How to I captilalize on popular posts/top keywords? | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

I'll admit that it seems counter-intuitive that the key to getting more out of popular posts is making them more popular. But I'll trust the pros on this. :)

LaTisha, thanks for the advice. I'm sure I could come up with another burrito recipe for the George Foreman and another style of semi-homemade spaghetti sauce. Coming up with another post on rice, beans, & tuna may be a little tougher. :)

I'll try to find a good affiliate program selling the Geroge Foreman grill, which I probably should anyway since I use it almost as much as my stove. And I will definitely make sure I link to the posts more often.

Jeremy, One thing I've noticed is that other sites use a lot more photos than I do. I'll admit, this is something I struggle with. I'm always forgetting to take pictures. Plus, I've never personally got the point of posting half a dozen pictures of the same thing.

The thing is, you could either use those popular posts to win over visitors and improve your user metrics, or you could use those posts just to make money.  I'd personally go with the more long term route of trying to turn those visitors into regular readers.  Done right, you could accomplish both goals.

Usually when you have a popular post there are ways you can milk even more traffic out of it.  Unless you're #1 for all related keywords, there's room for improvement.  So since you've seen signs of potential, why not try to realize even more of that potential?

And yes, more photos is definitely a good idea for a food blog.  Better yet, you'd also do some videos.

In my experience Adsense is pretty low paying for most food related keywords.  Have you tried foodieblogroll.com?  They have a CPM model for advertising that has paid us about double what we get from Adsense on my wife's food blog.

And as far as pictures go…you gotta have them.  There are huge sites built around food porn.

http://www.foodgawker.com

http://www.tastespotting.com

http://photograzing.seriouseats.com/

and of course the latest popular http://www.pinterest.com

My guess is that you could drive WAYYY more traffic from these sites than you will ever get from the SE's.

Probably the best way to monetize these pages though would be to write a cookbook and sell it on the site.

Wow, that is all some great advice. I would have to agree with them about pictures, they're a must. However, you don't have to take all the pictures yourself. I usually go to flickr.com to get my pics. If you do this, be sure to link back to the photographer and MAKE SURE you have permission to use the pic. I go to advance search options and scroll down to the "Only show photos with creative commons license", that way you won't get one that doesn't give you permission by mistake. 

Thanks everyone.

I will try to be more dilligent about taking photos in the future. I am hoping that my next kitchen will have better lighting than the place we were renting. I'm also thinking about buying another camera to keep in the kitchen so it is on hand. But obviously, that is a purchase for down the road.

On affiliate links, I have a question. The George Foreman Grill (GFG) is obviously a physical product. From whom would you typically buy such a thing online, if you would at all? Amazon? Target? Walmart?

Jeremy, I do want to take the long-view and build traffic instead of just making a quick buck off of new visitors. My bounce rate is pretty good (~30% historically), but my returning visitor rate is atrocious (~10%).

I have done two videos to date, but I typically don't have anyone in the kitchen with me to actually hold the camera. Plus, I don't exactly have stage presence. :)

Van, I will look into that. I have been procrastinating on starting the newsletter, because I really haven't come up with what I want to do with it. I'm also trying to find a newsletter solution that meets my needs. I'm not really in a position to pay for Aweber at this time.

Money Infant, I do have FBR advertising. I've done alright with them in the past, but lately the results have been disappointing. Probably because they tend to serve AdSense ads on my pages.

I actually started the blog as a way to promote the cookbook I was working on at the time. It's now finished although I've yet to sell any copies. I've also created a quick ebook of the recipes I posted in the first year. Two of the three aforementioned posts are recipes and they are in that short cookbook. I will add links to the cookbook in those posts. I just have to come up with a non-spammy way of doing that.

LaTisha, The GFG post is actually about uncommon uses for the grill, and doesn't contain any recipes itself. So my thought was to post more recipes that incorporate it. I said burrito before because they are my go-to food. :) I do already have a few recipes posted where I mention the grill. Now that I have that Automatic SEO links plugin, I should be doing a better job of linking to that post.

Joe, good to know I'm not the only one with that problem. :)