Ep #124: Create SEO Momentum with Casey Markee

Learn how to create SEO Momentum for your food blog with one of the top experts, Casey Markee. Do you ever feel like there’s something holding your site back? Well, take off the breaks and build momentum by increasing your search engine visibility. If you love the technical side of food blogging, check out the discussion on Top Pinterest Tips for Food Bloggers with Kate Ahl, or Blog Post Production Planning with Christine Pittman.

What is SEO?

The first question you might be asking is, what is SEO? Don’t worry, you’re not the only who’s asked this. It simply means Search Engine Optimization and it’s one of those acronyms thrown around a lot in the industry. SEO refers to the strategies and techniques you, as a site owner, can use to increase visitors to your site via search results. So, when someone searches for “banana cream pie”, the big SEO goal is to show up as result number one. There’s a lot of competition for a search term like “Banana Cream Pie” and so that’s what we’re talking about today — the things you can do to cause your site to inch its way up on search results pages.

How Can A Site be Optimized for SEO?

Casey Markee is the guest on today’s show and not only is he an expert on SEO, he has spent some time working with food bloggers and has developed some great strategies for helping food bloggers improve their SEO. He talks about ways you can optimize your site for SEO. There are some specific tips for food bloggers that can make a big difference.

Casey talks a lot about the small things that can add up over time. There is a lot of great nuggets in today’s post. I recommend listening to the entire show once through and then going back and picking the key strategies you want to implement. Here are a couple of myths about food blog SEO that I’d love to point out:

1. You can’t always listen to the big bloggers. They may find from their own experience that A and Z are all you need to do to grow your traffic. However, comparing a smaller site to a bigger site, even when they’re both in the same topic (food blogging), is like comparing apples to oranges. Pardon the food pun. However, that blogger that gets 2 million page views per month may be able to get away with skipping B — Y, but that doesn’t mean you can. Casey points out that SEO is about doing the small things that add up over time. And food blogging is a really competitive field, so you need to stay focused on your SEO strategy to get ahead.
2. A lot of people are focused on constantly creating new content. Casey points out that you might do yourself a favor by actually lightening up the new content load and, instead, going back to your older content and fixing it to meet SEO standards.

So, be sure to create SEO momentum, by listening to today’s show!

Featured Content – Create SEO Momentum

Here are some of the highlights of my discussion with Casey about how to create SEO momentum. Here are some of the specifics:

• Casey talks about his background and how he began working with companies and bloggers on SEO
• We talk about SEO and it’s impact on food blogging
• Casey talks about the Google search algorithm, and how it’s constantly updated
• We talk about why bloggers with smaller traffic numbers may not want to listen to all the advice given out by larger food bloggers
• Casey shares tips for food blog SEO strategies
• We talk about some of the best resources to help food bloggers with SEO (see links below)
• SEO amounts to doing a lot of small tasks over time to build momentum
• Casey suggests that bloggers may want to create less new content and fix old posts instead
• We talk about the ways in which Casey works with food bloggers

Show Notes

This episode on how to Create SEO Momentum includes references to some resources you might find interesting. Here they are:

• Learn more about today’s guest: Casey Markee
• Give a shout-out on Twitter and Facebook to say thanks for the Chopped Podcast interview!
• Casey talks about SEMRush for keyword research
• Here’s another resource mentioned: Answer The Public
• You can use this tool, WebPageTest
• Be sure to check your site speed:
• Pagespeed Insights ToolAnother resource recommended by Casey: GTmetrix
• A critical resource you should be using regularly: Google Search Console
• Casey recommends WP Recipe Maker for your recipe plugin
• You can use W3 Total Cache to make your site load more quickly
• Here’s another tool recommended by Casey: WP Rocket
• We discuss the February 7 Google Update  and the February 7 “Phantom Update”
• Worried about your email pop-up? Casey points out that the Interstitial Penalty ONLY Applies to 1st Click from Google
• Check out this great resource recommended by Casey: SEN
• Connect with Chopped Academy Online:  Instagram  | Twitter
• Connect with Marly: Namely Marly |  Instagram  | Twitter
• Production, music, graphic art & sound design by Shawn Beelman
• Learn about future Chopped Podcast episodes and get some awesome tips on food blogging by subscribing to the ChoppedCon newsletter. Just add your email in the subscribe section at the bottom of this page. You’ll be glad you did!

Subscribe to the Show & Feedback

Thanks so much for listening to today’s podcast. I hope you found it informative and helpful to the work you do every day. Make sure you don’t miss out on any of the Chopped Podcast episodes by heading on over to iTunes to subscribe to the Chopped Podcast. While you’re there, provide a review and rating is a great way to help other podcast listeners find it too! That’s it for today’s podcast. As always, thanks so much for joining in the discussion!

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