Ep #16: Top SEO Strategies for Bloggers with Amy Lynn Andrews

Is SEO the most complicated thing in the world, or what! Oh sure, there’s that brain surgery thing, but other than that, SEO is tough. Add tags, but not too many. Use Meta descriptions. Do keyword research. Have long tails. Long tails? Isn’t that something cats should be worried about? Well, now that you mention it, a cute cat video or two might be helpful. But before you start throwing care to the wind and courting traffic with irrelevant videos, why not take a listen to this post on Top SEO Strategies for Bloggers with one of my favorite blogging gurus, Amy Lynn Andrews. You’ll be glad you did!

There’s already so much to be concerned about with a food blog — food photography, recipe development, editorial calendars, and more — that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when it comes to SEO. That’s why I reached out to blogging guru Amy Lynn Andrews to get the scoop on the behind-the-scenes blogging tips.

Amy suggests that it’s important not to overthink this stuff. In fact, focusing on quality content that your readers love is some of the best advice you’ll hear across the board.

If you’re writing great content you’re already doing so many things right. — Amy Lynn Andrews

But, if you’re interested in taking a little deeper dive into SEO, then following along for more great information.

Featured Content – Top SEO Strategies for Food Bloggers with Amy Lynn Andrews

Here are some of the highlights of my discussion with Amy:

• Why Amy decided to start her blog sharing best advice on blogging strategies
• Why Amy recommends develop a niche for your blog
• Amy’s Number One SEO tip for bloggers!
• Why Amy believes food bloggers do better on SEO than most
• Why blog titles are important
• Amy recommends the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress blogs
• Be sure to fill out the meta description and post title
• Remove dates out of the permalink structure
• Why long-form content can be more important than short term content
• Why it’s important for your site to be mobile-ready
• Amy’s recommendation for the one thing to completely focus on if you do nothing else
• Amy talks about her preference for categories and tags for reader organization

Show Notes

This episode includes references to several resources you might find interesting. Here they are:

• Learn more about today’s guest, Amy Lynn Andrews and be sure to sign up for her Useletter.
• Sign up for Amy’s Knowtbook to get access to her best SEO, bloggin, and productivity tips.
• Amy mentions Google Trends Explore as a great keyword research tool
• Amy also suggests checking out the Google’s Mobile Friendly Test to make sure your site is mobile friendly
• Amy also recommends using TinyPNG – https://tinypng.com/ for images up to 20 MB and JPEG Mini – http://www.jpegmini.com/ (note the free option at the bottom). Another option is Website Planet for images up to 50 MB. In addition, we use Imagify which has both free and paid options.
• Amy shared with us these links on the topic of duplicate content:
  Yoast’s recent post on duplicate content, Duplicate Content info via Google (an overview), and more information from Google on Duplicate Content
• Amy mentions this Photo Collages/Round-Ups (an interview on Brilliant Business Mom’s Podcast (with Melissa Will at Empress of Dirt)
• Amy also recommends the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast
• Amy recommends Gimp as a free photo editing tool, an alternative to photoshop.
• Amy’s favorite app on her phone is Voxer where you message others via a recorded message. Fun!
• Amy mentions Documentary Heaven as a way to keep up on the latest documentaries.
• Why not give Amy a shout-out on Twitter or Facebook and say thanks for the Chopped Podcast interview

Announcements

1. Learn about future Chopped Podcast episodes 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!
2. Our next podcast interview is with Kathy Patalsky with the blog Healthy Happy Life and food photo sharing site Finding Vegan. Kathy and I talk about building your social media presence, and Kathy should know, she’s got over 700,000 followers on social media between her two sites. That’s impressive! Kathy shares some of her favorite social media strategies so you can grow your following too! Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it!

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!