There is no greater feeling than when you finally hit that “Publish” button on a new blog post!
All of the recipe testing, the writing, the photos, maybe some video…all that work FINALLY comes together and you feel that moment of relief - IT’S DONE!!
Well, almost done.
Driving traffic to your new (or old) blog post is the second step to ensuring that the blog post you worked SO hard to make perfect and publish, is ACTUALLY seen!
Over the years, I’ve fallen into the habit of simply sharing on social media, Pinterest, YouTube, and stopping there.
It can feel really daunting to find creative ways to share blog posts.
It’s important to find a sharing strategy that works best for you and your workflow!
Sharing on social media is a good start, but there’s SO much more that we can be doing to get our recipes seen and drive precious traffic to our blogs.
Ways to Boost Traffic to Your Food Blog
I’ve done my best to create a hefty list of creative ideas to help you drive more views to your blog. Some of these ideas may be basic, but I wanted to be as comprehensive as possible.
Also, I realize this is not everything, but hopefully it gives you some fresh ways to boost visits to your new and existing blog posts!
Share on social media
Encourage your audience to ‘share’ vs. ‘like’
Create several pins/new pins on Pinterest
Video & Idea Pins generally have a bit higher impression rate than static pins (be sure to include a CTA for Idea Pins!)
Promote your pins
Link your targeted blog post in all your social bios
Share a video tutorial
Publish on YouTube shorts, TikTok, IG Reels - be sure to include a CTA at the end (i.e. visit my blog, www._____.com to get the recipe now) since profiles with low follower counts can’t add links
Share your post on Yummly
Submit your images and links on FoodGawker, Tumblr, FoodYub, MyRecipeMagic, TheFeedFeed, Keen (aka Google’s version of Pinterest)
For older blog posts, optimize for SEO
Consider republishing with a newer date
Reindex in Google Console
Internal linking (link posts to popular posts on your blog)
Submit your content to be used in media or other publications
HARO (Help a Reporter Out)
Sourcebottle (similar to HARO, Australian based and there are not as many listings as HARO, but I’ve gotten a few features from this)
Submit your content to be used in round ups
Facebook round up groups/social shares are great places to look for opportunities. You could also try other related FB food/recipe groups (i.e. meal prep, GF/Vegan/Paleo/Easy Recipe groups..)
Create your own round up posts by using other blogger’s content and sprinkling in your own (psst: always get permission from other creators to use their content before doing this!)
Buzzfeed Community is also a great place to create roundups, and has the potential to be picked up by Buzzfeed
Send out a newsletter to your email list featuring the recipe
Don’t have a huge list? Find another blogger to collab emails with.
Share the recipe with a backlink in online communities/forums
Try places like Quora, Reddit…
Answer people’s questions that are relevant to your blog/expertise and post(s) you want to boost. For example, someone might ask, “Does anyone have a great gluten-free chocolate chip cookie recipe?” And you can respond with sharing a link to your post.
Instead of answering questions from other people, you can simply create original content/posts as well.
Find an influencer to work with (video or web)
A couple of years ago I had a YouTube influencer make my Oreo Brownie recipe in her meal prep video and she gave me a backlink in the description. I got a TON of traffic to that post thanks to her finding my recipe and making it on her video! The boost in my page views was relatively short lived since this creator made daily vlogs, but try reaching out to YT creators with big followings and ask them if they’d be interested in featuring your recipe in their content.
Do a guest post for another blogger or publication; add a referral link to your blog’s homepage or specific blog post.
In addition to finding ways to share your blog post and drive traffic, it’s always worth mentioning that you should ensure your blog is buttoned up from a user experience and SEO standpoint as well!
You want to make sure you have…
A fast site
Low bounce rate
Easy readability (large font size, 2-3 sentence paragraphs)
One H1 heading, H2 & H3 subheadings throughout (with targeted keywords)
High quality photos
Optimized images (compressed down to sizes suitable for quick load times)
Targeted keywords & long tail keywords
Alt text
Meta title & description
1700-3000 words, depending on competition or topic
Integrated/embedded video (optional, but recommended)
Internal & external links
Pinnable image
Social share buttons
Having all these items checked off will make your content more shareable and more desirable to be shared.
Master Your Mindset
Finding ways to creatively share your work can feel like a lot.
As I mentioned earlier, if you’re pumping out a lot of blog posts frequently, it can be easy to fall into the trap of sharing them in just a few places (like social media) and then moving onto the next post. There is an overwhelming amount of places to share content to, and a lot of it may require other steps such as sending reach out emails and filling out contact forms or long submission forms.
It’s a job all on its own!
It doesn’t hurt to think about hiring a VA (virtual assistant) to handle some or all of these tasks for you.
Or, you can create a schedule for yourself, or a checklist and work your way through each one; do some for when you immediately publish your post, then add some more tasks a few weeks later on.
Remember, once you publish a blog post, you don’t need to immediately share it to EVERY platform - trickle it out over as much time as you need!
There’s no right or wrong way to do it. 🙂
