Submission Sites for Food Bloggers

Hey Tyler! First off – your white garlic mushroom pizza has me drooling!

As for your blog – you have a lot of really delicious looking/sounding recipes. One easy thing to do going forward: I think you guys would benefit from taking more portrait style pictures as opposed to the horizontal/landscape ones you currently have. Pinterest is a really fantastic source of traffic for food bloggers and tall pictures will always perform better than horizontal pictures on pintrest.

As for your idea of just posting pictures and recipes – it’s got its pros and cons. Starting out with the pros: You’ll be able to produce so much more content without having to write about it afterwards. I personally find the writing to be the most time consuming/mentally draining part of food blogging. If I didn’t have to write about a recipe I think I’d be posting a LOT more regularly.

Also – no scrolling! Food bloggers tend to get a lot of crap from people about rambling on too much before getting to the food. I do think there is big audience out there of people who just want a good recipe with no extra fluff and if you can find that audience they’ll love you!

However – it will be harder to find an audience without all that ‘fluff’. Websites that do well with just recipe and pictures are already massive. Sites like All Recipes, Taste of Home and Skinny Taste have years of established clout and brand awareness. They’re almost too big to fail. If you try to compete with All Recipes on something like oatmeal cookies you’re going to struggle without adding more value to your posts. The way you add value is by writing something to go along with the recipe. The google algorithms job is to put forward content that it things is answering whatever question you might have on any given topic. There are millions of people sharing nearly identical recipes. In order to stand out you really need to offer something unique or helpful.

Instead of writing about how you and your grandma used to make oatmeal cookies together when you were a kid etc etc, you could try to answer common questions that people might have when making oatmeal cookies: What kind of oats do you need to use, rolled or quick? Does the butter need to be melted or softened? Etc.

There are almost 50,000 searches every month for ‘oatmeal cookies’ with about 50 million search results. If you can answer a question that people might have about oatmeal cookies (or whatever recipe you’re sharing) you have a really great chance at ranking in the first page for that recipe.

Here’s an example of recipe that I’m currently ranking well in google search for that focuses more on the recipe and how its made without too much fluff that people don’t like reading: https://www.asaucykitchen.com/almond-flour-chocolate-chip-cookies/ Within the past year I’ve switched from writing personal style posts to more recipe centric posts and I’ve personally have seen a big increase in my google search traffic.

If you still don’t like the idea of having to make people scroll there are a couple of things you can do.

1. You can share the recipe at the top of the page and add writing below. Most people share pictures and written content first and make you scroll down to the bottom for a recipe. If you’re trying to monetise your site through ads you want people to have to scroll by and see them. By adding the recipe first and descriptions second you give people the chance to scroll on and read more if they like or just get the recipe and go.

2. You can also add a ‘jump to recipe’ button at the top of your page. I used to have this on my posts but I’m currently testing a few things out and removed my code. WP Recipe Maker is a really great recipe card plugin that offers a ‘jump to recipe’ button. You can also add a big of code to each post with this tutorial: https://stripedspatula.com/resources/blogging/recipe-jump-tutorial/

I actually just listened to a podcast this week that talks about ‘jump to recipe’ buttons that you might be interested in: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/episode-34-what-happens-when-you-delete-jump-to-recipes/id1304449021?i=1000435871523 Essentially, if you are trying to monetise your site through ads you will see a reduction in income. That being said loads of people are still able to make good money while also including this function on their sites. I also think that sites that prioritise their audiences needs/wants will always do well.

That was probably a lot to take in but I hope I’ve given you some good stuff to think about! I look forward to see what else you guys come up with!

Thanks Emily! I’m really glad it can be helpful to people! When I was first starting out everything felt so overwhelming!

Thanks Stephanie! Hope it’s helpful to you!