Tips for Strategically Republishing Content with David Crowley | The Food Blogger Pro Podcast

So 2014 really has the point where it's almost like dabbling a little bit. It sounds like, like doing a little bit of this, doing a little bit of that, but all in the category of food and wine and then being like, wait a minute, like, there's something here. I could actually do this and starting to think a little bit more strategically learning a little bit, right. Food photography. How do you do how to get better at food photograph. What did that look like once you had made that, that switch to focusing a little bit more on the site? And did you. Knowing that, like, hey, you like what you're doing, you know, that you're not going to leave your. The nonprofit you founded, what was your mindset with it in terms of optimizations and time and effort along with it? Was it purely side hustle at that point?

Yeah, I think in the early days of doing it, of making that commitment to doing it more seriously, I think part of the idea was there were a couple factors. I think for us, it was kind of like thinking that one of our goals was definitely like, in wanting to stay for a nonprofit that's successful, but still relatively small and not super lucrative in terms of what, you know, seeing where there wasn't a huge growth salary if I was, for me, sticking there. But at the other day, on the other hand, you know, things like projecting college and retirement type things that it's hard to invest in as much when you're, you know, choosing to work in the nonprofit sector. So it was like, you know, my wife and I having a conversation a little bit, hey, like, this could be a way to keep doing, keep the day job you love, you know, with, you know, more or less the same salary kind of range and, but still help bring in, you know, the increased revenue we really need to meet our family needs. It seemed like maybe blogging had that potential. So I especially like hearing, you know, the pint of Yum Story and other folks that were successful, like, wow, okay. Like, you know, it was almost like, you know, dabbling forever probably doesn't make a lot of sense because I was spending enough time on it just as a hobby, you know, so it's like, hey, can we get serious and have this be, you know, part of our family's financial equation in a meaningful way and let's give it a shot. So I think what I would say, though, about the early days of that was not being. It was like kind of like drinking from the fire hose. Of all these ideas of photography, how to get more traffic, da, da, da. It Was almost like trying everything. And this feeling like, man, I could be doing this all the time. And sometimes it was like 20 hours a day. Yeah, so. So that, I think, was hard, you know, but I've always, you know, sometimes my first instinct to solve the problem is, you know, work more, work harder kind of thing. You know, it kind of. My, you know, my dad at various points had three jobs, you know, sort of make ends meet kind of thing. So it's kind of, you know, just kind of the way you do things. But that's not always the best way to roll. But that was definitely. I would say there are a couple years where that was kind of. My blogging was frenetic energy. Maybe not, you know, trying to figure out which of the things I was putting time and effort into were, you know, gonna have traction. And really to test the hypothesis that this could actually be, you know, some kind of meaningful revenue stream for our family.

Yeah. What did it look like to transition out of that? Like, do you feel like now when you look at what you're doing, you have a little bit more clarity on, like, hey, here's what I focus on. Here's what I do, here's what I don't do. Or do you feel like it's still kind of in that? Is it like fire hose stage or is it like garden hose stage? Or, like, like, on this. On.

It's at least garden hose.

Okay.

It's definitely not fire hose, I would say. Yeah, it definitely. I think I've been able to figure out over the last few years how. Yeah, how? Where? I think it's always an evolving question, I think. And I always think whether it's blogging or my day job, the most important resource we have is our time. So I always tend to be very. For the most part, I get in frenetic stages where I forget about it, but I try to be pretty mindful of where I'm allocating my time. And I feel like I have a better grasp at this stage of blogging as to, okay, these are things that make sense. This is where I need to be spending the biggest percentage of my time versus the stuff that's okay. If I have a little extra time, I'll do more of that. If I don't, I let it go and I'm okay. Not only is the world going to keep revolving, the blog is actually going to keep thriving, as a matter of fact.

Yeah. What are those things that, in the limited amount of time that you have, so you have, you know, when you slice it Looking not at your schedule, but in general it's like people who are doing full time. If it's a normal nine to five, you have mornings, you maybe have like a lunch sprint, you have evenings and you have weekends. So in that time that you have, what does that look like for you in regards to what you're focusing on and what you found to be for yourself? Right. It's individual dependent, the highest kind of ROI for your time.

Yeah, I definitely feel like. And it shifts over time, but I think in general that category of producing.

Well.

Content that has some SEO potential, that's based on some SEO concepts and a lot of times that means fixing. Lately that's meant a lot of. I probably spent more time updating old posts and creating new content because that seems like when I look back at, you know, I was looking back at my 2021 stats, I think I had to go down to about post like rank, rank order number 30 out of, you know, traffic. That was actually a new recipe this year. The other 29 were older posts and you know, within the top 10 there I can say, oh yeah, great, that was a good investment of time. I updated that sauteed arugula. Beautiful. It's glad to see it's getting, getting some attention. So I think. Go ahead, go ahead. I was just going to say I do feel like maybe in the coming year I, you know, I think to some extent I picked a lot of the low hanging fruit when I sort of figured out that that was an important space of time. So I'm sort of feeling like the year ahead, maybe it'll be a little more balanced and. But I do feel like I have a little bit more of an idea of how to, you know, you know, I might not be able to get a post that's going to bump, you know, my top couple posts out of those slots right away, but that are going to perform pretty well, you know, within the year as opposed to never or over multiple years.

Yeah. What does that look like in terms of your process for finding though? So you say, hey, I'm going to update a piece of content and I know that there's a good chance that if I do the right things, which would be interested in kind of your thought process with that, that I'll maybe spend less time and get more return on it than if I was creating something new. So first, how do you identify with those, those posts that you want to. And then what are some of the things that you like to do once you get into it?

Yeah, I've Gotten in the habit the last few years of doing around this, you know, around the turn of the calendar year. Try to pull both the Google Analytics and search console data and really look for those where I'm ranking. Originally I was, you know, looking where I'm not quite on page one of Google, you know, maybe 11 to 15 or something like that. Trying to try to bump where I can bump up. But I also now I think you know, from listening to your podcast and other, some guests and other things I've read also getting a little more like okay, realizing how much it means to go from you know, five to three or three to two. So whereas I think before, oh, I think my earlier on in this process, I think I was thinking oh, page one, I don't want to mess with that. But you realize, yeah, low down on page ones really doing all that much for you. Unless it's a, I mean my top performing posts that brings in the most revenue, you know, is that pork ribs recipe. And one of the reasons why it does well is it just ranks for so many things. So that's another factor too. I mean I think some of the newer things I'm targeting, it's like a little more niche from the get go but you don't have that benefit of so, so it is. And that's where I guess, I suppose it is a science, but it also seems like an art of figuring out well, well this is something I could be in the one slide on but it's not going to, you know, so many people looking for steak picado recipe for instance versus something where, you know, geez, if I can, you know, various iterations on mushroom risotto, if I, if I can even be on, you know, 10 on something like that, it's got 100,000 searches per month. That's. Yeah, that's something to consider.

So yeah, there's no exact formula for it. That's what's hard is I think some people are like what's the formula? What do you do? Um, and there's to your point, it's the art and the science and I think one of the things that people forget a lot is the art in content is the actual content itself. Right. So there's like structural best practices. Like here's how you would, you know, in you should only have one H1, you can have multiple H2s. You can have some H3s. It's probably good to you know, have an FAQ section like those type of structural type things. But like if that's super extreme Example, if all of that is filled with a random assortment of characters that you mash on your keyboard, like, it's not going to matter how you structure it because it's not going to. It's 0% helpful. There's a spectrum of like the most incredible piece of content that would be 100% helpful. And part of what we need to do is like, okay, we have best practices, but what does it look like for then us, for you, the artist, the creator, to backfill those best practices with things that are truly helpful, impactful, unique. And that's where it feels like the art and science comes in. Because sometimes you can do all the things that you read in articles or hear in podcasts, but it's like if you're not doing it from a source of authority or expertise or value, then it's not going to be super helpful when you do go into it. I'm curious to hear, like, let's say you do identify something from 2015. You're like, hey, there might be something here. Are you going in and essentially adding content? You reshoot photos? Do you update the recipe or does it depend for every piece of content you look at?

It depends a little bit. But I would say the majority of ones I've really prioritized for an update I probably doing, you know, shooting new photos at least because I feel like I've gotten better at that, you know, unless it's. There are a few have updated where it's only been a year, but I feel like there's, you know, adding. Maybe I'll just add process photos.

Sure.

But. But I'm happy with the finished dish kind of thing. Yep, the but. But I think the majority where I've seen good results, I've done a, you know, been old enough, they've been sitting around long enough maybe getting some traction, but not, you know, maybe not page one or low page one. And, and then doing a pretty comprehensive, you know, redoing the photos and, and you know, I think I'd say within the past couple years I've got, you know, probably what, you know, there's sort of a playbook I know like Casey and others have talked about on your podcast, you know those faq, you know, the flow of a good post. And so it's only, you know, I've been blogging for a long time as we discussed. So you know, I have 550 or so posts on there. So there are a lot that don't have that kind of format. So, so that's so, so Most have been, you know, ones that I've been looking for a pretty thorough redo. Although I am kind of interested in this idea of like. But that takes time. It takes almost as much time to do that as, as from scratch. Sometimes even a little more. If I, you know, if I had some really long winded intro, you know, stuff that just is not pertinent anymore because then it like trying to rework that instead of just.

It's almost like cleaning out an old closet and then reorganizing it versus just having an empty closet that you fill in.

Yeah.

Like depending on how unorganized the closet is, it could potentially create more time.

Yeah.

Or yeah, require.

So one thing I'm in, one of the things I'm interested in maybe as I think to the coming year is as a way to work into the workflow. Some of, you know, some middle ground kind of. And I recently signed up for Clarity and I think it's Ben that I did a call with. He was talking about, we were looking at some examples of how to organize like doing, you know, holiday post updates and just talking through some. We were brainstorming stuff for a checklist. I'm like, you know, I could probably get some lift to some old posts without needing to.

Yep.

Make the dish again, you know, shoot it again and the whole nine yards. Because.

Anyway, so yeah, no, that's great. So. And appreciate the Clarity. Shout out. Ben is the product manager GM of Clarity. Clarity with an I we've talked about on the podcast before. But that's really, that's really the idea with it. Like, that's what we're trying to get at is like, how do we help people discover areas of opportunity. That would be kind of the quick fix, quick enhancement type stuff, but also to guide people along the way in more project based things where it's like, hey, I want to do this kind of, you know, holiday post. I want to go through and update these or whatever it might be. So it's been fun to kind of craft that tool and continually evolve it.