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We were contacted by the Wild Epicurean to lend a hand with bringing the site to the top of the Google Index. Tessa already had a well designed and clean website with plenty of original content. A quick look at the recipes section and you’ll see there are 50+ recipes. All of this content certainly made our job easier while also making us very hungry!
So what exactly is SEO? SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s the process of taking steps to help a website or piece of content rank higher on Google. Basically, it includes using keywords, alt-tags for images, meta descriptions, SEO titles and heading tags. SEO success factors can be considered proxies for aspects of the user experience. It’s how Google estimates exactly how well a website can give the searcher what they’re searching for.
Let’s think about an example for this site. When someone types “Goose Ragu” into Google, they’re likely looking for recipes, cooking tips, and ingredients for making the dish. If you wrote a recipe for making Goose Ragu, you’d want people to find your article. For anyone to find it, you need to rank above all the other websites with similar recipes. It’s not easy, but that’s what SEO marketing is all about.
We employed Yoast SEO to help us single out which pages needed attention. While the content of the site was very good and the writing excellent, it had yet to be optimised for the search console. Tessa had article after article of yummy recipes with enticing pictures. We went through each of these articles and added a significant keyphrase. Then using this keyphrase we added the relevant SEO titles, meta descriptions and slugs. Finally, we went through the article itself to add alt tags to the picture and the keyphrase to the copy.
Search Console and Analytics
A key ingredient in SEO is analytics. This allows us to see the performance of the work we’ve put in. If things aren’t going well then we can reassess and rework our strategy. For the Wild Epicurean, we set up an account on Google Search Console to see where the site ranks on the Google index. We also set up a Google Analytics account to see what parts of the site were most visited and where the traffic was coming from. This kind of information is key to increasing the quality of our SEO work.
SEO is always just one part of an overall effort to improve a website. It’s important sure, but so are things like site structure, navigation and ease of use. On top of the work mentioned above, we undertook a mission to improve the user experience across the site. One example was the restructuring of the menu so that users could find the relevant pages faster. When we visit websites, we don’t want to spend half the day looking for what interests us. We made the navigation intuitive and easy so users can focus on their culinary knowledge.
We helped integrate Tessa’s MailChimp account so that a popup appears when users first visit the site. Prompting users to signup for a newsletter easily grow an email list and promotes a sense of authenticity on the site. Email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to reach clients so is key to a good marketing campaign.
I think everyone knows the importance of GDPR these days. With so much on the line, it’s easy to go overboard and include every sort of privacy notice. We took some time to organise and de-clutter the software on the site so that it doesn’t impede the user experience anymore.
Feedback from site visitors is such a big part of food blogs. As site creators, we want to prompt discussion and get comments from our users. Besides being personally interested in our user’s opinions, user interaction also lets Google know that the site is a great one. For the Wild Epicurean, we used CSS and the WordPress settings to make sure commenting was as obvious and hassle-free as possible. The last thing we want is unnecessary barriers to engagement, so keeping the process streamlined makes it easy for everyone!
Our client was very happy with the end result. We think it captures the high quality of the food blog and the cuisine! We’re delighted to say we still work closely with Wild Epicurean to boost the site and keep the SEO going strong.
If you have any questions for us, don’t hesitate to get in touch now.
At Lux, we feel we can contribute to any project and look forward to hearing what you have in mind.
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