Welcome to episode 29 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This is a special edition of the FBP podcast featuring... you guessed it! Bjork and Lindsay Ostrom.

It's always so interesting to hear about the stories people have with their blogs - when they started, how they got going, what keeps them inspired.

However, it's pretty rare to get a full breakdown of all the phases that the blog and the blogger(s) went through from day 1. Usually the stories talk about the beginning, and then the present.

But today, Bjork and Lindsay sit down together (literally) and talk about the 4 distinct stages Pinch of Yum went through up until today. It's just so interesting. And if you listen alllll they way through to the end, they also have some cutesy married-couple moments that I distinctly decided not to edit out. It's adorbs.

In this peek back in time, Bjork & Lindsay share:

• What the first year of blogging was all about for Lindsay
• What she would have done differently when they started Pinch of Yum
• Her advice for those who are still in the "first stage" of blogging
• Bjork's favorite Ira Glass quote (again)
• What it was like when Lindsay started "playing the game" with blog numbers
• Why Lindsay finds surveys so valuable
• Whether a custom website design or good content is more important
• When they entered the "high stakes" game with Pinch of Yum
• What it was like to work full time and grow Pinch of Yum at the same time
• Why Pinch of Yum is still a very personal site instead just a collection of recipes
• And more!

Resources:

• 10 Mistakes that Bloggers Make & How to Fix Them eBook
• Episode 028: How to Boost Your Blog’s SEO with Casey Markee from Media Wyse
• Google Analytics
• Google Analytics course on Food Blogger Pro
• Hotjar
• Hotjar course on Food Blogger Pro
• SurveyMonkey
• Wayback Machine

If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to podcast@foodbloggerpro.com.

Be sure to review us on iTunes!

Welcome to episode 28 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! We are starting the new year off strong with a podcast all about optimizing your blog so that you can show up higher in search results.

Last week on the podcast, Bjork interviewed Ali Maffucci from Inspiralized. They talked about how she built a really strong brand in a really specific niche, and how it worked out really well for her. She now even sells her own physical product! To go back and listen to that episode, click here.

How to Boost Your Blog’s SEO

SEO can sound like a really scary acronym - what does it even mean, and how can I make it work for me?! But fear not, because even though it can be pretty complex to master, it can also be pretty easy to get started with.

Casey Markee from Media Wyse specializes in boosting SEO for food blogs. He kind of fell into this niche by accident, and by now has worked with 50+ bloggers to help them rank higher in search. In this interview, he and Bjork talk about some of the really quick and easy things you can do to improve your blog’s SEO, as well as some of the higher-level stuff that can give you an extra SEO boost.

In this super informative interview, Casey shares:

• What SEO is and why it is so important for your food blog
• What the biggest component of ranking online is
• How backlinks affect your search rankings
• How you can go about link-building in an ethical, Google-approved way
• The one thing you should make sure you have set up for your blog in 2016
• What structured data is and how it can indirectly help your organic traffic
• How Google uses authorship to gauge EAT - expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness
• Why you should be updating your popular posts yearly
• How site speed will affect your rankings now and in the future
• A few small, easy things you can do to boost your blog’s SEO

Resources:

• Media Wyse
• Moz Search Ranking Factors
• Searchmetrics Ranking Factors
• Casey’s Slideshare Channel
• Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool
• Google Search Rater Quality Guidelines
• Redirection WordPress Plugin
• AMP Wordpress Plugin
• Tiny JPG
• EWWW Image Optimizer WordPress Plugin
• Yoast SEO for WordPress Course on Food blogger Pro
• EasyRecipe Course on Food blogger Pro

If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to podcast@foodbloggerpro.com.

Be sure to review us on iTunes!