This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Welcome to the curious world of recipe blogging, also known as recipe blogger posts dumb articles for Google. Welcome to Side Hustle School. In fact, that's the name of the podcast. Today we're gonna talk about that world of recipe blogging. We will revisit the flavorful journey of a recipe blogger who combined culinary passion with digital marketing acumen.
And also we'll talk about why is every online recipe post so incredibly long? Have you noticed that? If you ever search for a recipe or lots of other stuff on Google these days, you get taken to an extremely long post that takes a very long time to get to the actual information you were searching for, which seems counterproductive, right? You would imagine if you search for a recipe that they would want the recipe to be the first thing that you see. Or if you click the link, it's like, hey, you were looking for the recipe, guess what, here's the recipe.
But in fact, you get a long story. You get all sorts of preamble. You get just, you know, almost pages and pages that you have to scroll through. So anyway, that's a little bit of a side note, but we will talk about it because it relates to this person's business. And if you are building a website, a content-based website around topics that people are searching for, and you have this whole SEO strategy, well, this actually matters.
Like there is a point to all this. This is part of our Throwback Thursday series, where we take a look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them. Last week, we heard from a private chef who specializes in nutrition for elite athletes. And today in our latest feature, we're gonna stay in the food industry, broadly speaking, but we will look at this recipe publisher. Her name is Felicity.
How is she doing? She's doing pretty well. She's making money. Her blog is growing. But then also as that side note, we'll talk about why online recipe websites and so many others these days are so random.
Basically, it turns out it's because Google has ruined the internet. And I'm not actually kidding. There, this is a true story. So without further ado, let's hear from Felicity. I'll have some brief comments at the end.
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Hi there, I'm Felicity. Back to share more about my journey as a recipe blogger. When I first started, I love sharing my culinary creations, but little did I know how crucial SEO and contact strategy would be in turning my blog into a profitable venture. This is the most important decision of all. The world of recipe blogging is not just about whipping up delicious dishes.
It's equally about the science of SEO. One critical element is the length of blog post. To rank well on Google, posts need to be comprehensive, which often means long. A typical post on my blog ranges from 1,500 to 2,000 words. This isn't just to meet a word count.
It's to provide thorough instructions, tips, and often the story behind the recipe, which enhances user engagement and SEO. Initially, I didn't understand why many food blogs had lengthy introductions before getting to the recipe. But as I delved into SEO, I learned it's partly because Google prioritizes content that provides value and context. Those dumb stories often contain keywords and user engagement metrics that Google uses to rank pages. In other words, it needs to be long for Google, even if a shorter answer would be better.
Monetizing my blog started with Google AdSense. At first, their earnings were modest, just a few dollars a day. However, as I honed my SEO skills, my blog traffic increased and so did my AdSense revenue. By consistently posting well-researched recipes and engaging narratives, I started to see a significant increase in traffic and ad revenue. Today, I average about 4,000 per month from AdSense alone.
To boost my SEO, I focused on several key strategies. Keyword research, I use tools like SEMrush to find relevant Hive search volume keywords for each recipe and incorporate them naturally into my post. User experience, I ensured my website was easy to navigate, mobile-friendly, and had fast loading times, which are all factors in Google's ranking. Lastly, quality content. I invested time in creating high-quality original content.
This included clear, step-by-step instructions, high-resolution images, and personal antidotes to make each post engaging and unique. That said, anyone aspiring to enter the world of recipe blogging, my advice is that you need a lot of content to win. Understand the basics of SEO, be authentic in your writing, and remember, patience is key. It takes time for pages to rank on search engines. Today, my recipe blog is more than a collection of dishes.
It's a thriving online business that blends my love for cooking with digital-marking savvy. And as the latest SEO guidelines evolve, I continue to learn and adapt one recipe at a time. [Music]
Well, you heard it from her. As Felicity explained a little bit, the reason why so many websites are so random these days, content websites specifically, when you're searching for information, it's because Google prioritizes content that is really long. Like, it's a certain length.
Like, if the answer you're looking for could be provided in a very short amount of text, Google actually wants you to make up a bunch of other texts. And by doing so, your website's going to rank higher than a website that actually just gets to the point and provides you what you're looking for. Definitely annoying as a user, for sure, but it is something you need to be aware of and probably focus on if you want to win this Google AdSense content game. And as you heard, Felicity is making $4,000 a month from AdSense alone. This is largely passive income once the recipe blog is built up.
Of course, she needs to keep pruning it and adding recipes and such, but the income itself, she goes to bed at night, wakes up and sees, oh, there's a couple hundred dollars there, that's nice. So thanks to her for sharing the updates with us. Let me know what you think, who you'd like to see featured from our archives. Long set of archives, of course, but the best is yet to come. So thanks for being out there.
Thanks for being subscribed. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. This has been episode 2,581. My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
