Why Search Intent Matters for Food Bloggers with Liane Walker from Foodie Digital

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Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and Happy New Year. We hope you had a happy and healthy holiday season filled with lots of delicious eats and good time off. And we are happy to kick off a new year with a podcast interview with Leanne Walker from Foodie Digital and the Sifter SEO Newsletter. Leanne joins us to talk about what's actually working in search for content creators right now, and she breaks down why understanding your brand, defining a clear niche, and owning your expertise are more important than ever, especially as search continues to evolve. Bjork and Leanne also dig into search intent, what it is, why it matters, and how mismatches between search intent and your content can quietly hurt your SEO performance. Leanne shares practical advice for writing clearer, more intentional recipe titles, avoiding the pitfalls of keyword chasing, and how you can adapt to keyword research in a world influenced by LLMs. They also cover how to evaluate existing content using Google Search Console and how to spot opportunities in your existing content to better capture the attention of readers and keep them on your site. It's a great, practical interview that should start off your year with some good, actionable items to improve your content strategy and hopefully your site traffic. Without further ado, I'll let Bjork take it away.

Leigh Anne, welcome to the podcast.

Hi Bjork. Thank you for having me.

You're one of these people who lives in a world that's important for us as food creators to be aware of because you have two different businesses. One where you're helping food creators kind of in the day to day, another where you are reporting on industry related trends, news, information around the world of SEO, specifically for food creators. Am I right?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

This is called Sifter S I F T R and it's one of my favorite conversations to have, which is not only somebody with a deep expertise in a certain area, which is content creation and search optimization, but also somebody who has that specific expertise within this specific industry. So before we jump into talking about all the nitty gritty, gritty details about search, can you talk a little bit about your entry point into this work?

Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Seems like a lifetime ago now. Well, I've been a content strategist for a very long time for a number of years. And about, I guess maybe eight years ago, I was working independently and I took a contract where I was invited to help a big brand that was looking to get into the nutrition space. So during the course of my research, I was looking at a lot of recipes, healthy recipes for this nutrition company. And I was deep in the weeds and looking at, you know, different scopes of work that they were very interested in maybe launching products into. And when I was looking at all these recipes, I just started digging into the hood and I could really see that there were a lot of things that were quite broken with what I was finding. But I didn't really understand why, because every time I would Google it, like, oh, well, it seems like there's information about that online. Seems like there's a tool that could maybe fix that. Seems like there's troubleshooting information out there. Why are there these things that are kind of broken?

Broken in what way?

Like, let's say there was really incomplete recipe structured data or there were things that weren't even outputting recipe structured data. That's a really simple example. So I actually flipped some of my insights to my colleague Carla, who's now my business partner at Foodie Digital and at Sifter. And I sent them to her on like a Friday night. And I was like, hey, over the weekend, just take a look at this. Like, am I, am I wild? Am I like really seeing these gaps? Why do they exist? Do you see them as well? And, and Carla's a software engineer and she and I had worked together for many years and I really trusted her opinion. And it was really on a whim that I flipped her that information. She's like, yeah, I'll take a look at it Monday. Morning. She was like, whoa, did you land on a. On a gold mine here? She was like, yeah, I also don't understand why all of these things are either broken, misused. Seems like there's a gap in knowledge. And she and I really started to kind of dig into that together, thinking that our combined skill sets. I'm a content strategist with sort of deep expertise in search marketing, and then she's a software engineer. We thought, oh, maybe we're the right people to solve this. I'll be straight up that we were both working big corporate contracts, which, you know, can be a little bit tough. We had young children at the time, and we were maybe both kind of starting to look for that off ramp a little bit. And, you know, corporate jobs, pretty inflexible. We were looking for, yeah, a little bit of an off ramp. So Carla sent me a note back Monday morning and was like, wow, huh? And we quite literally bjork. I put a note on Facebook. I said, does anybody know anybody who runs a food blog? I'd love to talk to a food blogger just, like, firsthand. And actually someone I went to high school with, went to Yale with an individual who had started a food blog and is still a Foodie digital member today, actually. And I just reached out and I said, hey, I have some questions for you. Can we get in touch? And we did. We talked on the phone for about 25 minutes. And I've heard kind of her perspective and it was hugely helpful. It really made me realize in that moment, like, oh, we're the right people to solve these problems for these folks. We started a proof of concept group. We took on, I think, I mean, this is a minute ago. We took on, I think, 12 food content creators, food bloggers, and we worked with them for free for a year while we were doing our corporate contracts. And we just, like, help them solve problems. Um, and the idea was like, is there work here? Like, can we actually support these individuals well and effectively and with results? Um, and, you know, SE has a slow burn. But after about six months, the results started to roll in and we were like, ok, hey, hold up. There's like, really an opportunity here for us. We told the proof of concept folks, we said, hey, we're going to incorporate. We're going to start a business January 1st. Who's in? All 12 signed. And it's just been kind of a snowball since then. But that's. That. That was the beginning hearing for Sam.

Awesome. It's. Yeah, it's one of the things that we talk a lot about on the podcast, which is if you are a creator and you are building a creator business, there are lots of things that you are going to need to do within that business, and it's important that you are not the one doing all of those things. And it's also important for expertise to exist within your ecosystem for those things. And so, great example of that, you know, content strategy, like you talked about, search related to that content strategy. I think about it even within my own life. I think about this idea of like a personal board of directors. Okay. Who are the people that I go to for the most important things in my life, whether it be like spirituality and faith, whether it be like personal finance, whether it be relationships within our business? It's almost easier to think about that. Okay, who are the people that we go to to learn about or to help us with accounting and finance? Who are the people that we go to to help us with like organization and systems? Who are the people that we go to to help us with content strategy, search engine optimization? And the more that we can find those people that become our learning sources or our touch points, the more efficient that we can be in our businesses because we are not then having to solve that or go out and learn it on our own. We can learn from those people or partner with those people to get answers to that. Can you talk about within the group of creators that you work with right now or even what you're seeing within the broader marketplace for this industry? Can you talk about the things that you are seeing working well for people who have content businesses from a general content perspective or even more narrow, from a search perspective?

The individuals who I think are thriving right now really intimately understand their brand. They intimately understand what they want to be known for, the type of recipe they want to be known for, and they know how to find their right reader. So they are the people who, you know. Often when I'm doing introductory calls with individuals who are on the foodie Doodle wait list to come in, I'll say, okay, succinctly summarize for me your subject matter area of expertise. And there's a lot of folks who are not able to do that. Bjork, quickly. Well, it should. That should really roll off the tongue. There are some people who know it instantly. Right. And that's kind of always a little bit of a interesting turning point because when. When somebody's not able to succinctly summarize what their subject matter, area of expertise is, it also, it's kind of A little bit of a clue that maybe their content strategy is going to have some topical drift in it, meaning that they now they start driving a little bit all over the road rather than having a clearer understanding of who their right reader is. I think one of the misconceptions with search marketing is that every reader is a good reader. They're not.

Yeah. You know, let's talk about why that is maybe like an example of why every reader's not a good reader.

Yeah. Okay. I'm trying to think about a really great way to kind of teach with an example because we love to do that. So, I mean, you want to attract the right reader to you. I was, I always communicate this to Foodie Digital members. You want to attract the right reader you in the first place because when you attract the right reader, they're way more likely to stay right. You've managed their expectations well. They know what they're going to get from you. They're way more likely to scroll. They're probably much more likely to click on internal links or other things and they're more likely to engage. These are the kind of user metrics that we need to grow today in search marketing. I mean, Google's monitoring these types of things, clicks in particular. And so attracting that right reader in the first place is incredibly important. I often say it's better to never get clicked on at all than to get clicked on and bounced off of. And why is somebody going to be bouncing off of you? Maybe they thought they were going to get something from you or your recipe. When they clicked through, they suddenly realized, oops, I don't have that ingredient. Or whoa, I didn't know this was an instant pot recipe. Plot twist. So we often coach Foodie Digital members. Right? Avoid the, avoid the plot twist. Manage the reader's expectations up front. And when you do, you're actually going to be almost like qualifying the people who click through. Because again, I'll repeat that. It's, you know, we teach that it's much better to never get clicked on at all than to get clicked on and bounced off of because Google monitors those clicks.

Point being, if there is an indicator that a search engine like Google would see that there's a mismatch from their search intent. Hey, I'm searching in this world. I'm searching for this recipe. I think this recipe is going to good fit, be a good fit for me. I go to this page, actually, it's not a good fit. I'm going to go back. Eventually they will find one. Hopefully that's a good fit there. There might be something in there that would be an indicator that the last place that they landed resolved their problem. Like that was the thing that helped them. And what Google is trying to do constantly is figure out how can they surface the most helpful content that they can and increase shareholder value, which is a whole nother conversation around capturing some of the value on the page. But generally what Google is trying to do is how do we surface the most helpful content? We're also seeing Google get into like creating some of that content, which we can get into down the line with AI overviews. But what you're saying is as much as possible, think about how to get somebody to your site and stay on your site. One of those ways is to match the intent of what they're searching to your post. What are the other things? Well, and maybe can you talk about what is search intent and how can we be aware of that as creators?

Okay. So I actually, I wanted to make sure that I articulated well. So I have a little definition here to help us along. Okay. The challenge, I think, in search marketing is a lot of these definitions tend to be a little bit vague. So I'd like to get into some specifics. So what is search intent? So matching search intent means creating content that aligns with the reason or purpose behind a user's search query. It's about understanding what the user wants to know. That's quite vague. So, you know, we often coach community members here at Foodie Digital to stop thinking about Google so much, start thinking about the person at home. What do they actually want? Like, stand next to somebody who's in a rush while they're trying to cook, trying to figure out the method that they, you know, are going to be cooking with. Is it going to be slow cook for today? Is it going to be instant pot? They're thinking about time a lot and a lot of people are thinking about ingredients as well. So let me give you a really quick example of maybe a mismatch of search intent to kind of help demonstrate what matching search intent really looks like. And this, this is a real life example from auditing a community member at Foodie Digital. We had a member who came in the door. Technical house was in great shape. Excellent. We were able to move on to content strategy quite quickly. She had been losing traffic for about a year and a half and she really couldn't put her finger on why. She'd done the kind of rounds. She'd had lots of input and audits done. It was very clear to me after auditing the site that she was not attracting the right reader. Let me give you an example. She was jumping into her keyword research tool and she, she was chasing queries that were vegan specific. Okay. But when I looked at her site, I'm like, why does she have vegan queries on her site? Or recipes titled as as vegan?

Because she was in a vegan site.

She had, yeah. Next post over is a steak.

Sure.

Vegans want really particular things. Okay. They're searching for particular ingredients that they cook with quite regularly. But in addition to the fact they're certainly not looking to land on a site that then also lots of different meats, et cetera on it. This gal had been just targeting the keywords of vegan, but she had sort of lost sight of the fact that actually her right reader wanted something that was dairy free. Right. And so that was the sort of the mismatch in the intent there. And then of course that showed up in titling and that showed up in how she was writing her blog post introductions, how she was marketing her recipes as well on other distribution channels, Pinterest, social media, et cetera.

Are you saying that that's how you discovered that, like, can you talk more about the dairy free, like so in this exercise I think you're like, wait a minute, the point specifically around, hey, I see there's a keyword opportunity, but it doesn't fit within the context of my brand. And that I think is an important piece. It ties in this idea of brand. Sometimes we hear people talking about brand. It's abstract. What does it mean? That to me is a great example of a brand consideration. Similarly, I think of some of the other people we've interviewed on the podcast. Amy from Yummy Toddler Food or Beth from Budget Bites. Like if Amy suddenly did this five course meal post, it's like, wait, this is about like how to feed your kids well. Or if Beth from Budget Bites did a post and it was this like over the top like gold sprinkled steak. It's like, okay, that's obviously a brand mismatch, but sometimes we can get lost in the keyword opportunity. Hey, I see there's like, this is low hanging fruit. I should do this. Well, yes, but does it fit within your brand? So I think that makes sense. Important to point out. I think what would be harder for people to understand is then what is for people who haven't defined it, then what is my reader looking for? You mentioned in this case the non dairy. How did you surface that versus just like there was something that was performing well that was non dairy. So that would then become like a self fulfilling prophecy. Like how do you sort through that to figure out what your brand is?

Oh, I mean, I think you have to spend a significant time, amount of time thinking about your brand before you develop your content strategy. A lot of parts of what we do when we're coaching individuals thinking about their long term content strategies, what are you not, it's okay to not be everything to everybody and understanding there are going to be a whole sets of queries that will never be relevant for, for your brand, for your content strategy because you are not the right person to deliver on that search intent. So I think accepting what you're not and almost having a list of like here are things that I'm not going to pursue is going to allow you have much more of a narrow focus and once you have much more of a narrow focus and you can really start spending time on articulating that particular recipe's search intent. Right. So for example, let's go back to that sort of vegan dairy free mismatch. This individual had been titling many of their recipes as vegan such and such, when in fact it should have been dairy free such and such. The recipe really did not change at the end of the day, let's say it was made with cashew cream. That was just her substitution. So as soon as she started to reframe that recipe as dairy free, that reader that she was attracting, okay, you know, maybe she titles it such and such with cashew cream. That reader seeing that title, cashew cream, that reader knows it's going to be dairy free. And they're more likely to look at that hopefully title if they see it in the search results and go, oh, that's the right result for me, I'm going to click on that. And they see those titles, right? Directly from within the search results. Of course the image plays a large role in clicks and conversions. Ratings play a large role in clicks and conversions. But what we spend a lot of time on at Foodie Digital is articulating that search intent in your title. The algorithm turns incredibly hard on our titles. And when we are clearing.

Can you say that piece again? The algorithm, what the algorithms?

Well, the core updates in our experience turns incredibly hard on the titles we write.

Meaning it prioritizes them.

I don't necessarily know that it prioritizes them. I think what we notice at Foodie Digital is when a member alters a title, updates a title, tweaks A title to be more clear, improves sort of the focus of that title. And that recipe's title actually articulates what the recipe is about much more clearly. The algorithm, you know, is it the, is it the chicken for egg or egg before chicken? Are the clicks coming because the reader's expectations are managed a little bit better and they're like, oh, yeah, that's the right result for me, or is it the algorithm that's going, oh, this title is a better match for the recipe itself and then, you know, lifting it, you know, that that's the sort of stuff that of course, you know, we don't love to know, but what we find at Foodie Digital is actually write much more articulate titles that reflect what the recipe is actually about in support of their bigger brand. And yeah, over time they start to get those wins.

Yeah, and this is, I think, a really important kind of key feature because so in the world of content creation, there's a thousand different things that we could be optimizing. The recipe itself, the images, the flow of the content, the titling, the email that goes out to like support the content. But within the context of search, one of the things that is at the top of the list, we don't know where is title. When you were talking about title within this context, are you talking about like the H1 title that you'd see on the post as well as like the title within the code, or is it just like the title of a post within the code which shows up on a search results page?

No, I'm talking about all the titles. Post title, yoast, SEO title, recipe card title. I mean, one of the things that's really unique about recipe search is it's deeply dependent on the outputting of recipe structured data. And that is because we have the recipe gallery that exists in search, right. And it's very prominent on mobile, it's also very prominent on desktop. And in order to for your recipe to gain access to that recipe gallery where a significant portion of clicks are earned, we know this because if a recipe drops out of that gallery, clicks plummet. You need to be correctly outputting structured data. And when you look at where that recipe gallery even displays on a mobile device, I know it's a little pushed down right now because a lot of AI overuse, triggering, but I mean, that's the title in the recipe card. It's actually remarkable how many individuals, how many food bloggers are not aware of that that title drives a significant portion of the clicks and conversions that you're going Organic clicks and conversions that you're going to see on a daily, weekly, monthly bas and sort of not articulating what your recipe is right for or who your recipe is right for. Excuse me. And what your recipe is about in that title is just a massive missed opportunity. What we talk about at Foodie Joe's, we call these blanket titles. Any Foodie digital member would know that. And we don't like to see them. Right. You're leaving characters on the table.

There's a lot of expectations, like literally word characters. You have more that you could do to align or motivate somebody to click on a piece of content.

Absolutely right. So it's just a missed opportunity. And it's because, again, folks have been taught for a really long time, right. They jump into their keyword research tool, they see that focus keyword, and that's the one they stick to. And that's what they write to. It's why we get a lot of same same across the recipe search results. Right. Like, the gallery can look like almost every single title is identical. Right. Best. You know, you've seen those titles too, before. I'm sure you guys rate really snappy and excellent titles. I think with pitching to Pinch Lindsay, it's not me.

Yeah. All credit to Lindsay and Jenna on the team. I won't take any credit or I will take credit publicly, but privately I'm not doing it, so.

But your brand comes across in your title. But I also think that there are titles, right, that are more descriptive, like, you know, such and such with potatoes or whatever it might be. And that's an excellent way to both manage reader expectations, but also match search intent. So, yeah, one of the ways in which search intent goes awry is through keyword chasing, which is really common. I just kind of want to normalize that experience for a lot of people. It's how search marketing's been taught for a very, very, very long time. But the introduction of natural language processing, which is a technology, has really changed how the algorithm responds to individual words. Right.

Can you talk more about that?

Okay. I will often say to people because I've, you know, I've. I've thrown so many expressions against the wall to see what really lands with people, to kind of deepen the teaching, get it to stick. And the one that always sticks is exact match. Keyword use is dead. Like natural language processing killed it. And I know that sounds incredibly dramatic, but sometimes to get people to kind of really sink into understanding the message, you have to be over the top a little bit. But it happens because we jump into keyword research tools and we start looking at, you know, ex match keywords. We see a little green light, we see all these little things in our keyword research tools and we think, you know, I'm just going to write to that. But the focus keyword for a recipe has nothing to do with the reader's intent. Right. A recipe for. Let me give you an example here. I actually wrote, wrote one down because I wanted to bring good stuff to this call. So let's say our focus keyword is gluten free, dairy free, scalloped potatoes. Okay, well let's. That's our focus keyword. We are in our keyword research tool. We see it there. It's in the long list of words. Great. What else? Okay, we have to get outside of that focus keyword to start unpacking the reader's intent. So we have to start asking ourselves questions like, okay, well, what type of potato do they want to use to make those scalloped potatoes? What type of cooking vessel or cooking method do they intend to use when they're going to be making those scalloped potatoes? Is it going to be in a slow cooker? Is it going to be in a casserole dish? There's actually a lot of standalone search and chump for what are the best type of potatoes for scalloped potatoes. Now that's not a keyword to chase. That's intent that's being revealed through the keyword research around just a common problem that people have at home. Usually we're making scalloped potatoes on a fancier gathering and we want to nail the dish. We want to make sure we use the right potato. So, you know, articulating that, let's say Yukon Gold potatoes are the potato used and the recipe you've developed is incredibly important. Right. To help match that intent. Now, I'm not going to get into natural language processing and the meaning of unlocking of individual words because that's, you know, another episode. But I think starting to think through and some of those things that the reader cares about at home, after you find your focus keyword is going to allow you to match search intent much more closely when you write.

Okay, and that would be what you're talking about is like within the post itself, what does it look like to do a good job of helping somebody who is searching for this?

Yes.

So it's a little bit of like either through actual user research, like you talked about that one year of just working with creators, it's user research in order to then launch your business. Because then you know what they not want, what they want, what the problems are. So there's that. So either through user research, asking people, hey, if you're going to make this, what questions would you have? Or through your own expertise, through years, decades, whatever it might be, intuitively understanding that these are going to be the questions, the curiosities, the help that people would need when they move through this piece of content. Your point in is to think holistically about what it is that you're writing about. In this case, it's a recipe and scallops potatoes with some specific dietary considerations that plays out in the paragraph. So how we're actually the paragraphs, how we're actually structuring and writing about the post. And then are you saying it also then ties into how we are titling it and being strategic with that?

Yeah. And in some cases. And that's. That's the hard part, right? That's the creative execution. I always coach Foodie digital members and Sifter readers to think like this is creative work. Right. And oftentimes when you are trying to write a really snappy title, don't just write one title, write five and then ask, well, which one makes the most sense to you? Which one do you actually think is the most actionable or is the most descriptive? Now I don't want, you know, folks to over focus on their titles either. You can also match intent quickly and easily in your the introduction that you write at the very top of a post. Right. The algorithm has moved far past needing to see something in an faq. FAQ schema was retired or sunset as a schema type for recipe sites I think almost plus two plus years ago. Right. So I don't want people to think when I say, you know, what is the best potato to use to make scalloped potatoes successfully that that shows up in some sort of expandable faq. Not at all. It should be contextually woven into the writing. So let me. I gave. I actually penned an example so that I could read it out today. So for the gluten free dairy free scalloped potatoes, maybe our opening snippet looks like my recipe lightened up. Dairy free scalloped potatoes come together effortlessly in one pan using gluten free bechamel shallots and scallions. Like a classic au gratin. It's an elegant holiday side dish or make ahead option for Wheatnik that you can serve alongside rotisserie chicken, roasted pork loin, etc. It uses unpeeled Yukon Gold potatoes.

Love that. So point being, you touch on the pieces that you have kind of promised in the title, you've done some keyword research, you understand there's an opportunity here. You realize it's going to be a good fit within the context of your brand. You have done the creative work around thinking about how you can help people be successful with a piece of content. Then there's also some of the structural components. Like you talk about having this kind of block of text above. But basically what we're trying to do is help people know that they are in the right spot.

Got it.

And doing that in a way that we would use natural language. Like if I was communicating to you, if I was, if I was, if I had a little recipe card and you came up to me and you were like, what is this? How would I describe it to you? In a way that feels like a match. If you're the person who had done that search.

Okay. And let's unpack that a little bit because I think it's really good. Bjork, right? If, if, if you're standing in the kitchen with me and I'm making dairy free, gluten free scalloped potatoes, you're having an experience. You're seeing me go out and grab Yukon Gold potatoes. You have life experience. You know that a russet potato looks different than a Yukon Gold potato. And I start slicing them. The robot's not coming over for dinner. Robot doesn't know what type of potato is being used. It doesn't have life experiences. It doesn't have perspective. It doesn't know what a russet potato is versus a Yukon Gold potato. Has it been to Thanksgiving dinner? You know what I mean? So when we are trying to match search intent, we have to close the gap on those experiences and that understanding for the robots. That's what natural language processing ultimately is about. When you begin to understand the role natural language processing plays in search marketing, you really begin to understand that exact match keyword use is dead. And then you really begin to know, oh, wow, I can just write this naturally into my opening copy snippet or in a paragraph in my post without having to stuff anything, without having to bury it in an faq, without having to in any way have written for a robot, make it contextually relevant for the person at home. Hey, go grab those Yukon Gold potatoes. And guess what? You don't have to peel them. Or you do have to peel them, right? So that's like real life kitchen stuff that people find tremendously helpful and when you match that intent work, you've satisfied them. They're more likely to stay on the page because they know what they're going to get from you and they're going to start schooling.

And your point with the natural language processing, I know we don't have to get deep into it, but that kind of the before and after, hey, before these algorithms, you know, these bots that are coming to your site and crawling and kind of trying to understand what your content is about, before, they weren't as good at crawling a piece of content and understanding in natural language what it was about. So it had to be more like structured and concrete in order to help guide these bots. Like, what is this content about now? They're much better at understanding natural language. And so you don't have to be as structured because they understand natural language more. Therefore you are more free to speak naturally. As long as it's still comprehensive. Is that getting at what you're saying?

Absolutely. As long as it's still comprehensive, as long as you're not, you know, leading anybody astray. And as. As long as what you're writing is a true representation of what you're writing, recipe is meant to, or how you developed it. Something that I think comes up a lot in talking so many food bloggers is accepting what your recipe is not. So one of the objections that will often come back, let's keep going on the scalloped potatoes example. But the people are like, but I don't want my scalloped potatoes only to rank for queries related to Yukon Gold. I want it to be relevant for all of the scalloped potato queries. I'm like, but that's incorrect. That's a mismatch in intent. You are actually not a relevant result or recipe result for a scalloped potatoes made with. Let's go ahead and say maybe yours is onion free. Somebody wants it with onions, or someone wants it with ham, or somebody specifically has russet potatoes. They want to make it for that. It's okay to go, oh, I'm not the right result for them. Yeah, people want their recipes to rank for. For, you know, all the queries. It's not about ranking for all the queries. It's about ranking and converting on the queries that are relevant for your brand, your content strategy, and ultimately the recipe that you developed.

Yeah, a great example. And on an extreme, I forget exactly what it was. This was a few years ago. We had a recipe that was getting like a decent amount of clicks, a ton of Impressions. We didn't pay super close attention to it and it was something like tacos and. And then it completely fell off and we're like, oh my goodness, what happened? And what we realized is like when we went back and looked at the data, it was like ranking for something like tacos near me or something where it's like, so it was great. We're getting a lot of impressions. We're occasionally getting some people who would just by chance click on it. But like the search intent was very obvious. Not a match for a recipe. It's just people who wanted to get some tacos buy them, like they wanted to purchase tacos. And so, so it made sense that eventually the algorithm got smart enough to be like, wait, this isn't a good match because these are, this is a taco recipe. It's not, it wasn't tacos. I don't remember what it was, but that was the basic idea. And then there's all of those little versions of that that might have to do with like dietary considerations or, you know, specific questions that people have about ingredients and whatnot. Before we continue, let's take a moment to hear from our sponsors. Running your business can feel like a constant balancing act between making great content, keeping up with platforms and actually earning enough to keep doing what you love. That's where Raptive comes in. They're the team behind thousands of the Internet's top creators, including Pinch of Yum. And they help creators grow their traffic, boost their revenue and protect their content in an AI driven world. Raptive creates tailored growth strategies helping with SEO, email and audience development. They're serious about supporting real human made content. And now it's easier than ever to join. If your site gets at least 25,000 monthly page views, you can apply to become part of Raptive's creator community and get the kind of support that scales as your business grows. To learn more or apply, visit raptive.com thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode. So getting back to the titling, cause I think that's important to talk through. Then what you are doing is creating both like an intent match, but also something that's compelling. And I've seen people do, you know, they'll use like parentheses to say something like five ingredients or super easy or you know, dairy free. Is that a little bit of the strategy around titling is thinking about how to create something that's compelling?

Yeah, I mean in order to get clicked on, you need to be noticed, right? There's tens of thousands of individuals ranking with Their recipes. So, I mean, she's noisy out there. So, yeah, in order to get clicked on, you need to be noticed. So I think that's, that's a huge part of it. You know, Foodie Digital members probably who are listening would have a laugh when they heard you say five ingredient or super easy, because they know I'm coming with the question, what does that mean?

Like, what's below that?

Or what does super easy mean to somebody at home? Like, okay, what's super easy for you? Bjork may not be super easy for me. Right. You may be a super skilled cook and I may be a bit of a beginner. What does five ingredients?

Probably the other way around. But I'll, I can roll with it.

You know, like, I, I don't mind a three ingredient because that's really kind of implying simplicity or like, this is gonna be quick. But four or five ingredient, I, I don't love. I'm like, oh, tell me what's, what are, what's the most compelling of those four or five ingredients? There's gotta be one that's the anchor and I'd like to know what it is. Um, something that I wanna kind of unpack here is we're very lucky in recipe search, there are so many different ways for a recipe to be made. Um, you know, it can be made with potatoes without potatoes. It can be made with carrots. It can be made without carrots. And so when you write a really clearly articulated title, you are making sure that the individual who's about to click on you understands what your recipe reflects. Okay. As opposed to what another recipe reflects. An example that I believe I'm going to pinch this one from the Sifter team. But let's take a strawberry banana smoothie. There's a lot of ways to make a strawberry banana smoothie. It can be made perhaps with cottage cheese. It's going to be a little higher protein. It can be made with Greek yogurt. It can also be made with almond milk. It could be made with soy milk. The list goes on. It can be made with fresh strawberries. It can be made with frozen strawberries. It can have vanilla added. It can not have vanilla. It can be yogurt free. There's a lot of different ways in which that that individual recipe can be developed. You have to write your title to reflect that. Right. Somebody who's going to convert and click on a strawberry smoothie with cottage cheese. Strawberry banana smoothie with cottage cheese. That's an entirely different search and conversion than someone who's going to be cooking and converting on a strawberry banana smoothie with Greek yogurt. Right. So our titles can sort of ensure that we're getting that right click to our site and then we have that we've invited that right reader to us and then we're able to hold their attention because we better manage their expectations. Nobody wants a cottage cheese plot twist and the recipe card, right? If they get there and they're surprised by that, you're risking a potential bounce, that's great.

I think of Mr. Beast, who often talks about within the context of YouTube content, that he is always thinking about the thumbnail, the thumbnail, the thumbnail, the thumbnail, the thumbnail is what gets the click. But then as soon as people click, how do you get them to stay? And YouTube is a very different algorithm, but it's still a Google algorithm. Like, it's still people who are working within the same context of attention, capturing attention. And that to me is like the core of what we're trying to figure out. How do we capture somebody's attention, get them to click and then get them to stick around? I also think of way back in the day, like my entrance into entrepreneurship was selling shoes on ebay. So I'd get like wholesale shoes from Chicago. We had this tiny condo and a one car garage and we would store them in there. I'm sure it's such a pain for Lindsay to have all these random shoes. You'd sell them on ebay, but you'd have to pay extra on an ebay listing to have like the title bolded and to have like stars on it because that just meant that more people would click on it. And the amazing thing for us within the context of search is like, we don't have to pay extra to get more strategic around the titling. The important thing to your point then after somebody clicks is are they going to stick around? Is it going to be a good experience on the site? Some of that is science, some of that is art. It's also brand. All of these things play together holistically. A couple other specific questions around title that I'd be curious if you have opinions on. Have you seen people using emoji in titles and.

Yeah, no opinion. I think the jury's out on that one. I think. Emojis and posts, yes, for sure, a lot. There was a hot minute there where everyone was putting emojis alongside their table of contents, which again, I don't think that didn't help. Didn't hurt. Maybe it was just kind of a, you know, something to spice up the page. I would say I'm probably not a fan of an emoji and a title. I'd be like, ah, just use the characters, be descriptive. So I'd probably ax that one and vote no. But yeah, I would like to be proven wrong with some good click through data.

Yeah. And then related to that, let's say you are trying to improve some of these things. How do you know where to start? Like what is the most valuable return for your time from a starting point.

When you okay, I don't want anybody to think here that I'm suggesting cured research isn't the backbone of a successful search strategy. It is. It's where you go and you might for intent. But when we when you're logging into your keyword research tool and you find your focus query that you feel like is relevant for your brand and your content strategy, I want you to jot that down and then keep going. Ask yourself I will often coach to say at the intersection of asking type related questions, what type of okay, so what type of dish is this? Is it a side dish? Is it a dinner? Is it a. Like am I describing that that dish's type or that recipe's type? Is it a dessert? Is it no bake? Is it? Et cetera? Again, at the intersection of type, perhaps you've got an ingredient there. Well, what type of mushrooms are being used? What type of pesto is this? We all know that there's many ways to make pesto. Is it made with basil? Is it made with pistachio? Is it made with spinach? Et cetera. Just if you ask yourself questions about type, it's going to naturally bubble up. Different types of intent. You're going to have to look at the recipe you developed and go, what type of pesto did I use in this chicken pesto pasta? Oh, mine is made with basil. Maybe I shouldn't just title my recipe Chicken pesto Pasta. Maybe I title my recipe Chicken Pesto Pasta with Basil pesto. If I could, you know, pull up the keyword research tool right now, you would see that there's a lot of standalone intent for that recipe in particular. So asking yourself questions about type and having it be a little bit divorced from the cured research and the volumes and all those things that you see, I'm just thinking, how do I correctly articulate what is in my recipe? That little prompt I think will get you started maybe even halfway to more descriptive language almost immediately. Hudi Digital members know the second they bring up you know, individual ingredients, plants, let's say cabbage. I'm like, what type of cabbage? Napa, soy, et cetera. You know, what type of potato, mushrooms, common, what type of flour? That's a huge one, right? For baking and desserts. You know, if you're using almond flour, I mean that's potentially a gluten free query, right? Or if you're using oat flour. So you know, just even inviting yourself to think about type is going to get you, get you started.

That's great. And then how about like looking at your existing content? You have 500 recipes and one of those, two of those, 50 of those are probably going to be good candidates to revisit and do some optimizations to help improve click through rate and well yeah, let's just start with click through rate. Like is there a way to surface that data easily to see what the opportunities are?

Absolutely. So we use Google Search Console here every single day. It is free, so it's the most effective tool. Be able to monitor your organic click through rate really, really clearly you don't want to be monitoring click through rate by page or post. You know, that's the language that's often used among food bloggers. You want to be studying your click through rate by query. And in Google Search Console there's a really quick and easy way to enable a column that reveals click through rate to you by query. I loosely coach Foodie Digital members to think a Good click through 8 for a standalone recipe query is about 8%. This is for a single recipe. Okay, I'm not talking roundups or anything like that, but for a single recipe, a fairly that's a good click through rate. A really good click through rate is about 10%. An excellent click through rate is 12% or higher. And if you're in the, you know, 2030 and then you're crushing it, that's an outstanding click through rate. But monitoring click through rate by query or studying that will help you identify queries in your search console list that are under 8%. And then you can start to look here. Oh, am I leaving some clicks on the table? Right. If it's converting at 2% that query, is there something here that is there some intent that I have not leveraged in my title writing in my introduction? And so that's the first place. I mean there's a lot of different places to do this, but that's probably the quickest and easiest place to point people because that sort of 8% turning point is a good guide.

Yep. And I suppose that also would take into consideration like that click through rate would be lower if you're lower on the page because your impressions would be higher and the click through rate would be lower because of position. So you, it's probably you would need to realize that you're both optimizing position which would increase click through rate but then also optimizing the actual click through rate rate regardless of position, if that makes sense. But those two are probably intertwined.

Absolutely.

Like as it goes up, the click through rate goes up. As the click through rate grows up, potentially also the position goes up.

But also something that I think is worth mentioning here, Bjork, is that you know, a lot of food bloggers will over focus on their big volume queries. Sure, the scope of the opportunity is terrific. But if you have a lower volume query that you're or let's say just gonna spitball, but like 200 searches a month, okay, maybe that doesn't get a lot of people very excited, but let's say you're ranking in position four. Well, if you revisit that post to better match search intent, what the person at home actually wants and you manage to get clicked on and you make your way to number one, you're gonna get a lot more clicks to your site.

Right.

So you're strengthening that click through rate on a lower volume query as well. And oftentimes those tend to be the easier place to start. Bigger queries, more competitive, things are going to move a little bit more slowly. But I don't want people to sort of skew as I always do to those bigger volume query conversations just because it's the scope of opportunity is massive. Some of those lower volume queries, you know, you strengthen click through rate from 8 to 10, maybe 12%. Yeah, you're going to feel that in a really positive way.

Yeah, that's great. And then how about after somebody's on the page we talked about, are you doing a good job of matching user intent? Is there a way through data to know if you are matching user intent? Google Analytics time on page like that would be the first thing that I would think of. But other things that you would suggest for knowing if you're doing a good job when you're making those updates.

We don't spend a lot of time on time on page here. I think that's a tough metric today. I think it was a little bit more reliable years ago. I think attention spans have gotten a lot shorter. I think jump to recipe has altered that a little bit. So I think that one can Be a little tough. You know, the way in which I study. Let's talk about a particular post to see if it's doing a good job of matching intent is leveraging the individual poster page filter in Google Search Console so you can take an individual URL, run it through, and you can see the range of queries that it's converting on or gaining impressions for. And you can look at that list. Maybe one recipe has, let's say, half dozen queries that are contributing, contributing to its click portfolio. Are they all on the money or some of them really, really off? Right. And it's going to be pretty obvious the ones that are off. But you can also not just look at that list of being like, is it, is it on the money or not? But like, yikes. Where, where have I left things on the table? If we go back to the chicken pesto pasta example, you know, is anybody saying thing? Any, any queries converting on basil pesto for this chicken pesto pasta? Have I just left those clicks and I haven't gone out and tried to grab them? That's probably the top way of understanding like, am I matching the intent well, or am I leaving some clicks on the table here?

Sure. And within Google Search Console, looking at the post URL from that, it will surface data for you, which is the queries that are going through Google that people have used and then clicked in impressions and whatnot. And what you're saying is you could look and see as you are improving a piece of content, does that expand? Does it get wider? Are there more queries that people are using to now discover your content? There's not an easy way to like, see that other than observationally. Like number of queries isn't a data point point within Google Search console.

I wish it was. I think that that would be outstanding for recipe publishers. There's this sort of false sort of narrative. Right. A lot of people will use keyword research tool to do keyword tracking. That's quite literally tracking that individual keyword for that one recipe. These keyword research tools are tremendously helpful for other things. We just don't love to use them for keyword tracking because it misses the nuance of this niche. Right. I can describe a chicken pesto pasta in a dozen ways. That means people at home can too. They're searching for that recipe in the way that makes the most sense to them. Maybe they actually search chicken pesto pasta with penne. Right. So it's going to be very difficult to see that those relevant queries for that One recipe in some of those keyword tracking tools. That's why we like to use gsc, because it gives you the fullest picture and it gets people to really understand, Right. That there isn't one keyword to chase. I think success looks like when you have one recipe that is ranking for, let's say a half dozen, maybe Even up to 8 to 10 closely related queries to what your recipe is about. Now, not all of them are going to convert in the same way. Not all of them maybe are going to convert at that 12%, but it's understanding that there isn't one way to describe a recipe. So there shouldn't be just one keyword. Chase. One recipe that can be described a bunch of different ways. And then ideally that larger list of queries shows up in your search console account. And if it's bigger, you know, and that all those queries are on the money, great. Then you know that you are heading in the right direction.

Yeah, that's great. I think it's. It paints such a good picture around the balance that we have to strike as creators, which is we have to understand how these search engines are working, we have to understand technical SEO, we have to understand structured data. All of these are really important. And we have to understand the human who's typing a search query in, going to our page and looking at it and thinking, is this what I need? And the. Your ability to do both of those things really well is what results in success as a content creator within the context of like publishing content to a blog or a website. Because you can get really good at the technical stuff. But if, then somebody comes, we use this. You know, as you and I were chatting Spotify, it's like you could get really good at understanding the mechanics of Spotify as a musician and a recording artist artist. But then if somebody presses play on your song and they're like, oh, this isn't for me, or this isn't great, or the quality on this is bad, they're not going to listen to that song. Similarly, you could be the best songwriter in the world, but if you haven't figured out distribution channels or if you're not working with somebody who understands distribution channels, people aren't going to be able to hear your music, even though it's really incredible. And so we need to find the balance between the two of those things. Um, and some of us are going to be really good at the technical and some of us are going to be really good at the creative. But our work, our job is to Figure out how we can level up and also work with other people who are really good at doing what they're doing. I know that Foodie Digital at this point isn't taking on new clients or there's a wait list so people can sign up for that. But Sifter is a newsletter all around, kind of, you know, the industry, things that are happening, news that people can sign up for. So maybe you can talk about that, you know, as we close out here. It's been such a great conversation.

Yeah, well, we started Tifter. I mean, it's really a outcome of the wait list getting wildly out of control. I mean, we had a tiger by the tail there for a while. And what we realized is there's a lot of people who are hungry for a different way to approach this work. A lot of people tell us, you know, our approach at Foodie Digital, like, wow, you guys really, you know, this isn't what I thought SEO was. And I love hearing that. Right. Because I think sort of that era of hardcore keyword chasing and writing for robots and stuffing FAQs into things, you know, it's over. And in order to compete today, you know, I always say this to individuals I'm talking to, but, you know, the tactics and approaches that got you from point A to point B are very likely not going to be the same tactics and approaches that get you successfully from point B to point C. And so, you know, Sifter really operates in that point B to point C approach. I joke internally with the team. I kind of call it. It's like the unaudit. We talk about a lot of things to do with SEO, but it's in a really approachable tone of voice. There's no jargon. Probably the top feedback we get back from individuals who are subscribers is the recipe specific examples. You know, if listen to lots of different SEO podcasts, I mean there's E Com people listening to that information, there's travel bloggers listening to that information. It's not recipe specific. And when that guidance isn't recipe specific, it can be misunderstood. So Sifter really just focuses specifically on the recipe search scenario and then unique circumstances and opportunities of food bloggers, big, medium and small and how that. It's like kind of a. It's an evolving field, but I would say it kind of skews on the more advanced side of things. But what we know from our time operating Foodie Digitals, that's what people are hungry for. Like most food blogs got the one on ones dialed, you know, over the years as Foodie Digital's audited like people are coming in the door of pretty clean technical houses and now they're looking for new ways and new approaches and new opportunities to grow. And with the introduction course course AI Mode and AI overview really understanding the underpinnings of natural language processing, the role topical drift plays in our content strategies, these are the types of topics that Sifter tackles.

Yeah, that's awesome. Link to it in the show notes, otherwise people can check it out.

I have it open here just so I didn't say it incorrectly, but it's sifter SEO.com Leon thanks so much for coming on.

Such a joy to talk to you. You have such a deep knowledge in this work world and I know I've helped a lot of creators and we'll have to have you back on again. So thanks for coming on.

Okay, thanks so much Bjork. Thanks for having me.

Hey there, this is Emily. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, we would really appreciate it if you could share it or leave a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. Since we are kicking off not only a new year, but a new month, I wanted to give you a little update about what you can expect in the Food Blogger Pro membership this month. If you are not yet a Food Blogger Pro member, you can head to food bloggerpro.com membership to learn more and join us. Otherwise, if you've already joined us, here's what you will see in the membership this January we are kicking off on Thursday, January 8th with a brand new coaching call between Bjork and Davia Delgado, the Food blogger behind Raven Cakes Bakery.

Free.

The next Thursday, January 15th, we'll be releasing a brand new Quick Win course all about internal linking on your food blog. Lastly, we will be hosting a live Q and a on Thursday, January 22 with Ali Grummert all about email list best practices how to welcome, nurture and engage your subscribers. If you would like to submit a question in advance of that Q and A, you can just head to the live Q and A section on the site, add the event to your calendar and submit a question. We are really looking forward to kicking off the year on the right foot and hope you will join us in the membership. Next week on the podcast we will be welcoming Phoebe Lapine, the Fubogger behind the fubog Feed Me Phoebe. It's going to be a great episode and we hope you'll join us. We'll see you next week. Hope you have a wonderful week.

Sam.