Is cooking your passion and do you want to turn it into a source of income, even without spending your days in the kitchen?
Then you are in the right place, because I will explain to you how to create a cooking blog and I will reveal all the tricks to achieve this successfully.
If you start on the right foot, you will be able to get:
- visibility
- traffic
- earnings
In this article we will see the steps to take to better organize your project.
I would like to remind you that you can also entrust us with the creation of your blog through our service professional blog creation by clicking the button below.
The 5 steps to creating a successful cooking blog
1. Choose the content and name of your blog
It would seem trivial, but it is not: before create a cooking blogwe must first think about the leitmotif of the blog .
Do we want to talk about generic recipes? Or our creations with fish? Or of “nouvelle cuisine”? Vegan cuisine? Recipes with the Thermomix?
The choice of content is important because in relation to it we will choose the name of the blog.
The name can also be imaginative or witty as long as it is consistent with the subject matter.
At this point, do not buy anything, because I recommend you go to SiteGround right away , where you can get the domain for free with the subscription of a hosting plan.
Hosting is the service that will provide you with the web space in which to create your cooking blog, and SiteGround’s Startup plan is just ideal for an idea like yours.
At this point, you can immediately install WordPress and start building your blog.
2. Create a cooking blog with the right theme
After setting the technical basics to create your cooking blog, move on to the choice of graphics.
It represents the trademark of the blog itself and therefore a captivating mix of colors and fonts must be chosen, which, however, is not heavy when loading the site.
To do this, just go to view the number of downloads and the rating of the WordPress themes , which must be SEO friendly , that is, optimized for search engines.
Let’s not forget the importance of themes also optimized for tablets and smartphones, which represent the present and the future of connections.
When a theme works correctly even on mobile devices, it is called “responsive”, and I assure you that a significant slice of visitors to your blog will use their smartphone.
First, more and more people are using their smartphones to research last-minute recipes.
Plus, it’s much more practical to keep in the kitchen than on a computer!
Some of the themes we reviewed also have useful features for cooking blogs , such as the ability to search for recipes based on the ingredients you have at home.
Or they support rich snippets that are used to display content as recipes on Google.
These are features that improve navigation for your users, helping you grow your recipe blog.
More and more people are using their smartphones to research last-minute recipes.
In order not to lose this slice of visitors, create a mobile version of your cooking blog and you will see that the traffic on your site will increase significantly.
Therefore, make sure that your site is responsive, that is, correctly viewable on every mobile device such as smartphone and tablet.
Eventually, you can create an app for your blog to more easily browse your recipes and your cooking videos.
But that’s not all … in writing the posts we must also take into account another factor: keywords .
3. The choice of keywords
Now let’s take a practical example: let’s write a post on the sacher cake and enter the word “chocolate cake” in Google as the search object.
This will result in around 610,000 results, a little too much for your cooking blog in the opening phase that no one knows about.
However, if we use the word “sacher cake” the result will be better: 223,000 results, or less competition.
In order to identify the right keywords, a useful tool is the Google Ads Keyword Planner , which not only helps us analyze the competition, but also the number of monthly user searches for that type of word.
To use it, you can create a Google Ads account by skipping the wizard, so you don’t have to enter your credit card.
You will then be able to research keywords and their combinations.
The niche to look for is the one with a high volume of searches, but with medium-low competition.
As it is a free tool, however, it is rather limited.
For a much more precise and in-depth keyword research, rely on a professional tool like SEOZoom .
Do you know the KISS rule ? It stands for Keep It Simple Stupid , which means you write in a practical way and straight to the point.
Don’t get lost in long textual explanations, use images or videos to make complicated passages to explain with written words more immediate and simple.
Another useful tool for researching keywords around which to build content is Google Trends .
It allows you to see the evolution of search trends for a certain country and certain terms.
We can also see related searches and how much they are increasing.
The tools I have proposed to you are certainly a good starting point but, if you want to get visibility on search engines, you will have to apply the best SEO rules as soon as possible and thus avoid any penalties.
4. The choice of images
After choosing the content and name of the blog, the keywords and the theme, we must insert captivating high-definition images within the pages .
Try to imagine: you are a budding chef but you insert poor, blurry or unsharp images… no one will follow you.
The images are the result of your hard work and should be represented in the best possible way.
By doing so, they will be shared on social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram) and you will get an almost unlimited potential pool of visitors.
To share images quickly on Pinterest we recommend that you download its plugin and place the “Pin it button” between the buttons of your browser.
By taking advantage of these visual channels you can collect enormous popularity and engage your audience to the maximum, which in this way will grow more and more.
Also remember to equip each image with the relevant keywords, so that they can be well indexed by search engines.
At the same time, make sure you optimize your images so they don’t increase page load time too much, negatively impacting the user experience and SEO.
5. Update your blog constantly
Creating your own cooking blog is certainly the first step, but it doesn’t stop there.
Just as you cultivate your passion for cooking consistently, in the same way a blog requires the same passion that you put in the stove.
It is therefore necessary to create original content consistently otherwise the search engines will downgrade your blog with the consequent loss of visitors
This will also give you content to share regularly with your users on various social networks , helping you build your community and keep the online discussion alive.
You can also consider guest blogging : it is a practice that will allow you to make yourself known to other cooking bloggers in your niche and their entire audience.
Then program your content, always trying to cut out a portion of it to use for guest blogging.
Contact online magazines or successful cooking blogs to propose your content after evaluating that there is a commonality of topics and a similarity in style and exposure.
Eventually, try some articles in English if you are well versed in the language, or translate some recipes of a foreign “guru” to disseminate it (with the owner’s consent) to an Italian public.
Since cooking shows and competitions such as Masterchef are also having more and more success, you can also write editorials that refer to the episodes of these programs so followed.
Don’t forget to comment on other people’s cooking blogs and respond to comments on your recipes, encouraging dialogue with your users.
Commit to posting new content at least twice a week and you will be rewarded!
Conclusion
Ultimately if you follow all these precautions, just like in a recipe, you can build the foundation for the success of your cooking blog.
Remember that many blogs fail precisely because they skip one of these steps: try to think of a cake without flour or a sacher without chocolate: what result would we get?
Certainly something not up to par.
The approach to use on the Internet is the same.
Furthermore, if we undertake to disseminate content , images and videos on social networks looking for interaction with visitors, we will be able to obtain all those ideas and ideas that will undoubtedly make us improve our blog.
Are you ready to make your own successful cooking blog?
