1. WordPress & SEO for
Food Bloggers
Tom Greenwood

2. Introduction
Wholegrain Digital is a WordPress
design and development agency.
We design, build and SEO
optimise WordPress websites for
clients ranging from individual
bloggers to large corporations
like M&S and Reed Recruitment.

3. What is WordPress?
WordPress is a content management system
(CMS). In simple terms, it provides an easy way to
add/edit content on your website.
Started as a blogging system
Now the world’s most popular CMS

4. How popular is WP?
WordPress is used
by 17.4% of all
websites.
That is a CMS
market share of
54.6%.
Source: http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all

5. Why use WordPress?
• It is easy to use
• It is free
• It is infinitely flexible
• It has a huge support community
• Google LOVES it
“WordPress is a fantastic piece of software… it
solves some 80-90% of the mechanics of SEO”
– Matt Cutts, Google

6. What is SEO?
The task of improving your website so that more
people can find it in search engines

7. SEO Fundamentals
If anyone tells you there is an easy way to be #1 on
Google, the are either lying or misguided
There are 4 main elements to SEO:
1. Setup your website correctly
2. Focus your content
3. Write lots of good content
4. Encourage interaction

8. Basics: Keywords
• Research popular search terms using Google
Keyword Tool (filter to ‘Exact Match’)
• Keywords are useful, but less critical for bloggers
than passion and personality
• Don’t stuff too many keywords into your posts or the
keywords will seem unnatural. Keywords should be
used sparingly, so don’t put keywords everywhere
unless the keywords sound right.
• Quality content first, keywords second

9. Basics: Clean URLs
• In WP under Settings > Permalinks choose Post name

10. Basics: Titles and meta

11. Basics: Headings
H1 heading

12. Basics: XML Sitemaps
• It automatically creates XML sitemaps and notifies
Google & Bing of the sitemaps existence
• It includes images from your pages/posts in the
sitemap

13. Basics: Analytics
Monitor which posts people are finding and
reading, and learn from it so that you can write
more posts that people find and love

14. Basics: Webmaster Tools
• Setup a Google Webmaster Tools account, submit
your sitemap and make sure that Google is not
reporting any problems crawling your website.
• If problems are found, you can deal with them

15. Basics: RSS Feeds
• Setup a Feedburner account and add RSS and
email subscription links on your blog
• Feed Stats for WordPress plugin

16. Basics: Linking
• Create amazing content
• Cross promote articles, recipes and reviews
• Give love to get love – don’t be scared to link out
• Guest blog for other people
• DO NOT buy links
Image: http://www.leostartsup.com

17. Food Blogger SEO
There are some specific things that food bloggers can
do to raise the profile of their blog
• Author profiles
• Photography
• Recipes
• Reviews
• Usability
• User Interaction
Image: http://www.lolfoodie.com

18. Author Profiles
Get yourself known as a food blogger, and attract
more traffic
• Create Google+ profile
• Add you blog to your profile
• Add your Google+ profile URL to your WordPress
author profile (use Yoast SEO plugin)

19. Photography
• Posts with images get 94% more views (Skyword)
• Get found in image search
• Use readable file names, titles and alt tags
• Use YoastSEO plugin for image sitemap
• Encourage sharing
• Use Pinterest "Pin It" Button premium ($29)
Image: http://www.foodcoachnyc.com

20. Recipe SEO
Recipe Schema and hRecipe
• Help Google, Yummly and SuperCook index your
recipes
• Get thumbnail images next to recipes in Google
search
• Cooking method, prep time, cooking time, cuisine,
ingredients, yield etcetc
• Plugins - Schema Creator by Raven, Recipe
Schema, hRecipe

21. Review SEO
Review Schema
• Review restaurants, cafes, bars
• Google understands the site is a review and
references it within Google local listings
• Sites like Urban Spoon also pickup reviews
• If review is genuinely favourable, contact the
owners of the venue to suggest they to link to
the review or quote something from the review
on their website

22. Usability
• Keep it simple
• Break up text with lists and sub-headings
• Use photography
• Responsive design for mobile and tablets
• Mobile important for restaurant reviews
• Tablet important for recipes

23. User Interaction
• Include sharing buttons prominently
• Lots of plugins for WordPress
• Facebook Comments
• SEO Facebook Comment plugin
• Engage with commenters
• Engage with influencial bloggers/tweeters
• Find influencers using Followerwonk.com
• Ask to interview them
• Reference their site or work
• Review their venue (e.g. chefs)
• Look for trending topics such as hot / new venues or
recipes getting a boost due to trends or celebrity
chefs (e.g. recipes from Masterchef). Notify
influencers via social media and interact.

24. WordPress Plugin List
• WordPress SEO by Yoast(essential)
• Feedstats for WordPress
• Pinterest "Pin It" Button premium ($29)
• Schema Creator
• Recipe Schema
• hRecipe (better to use Schema)
• SEO Facebook Comment plugin
hRecipe Website: http://microformats.org/wiki/hrecipe
Schema Website: http://schema.org/Recipe

25. Conclusion
• Setup your website right
• Figure out who you are and what you’re about
• Write great content
• Include great photography
• Use schema to tag recipes and reviews
• Make your content easy to share
• Engage with readers & influencers
• Monitor performance
• Learn and get better!