If you’ve been around here before, you’ll know that we love featuring other entrepreneurs on our blog! Today we’re thrilled to welcome Traci Wennerholm, who’s sharing her knowledge on how to complete multiple SEO friendly blog posts in just a few hours.
Traci started her journey as a food blogger when she was only 11 years old when she made a not-so-great birthday cake for her dad. Despite his slightly off-put reaction to her cake, he encouraged her to continue cooking and it eventually led her to a career in food blogging, helping others living with food allergies find fast, convenient recipes.
In this post, Traci shares tips she’s learned over the years that are designed to help you create blog posts quickly and efficiently so help your website get discovered through Google searches.
Enjoy!
How long does it take you to complete one SEO friendly blog post? A recent Facebook group of like minded bloggers just starting out in different niches from cooking to crafting to finance were asked that question.
The answer was between 4-8 hours!
Whether you are starting out on the blogging journey or a seasoned blogging veteran, putting good quality content along with regular content out is important. And that takes time, right?
So today I’m tackling ways to complete multiple blog posts in just a few hours by sharing some ways I’ve condensed my workload.
SEO
What are the most important bills you pay every month? Your mortgage? Car payment? Consider SEO to be that all important bill. Make sure that you spend time to research keywords, important holidays and events or trends in your blog niche.
In addition to that, if you are a seasoned blogger, look back at some of your old posts that are trending and doing well. Look back at some of the blog posts that maybe did well in the past but might be dropping off. Determine if focusing on going back and cleaning those up or building on those articles might be worth it. Also see if there are some ways that you could build out those articles into newer ones too.
Build Time Efficient Blog Posts
Once you’ve got your research done, it’s time to build your blog posts. Let’s say I notice a trend in caprese salads being popular. Or they are ranking as one of my top viewed recipes on my site. So I’ll plan to make and shoot four different caprese salad recipes one day. I’ll shoot the videos, take photos and prepare the recipes. Then I’ll turn those four recipes into five or six different blog post articles based on trends. My blog posts might be:
- Peach caprese salad
- Classic caprese salad
- Grilled caprese salad
- Strawberry caprese salad
- Best caprese salad recipes
- Minimal ingredient caprese salad recipes
Since I’m using a lot of overlapping ingredients, I can borrow video clips to use in several videos for reels or TikTok. I also edit photos more efficiently by having several presets in place on Lightroom. I can use similar backgrounds and just change out a few props for photos.
Writing Articles
Now I’ll take the time to write the articles and spread them out over several weeks to several months. Using my WordPress calendar, I might schedule my peach caprese salad to go live in August or September when peaches are in season and people are searching for more peach recipes. I may schedule my grilled caprese salad for July when SEO trends show people are looking for grilled recipes and I’ll schedule the best caprese salad recipes for June when trends for summer salads start to peak.
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Borrow and Link
As I’m writing my blog posts, I’ll borrow what I wrote in one blog post to use in another. Since the preparation is almost the same for all of the salads along with most of the ingredients, the posts can be written very similarly but with words like ‘peach’ swapped out for ‘tomato.’
My link posts like ‘best caprese salads’ always link back to some of the recipes I have listed on my website. So I’ll make sure links to my peach, strawberry, classic and grilled caprese salads are listed but I’ll also add in a few from blogger friends and associates in return for some organic backlinks as well. There are several Facebook groups made up of niche bloggers that provide backlinks with each other.
I want to keep you on my website, so I don’t forget action links! Throughout the article I will also pepper in SEO rich phrases like “click here for more summer salad ideas” or “love grilling? Grab more grilling recipes here.” I may have links to email signups or links to products I’m selling within my article as well.
Build Your Calendar
As you start to blog in this format, you’ll start to see that you have more and more posts building up in your calendar queue ready to be published. It also allows you as a new or seasoned solo blogger to get more material out there faster and more efficiently.
Scheduling your blog posts apart from each other also gives a nice illusion that it’s a fresh new recipe everytime it shows up on places like your Instagram feed.
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Examples
I’m a visual person, so I’m including a recent campaign I did this summer using just frozen fruit cubes. I took an hour the night before and prepped the fruit cubes and filmed the preparation. The next day I did the photography, final videos, editing and articles once the ice cubes had set up. I split the photography into two different styles. I made a red white and blue fruit cube set for summer holidays and a bright and vibrant rainbow set up to cover summer holidays and events and Pride month. For this particular article you can see how I only wrote one article but then used it in another article and then made it a focus of several campaigns throughout the summer to draw attention back to the article.
- Article #1: Frozen Fruit Cubes for Water Bottles
- Article #2: Pride Month (Included Link to My Other Website for Informative Article Plus Link to the Frozen Fruit Cubes Article)
- Article #3: Memorial Day Social Media Campaign –Red/White/Blue Fruit Cubes
- Article #4: Fourth of July Social Media Campaign –Red/White/Blue Fruit Cubes
- Article #5: Pride Month Social Media Campaign –Rainbow Fruit Cubes
Making Your Posts Work For You
Life happens and things come up. I’ve worked on my blog by myself solo for nine years! I’ve had to take impromptu breaks here and there. In the past I’ve seen this type of blogging method called the batch system, but it wasn’t quite mentioned in this way. Often it refers to preparing, filming and photographing all your new recipes in one day. But I prefer to make sure that I have multiple similar articles going out at one time. I know all my articles aren’t going to be top page ranking articles. So once you’re on my page I want to keep you! for me, I’m going to give you what you came to my website looking for, but I’m also going to try to keep you there with similar recipes or other recipes you might like that I have available.
By having a rich amount of SEO friendly articles already in my queue ready to go out, when life gets busy I’m already prepared for it.
Related: 5 Reasons Your Business Needs to Hire a Copywriter Today
About the Author
Traci Wennerholm is a blogger who got her start at age 11 when she created a rubber birthday cake. While her parents were out for her Dad’s birthday dinner, she decided to make his birthday cake. After he got home, he took a bite, and then stopped chewing. He proceeded to scrape the frosting off and then stretch out her cake. Cooking hasn’t come easy for Traci. In fact, her Dad called her cooking a “beautiful disaster.” But she continued to work at it and got better.
After her diagnosis of colitis after her third daughter, Traci saw a niche and need within the food allergy community. A lot of recipes she found required complicated steps and making everything from scratch. With no time in her busy schedule, she moved to making recipes that were five ingredients or less and ready in under thirty minutes.
You can find her at her website, BurntApple.com, or on Instagram or Facebook.