by default. There's also an option for shared hosting, which means that you're going to be on a server with all kinds of other sites that might be a bit heavier and your site speed might be affected by those other sites. And shared hosting is cheaper. While you're still starting out, it's okay to have shared hosting. But once you start generating a little bit of traffic and maybe you have some income, you should upgrade to managed hosting

because that will help your site to keep going and be healthy and up to date and everything. Theme is another thing that you have to choose before you even start putting anything on your site. It's a theme. Generally, the rule is that if the theme is cheap, it's probably not the best. Well, I'm using a free theme.

It's Astra I'm using right now. Although my goal is to go on to Feast. There are plenty, plenty of great themes that people are using with bloggers. I didn't research it in depth. I know there is Feast. And Feast is good. And that's good enough for me. I want to be with them.

Feast is basically a plugin that allows you to structure your website in a certain way. And it is up to date with Google guidelines, Google's requirements. And that's why it's good because it will actually help your site to stay healthy. And they come with a free theme. You pay for the plugin.

They come with, I think, a couple of themes that make your site look pretty. I think the probably bad side of it is that there are so many sites using it and you probably will look like all these other bloggers. So you can decide what you want to do. I think for now, I just don't have time to worry about a theme. So I think I would just go with Feast in the near future. I want to transfer. Then you have to have plugins. A lot of times, it requires a little bit of programming in order to make your site super fast. So to avoid, if you're not a programmer, if you don't know the

right things to do on your site, you can download a plugin. It is a paid plugin, but it's fairly cheap. It's called WP Rocket. And it is, I think, $50 a year. And it will speed up your site and take care of all these little details that you probably don't know that you should pay attention to. I have that on my site and it helps a lot. All right. Another one that is a really good plugin that people probably should have is Yoast SEO. It's free. It just helps you with certain structured data. That's another complicated word for another day, but basically it's good if you you have it it will give you some guidelines as to how to structure your post for seo which you don't necessarily need to follow all the way those are just guidelines and they have its own

downfalls they say if you follow your seo completely then you probably are over optimizing your posts anyways. But they give you some good things and they're free. So why wouldn't you use it? You probably should. They also have FAQ blocks that are also very good for Google to know that you have frequently asked questions section in your post because it sends certain signals that you actually have that section versus if you just write frequently asked questions. So UOCCO is a great one to have. Then a very helpful one is Table of Contents. There's a free plugin for Table of Contents. It's helpful when you have a

long post and people want to get to a certain section quickly without scrolling. It's super helpful. I know from experience when I go on somebody's post and there is so much information and I can't find what I want, I sometimes go back to Google and look for something else because it's just too hard to navigate a long post without a table of contents. Another one is, so you want to have a plugin to optimize your images. If you're a food blogger, you probably have a lot of images you should have for you know process shots and you want them to be small because if you have a lot of images and they're all large then your site will be super slow and that's not good for google you can't optimize

images prior to uploading them that's important but also you can get a plugin those are also paid there's a short pixel that is a great one. I think there's a smoosh. It's called smoosh, but short pixel is a great plugin that you can use. It is also paid. You don't have to use all these plugins right when you start. You can slowly, slowly get them. I think when I started, I didn't have any paid plugins, but I got WP Rocket first. And then, okay, if you're a food blogger, you need to have a WP Recipe Maker, WordPress Recipe Maker. There are free version of it

and there's also a paid version of it. And that was the second paid plugin that I got was WP Recipe Maker because a paid version allows you to put nutrition info into your recipes, which is important for Google, again, to rank you. When you Google a recipe, you see in the top of the page,

there are pictures, like it's called a carousel of recipes. And then there are search results, written search results. So in order to rank in those three spots, you need to have a very optimized recipe card, which is generated by this recipe plugin. And if you don't have nutrition info, then it is

not as optimized as other people's recipe cards that are paying for it. There are, I think, four different payments, payment plans for versions of this plugin, but it's okay to get just the next one, the first, the cheapest one. It will already give you the option for filling in the nutrition info. And then you'll have to use a separate website to actually count it out because it doesn't count it for you. But there is another free website where you can actually count that information for people.

I think something really important to say there, if you are a food blogger, you need a recipe card in your post. I know that there are a lot of people who are sharing recipes who don't have a recipe card. And Google won't read your post as a recipe unless it's in a recipe card format. So that's just something to... Just a little tip there that if you're sharing recipes, and you're just sharing it within the post, you definitely want to upgrade to an actual recipe

card. We also recommend WP Recipe Maker. That's the one that we encourage our students to use. So we're in alignment there. And that is money well spent. Absolutely. If you see a post that ranks on the first page of Google and doesn't have a recipe card,

there's a good chance you can outrank them if you just have a recipe card. Yeah. Also, one time I almost switched from WP Recipe Maker to Create because Create has, I think, a free nutrition label. But I posted, I think, on a... There is a Facebook group called

Food Bloggers Central. And I posted there asking, how do I migrate? And everybody in the post, instead of helping me migrate, they will tell me, don't do it. Don't go from Recipe Maker to Create. Even if it costs money, just stay there because it's better. And I didn't. So don't. It's better. They're better for SEO. There are so many plugins. But basically, another one is Broken Link Checker. It's also free. It scans your site for broken links. Broken links are the ones that you, let's say, linked to somebody, and then they deleted that post and that post doesn't exist so when somebody goes on that link it just shows 404 page and that's not a good signal because google thinks that you're not providing helpful enough information

for the readers because your links are links to broken sites and that plugin helps you scan your site for those links and then you can update or delete those links. Another one is Link Whisper. That is a plugin that helps you check your internal linking. So there's back linking and there's internal linking. Internal linking is when you are linking to your own posts within one recipe. Super helpful for SEO. You should do that. And Link Whisper helps you find exactly what words you're using to link to certain

recipes how many links are going in and out from certain posts really good there's so much to learn about it but this plugin is also free there is there are paid versions of all plugins but they're free is enough for a beginner then another one that i'm using is Tasty Pins. So that's a plugin that helps other people pin your images because it's not there by default. I was researching a little bit and I didn't find any free plugins that will allow you to pin your images. You can let people pin your recipe from the recipe card

if you're using paid version of the recipe card. But why it is good to let people pin, even if you are not posting on Pinterest every single day, it is great to let people pin your images because at least they will do the work for you partially and they will pin your recipes to Pinterest and others might find it too. They will go back to your site through their pins that they pinned and it just helps you increase traffic. i personally right now don't have time for pinterest although i know how much traffic it can bring potentially but i

just can't be consistent with it so right now it's on hold until i can outsource it i'm just waiting for it to you know happen but right now i'm not doing it but i have tasty pins because i want people to save my recipes and they are saving it more now that I have that plugin versus before. Before, maybe it would be one, two saves a day. But now I have more like 10. I just installed it actually. So now it's like 10. Maybe it will be more later.

But overall, over time, it will be more. So the last one is backups, backup plugin that you make backups of your site. I'm using the plugin called UpDraft, and it is free. The reason why you need a plugin like this is because one day your site might just break. I don't know. There's so many reasons for that.

It can be also up to your host. If you are not with BigScoots or if you are with some less established host, they might just stop existing the next day and your site is totally lost. Or one time I was transferring from one host to another. I didn't ask BigScoots to transfer my site. I thought it's going to happen by default and they didn't.

And then my plan expired with SiteGround and my site was nowhere to be found. And they couldn't, you know, they couldn't recover it. And I asked SiteGround if they could extend my subscription with them for just a few days until BigScoots could, you know, take it, kind of recover it and i asked siteground if they could extend my subscription with them for just a few days until big scoots could you know take it kind of recover it and they did for free for me which that was uh you know doesn't happen every day so it's good to have backups that if anything happens to your site it breaks for whatever reason something happens with the host you can recover it because otherwise you'll just have to start over again. And that's not fun, especially if you've been working for some years. Good point. That is all when it comes to plugins, I think. Yeah. And theme. Bloggers often feel like they need to spend a fortune on a custom website to have a professional online presence.

Not only do you not need to spend a fortune, you can actually build your own website with a beautiful theme that won't hold you back from success. That's why we recommend Restored 316 website themes. You can have the website of your dreams with a beautiful conversion-focused online presence without breaking the bank. We love Restored 316 so much. It's the only website themes we recommend to our students because of the heart and soul they put into their themes.

They're also so customizable. So even if you purchase a theme that someone else has, you can absolutely make it your own using the block features of Cadence so it's customized to your needs without the price tag. To learn more about Restored 316 themes, click the link in our show notes. I think that you've listed some really important things. And I think you've approached it in a way that will be really helpful to newer bloggers because you've prioritized.

Here's what's really important. These are all very important, but here's the most important if you're getting started. And then as you go, as you grow, you can start adding things on. Because you're right, the recipe niche is pretty competitive. And we don't say that to scare anybody off. There's still room for new food bloggers. We still encourage new food bloggers there. But we encourage you to be really strategic about it and just know what you're getting yourself into and be willing to put in the work to do the keyword research, to have the tools you need, and also to create posts that have the ability to compete. So do you want to just quickly talk about a few of the most important things that you think that any food or recipe post should contain in order to, I guess, compete with another one out there. Because the whole

idea is that you do want to rank on page one. So what can you include to help ensure you have the opportunity to rank for that post? Yes. When I just started, I thought you need the keywords. That's all you need. And I put tons of keywords on my page that sounded super unnatural. But I thought I'm going to rank for everything because I have thousands of keywords on my page. That's not working today. It might be working before. But now there is a term called semantic search. Basically means that you have to have certain things on your page for Google to actually rank you more than just keywords.

means that you have to have certain things on your page for Google to actually rank you more than just keywords. And for recipes specifically, number one is you really need to have a recipe card. It's free and it just takes like 10 minutes of your time to copy your recipe into the recipe card. So that's one thing. Another one, you think as a person who cooks, when you go onto the site, what is helpful for you? For me, it is very helpful to see pictures of every single step. So the process shots, you know, how you start, what is the next step? What is the next one? And how do you finish? You really need to include good quality process shots into your post and step-by-step description of what you're doing in every picture.

The best practice according to Feast, developers are saying that you should include the description after every image. Some people put a collage of pictures, which might be helpful for some people who like to just see the collage of everything you need to do and then read the description. But they say the best practice is for you to put a picture and say, you do this in this picture, then you put the next picture in the description, now mix the ingredients, now let the dough rest and you do it step by step together. Then you think of what is helpful for the readers. Because on one hand, yes, you need to have ingredients in every post with a picture of ingredients and then labels for each ingredient, because that's also how some people can process information better. If they look at it and they see that, okay, I need potatoes, I need milk, I need garlic versus reading it.

And they can maybe remember the picture in the store better because they saw it and you put labels, what is what. That's one thing you need to have ingredients, substitutes, because there are so many people with allergies who have to eat gluten-free or dairy-free or vegan, or they can't have a certain ingredient that you would never think somebody can't have like peanuts or I don't know. So it's better to include every single substitute that you can think of that can be helpful to other people. Then you have step-by-step. After that, storage. How do you store this?

Do you store it in the refrigerator, in an airtight container? Can it stay at room temperature? How long it stays at room temperature? Can you freeze it? How do you freeze it? For example, if you're making a cream soup and you add milk to it, then they recommend you freeze it without milk. And then you add milk afterwards. How do you defrost it and things like that?

It's important for people to know so that they don't make the mistake and then come back, you know, and ask you in the comments, why did it not work? You give them all information right away. Then, you know, how to serve this dish, what toppings are good, what side dishes are good for this. It is all helpful for others and Google sees that you're adding a lot of helpful information and then expert tips or you know tips for success and then you include some notes for people to pay attention to as they're going through the recipe that they might not think of but you need to let

something sit like the dough you need to let's say rest the chocolate chip cookie dough in the fridge for 30 minutes before actually making them so that people get that information once again and think, okay, this is important because they included it twice. And then you link to related recipes. All that might seem a little bit unnecessary sometimes because people think, oh, it's too long. Nobody's going to want to go through this. But if people don't want to go through your post at the very beginning, there is a jump button that you should have to the recipe that if somebody doesn't want to go through your post at the very beginning there's a jump button that

you should have to the recipe that if someone doesn't want to go through your post and look at all the pictures they say jump to recipe and then it takes them all the way down to your recipe card and then they don't look at all the process charts but some recipes are hard like make macaroons or make you know sourdough you really want to look at pictures because it's important how things look because it's such a complicated recipe you want to look at pictures because it's important how things look. This is such a complicated recipe. You want to include that. And it's not only for the people, it's also for Google because Google understands what's best for the people. And the more useful your content is for the people, the higher Google will rank you because they are constantly updating their algorithms so that they rank the most useful content. It's not necessarily the main

point for you to meet Google's needs today, what they consider important today. But what's more important is think the best way you can be useful and helpful for your readers. Also, frequently asked questions block is very helpful. And sometimes you need different blocks depending on the recipe because not all recipes need exactly the same template, but that is a general advice how to rank better. And that's a lot. So I think maybe there will be notes under the episode, or you can also go on to other posts that rank on the first page for your keyword that you're actually targeting and see the first 10 pages that are actually ranked for this keyword and see what they are doing. And if they are including all this information, then probably you should too.

Yeah. I think that's a really good thing to think about is what your competitors are sharing. And it's not to copy in any way. You don't copy. But how can your post meet the user intent even better than the one who's 1 through 3 or even the first 5 or 6? You've shared so many. I don't even think people have realized how much goodness you've shared in this episode, Natasha. It's been... I mean, this is definitely an episode that if you're wanting to start a food blog, I would go back and get a notebook and write it down and really take in what Natasha is sharing. We recommend the majority of the ones that you mentioned. So we will put a lot of those in our show notes.

So you have access to those. I think that's going to be really helpful for people. And thank you for just being so honest about this. And I want to applaud you also for stepping out of the safe comfort of just working behind the scenes on your blog and writing recipes and going out there and getting on podcasts and sharing what it's like to build a blog and what that looks like and sharing your knowledge with others because you could definitely keep all of this to yourself. But I love that you're supporting other people who are wanting to do what you're doing and say, Hey, this is how you can do it. And this is how you can be successful. And I think that as a blogging industry, that's something that we

are really passionate about doing is just creating a closer, tight-knit community that can help each other and lend a hand. And you've shared things today that I didn't know. And that's super insightful, I think, to just being willing to talk about our journey and what's helping you or what's holding you back and sharing. So I just want to say thank you for that. Thank you so much for having me here too.

Also, one thing I want to share is there's a great course for food bloggers and any other bloggers on youtube it's absolutely free it's called seo for bloggers it is held by top hat rank organization they are seo people experts they do audits for sites too and they have great information i think they have like 20 something episodes right now and it's on youtube but you don't have to watch the videos you can just listen to it as you're cooking or doing something else. And it's great. So much great information that everything that I've learned, I've learned from them and it works.

Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that. Jennifer listens to a lot of those webinars as well from Top Hat Ranks. So yeah, they're an awesome group. So Natasha, can you please let people know how they can connect with you and how they can find your blog? My blog is natashashome.com. And you can connect with me on Facebook. Mostly, I have Instagram, I don't go on Instagram as often. I do answer my emails too. But probably Facebook is the best. We have a Facebook group that's called Gluten-Free Sourdough Bread Baking Community. And if you go there, I always answer everything there too. And my Facebook account is actually linked there too. I have two.

I have one that is Natasha's home and my personal one. And my personal one and both of those I will answer. We will put all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much, Natasha. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about blogging with us, please find us on Instagram at Spark Media Concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share blogging tips and inspiration. You can sign up by finding the link in the show notes. For those of you who are ready for the next step and want to start your own blog,

join the waitlist for the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp. The link to join the waitlist is also in the show notes. Go out and make today a great day.