How to Start a Food Blog

Contrary to what you might think, you needn’t be an expert photographer or even a semi-skilled chef to start a food blog. What you need to be is a person who has the ability to cook, take pictures of what you cooked, and then explain what you cooked to the world. Oh yeah, you also have to have a certain personality type; one that never gives up, constantly tries to improve, and one that reads, watches videos, and learns from others. With this sort of diligence and continuous improvement, there’s no way to lose.

What Exactly is a Food Blog?

A food blog can be many things. In the old days of the internet (late 1990s), the word “blog” hadn’t arrived yet. No one on earth was telling others, “Yes, I’ve got a web log where I share my latest and greatest recipes. You should like, follow, and subscribe.” If anything, they had a cutting edge “web page” upon which they typed. Very few websites utilized databases and nearly everything was static. Oh my, how times have changed.

What is a food “web log” today? Well, it’s usually a WordPress website where a person shares recipes, food photography, writes about food, is a critic of food, reviews restaurants, shares knowledge of various types of cuisine, teaches others how to cook, etc… It’s a type of food journalism. A food or cooking blog today can be anything, as long as it’s food and/or cooking related. And even then, food blogs today also include daily goings on, travel posts, and more. These types of websites aren’t confined in any one way. Some folks enjoy operating blogs that cover wide ranging topics, while others stay hyper-focused on one specific ingredient used in one specific type of food. It’s up to the blogger, really.

I will tell you though, most food blogs today are recipe blogs, meaning, they offer a rolling offering of the latest and greatest recipes prepared by the blogger. Nine out of ten food blogs on the internet are of this type.

Why Start a Food Blog?

Why should you start a food blog? That’s easy. Because you love food. Because you love the industry or you love cooking. Or perhaps you love eating or you love the photography. Your interest in food blogging should stem from your passion. And that’s it. You should start a food blog, simply put, because you can’t contain your excitement and because everyone around you is sick and tired of hearing you talking about food or your taking pictures of food. Because you’ve got nowhere left to go to release all of your pent up enthusiasm about what you made yesterday or the day before or what you’re planning on preparing tomorrow. If you were to start a food blog based on your unbridled passion, I can tell you right now that your endeavors would be successful. An attitude like that is infectious and people would naturally follow your website.

There are, however, other, less intense, reasons one might wander into the food blogging space. I’ll explore those reasons below. And at the end of this section, I’ll discuss the danger that lurks behind the scenes. The danger that’ll surely lead your efforts to ruin.

Why Become a Food Blogger?

1. To Express Your Love of Food – When David Lebovitz launched his blog in 1999, he did it to merely share recipes and stories. He did it because he loved food and wanted to immerse himself into it even more than he already had. He wanted to bring the public on board. He didn’t do it to pump out recipes to monetize them to make millions before three years time. He didn’t burn himself out by overextending himself on social media. What he did was slowly and surely present his best work and he allowed that work to speak for him. Today? David Lebovitz is one of the most popular food bloggers on the planet. Let that sink in for a moment.
2. To Practice Your Writing – Many of us look for things to write about. We love writing. I’m one of these people. I’ve written on so many topics that I can’t keep up with all of them. The world of food is endless and when I finally discovered that, I said, “That’s it!” Since I already had a love of what went into preparing a wonderful dish and since I was in the middle of learning how to properly cook, I launched my first food blog. That was back in 2015 and since then, I’ve shared hundreds of recipes and can’t get enough of sharing even more. And to top it off, I’ve become a better writer and blogger (and thinker) because of my efforts. It’s actually why I’m typing at this moment – to practice and continuously improve.
3. To Write a Cookbook – If you look at the websites of all the best food bloggers, you’ll notice one thing – they’ve all either already written cookbooks or they’re in the process of writing one. After writing and sharing hundreds of recipes on a blog the public adores, it’s the next logical step. Some of the cookbooks written by these food bloggers have been best sellers. Imagine being a food blogger who manages an inventory of excellent recipes on a website and who also has had a cookbook that’s been mentioned in the New York Times or on Oprah. Man oh man.
4. To Share Your Food Photography – One area I’ll never be completely happy with is my food photography. That’s why it’s important to continuously practice and learn. Learn and practice. I’m fairly decent at it though and since people seem to like my photos, it’s fun to share them on this website as well as on Instagram et al. I’ve seen very popular food blogs that share only photos. I’ve also seen Instagram pages that share food photos – and those pages have millions of followers. And the owners of those pages don’t even run food blogs! But yes, if you’re a skilled photographer and have taken lots of food photos, you might want to consider launching a website to show those photos off.
5. To Learn & Teach About Food – There’s a very specific type of person who jumps into the food blogging conversation. It’s a technical type of person who, yes, enjoys discussing food and who likes writing recipes, but most of all, who adores teaching others what he or she has learned and knows about cooking. These folks are the “cooking school” folks. I’m sort of one of them. I’ve always had an affinity toward teaching and when I began learning how to cook the right way, I thought of how fun it would be to pass my knowledge on. That’s why I’ve got a learn to cook category right on this very website.
6. To Make Money Food Blogging – This is the section I told you about above. It’s the one that has the potential to suck you in and make your efforts all for naught. Here’s the deal – we all know that successful food bloggers have the potential to make a lot of money. If you read my post about making money with food blogging, you’ll see just how much one can earn. The thing is, to earn a living, you’ll first need to launch and cultivate your blog for the reasons I listed above. You can’t go into it with the frame of mind that the money comes first. If you do that, you won’t have the necessary audience in place and you’ll make poor decisions when monetizing your website. You won’t be motivated by the things that matte most. You’ll have dollar signs in your eyes. So take my advice, and, if you’ve got the passion and the love of food, go ahead and start creating the world’s best content. If you think you can become rich, quit your current job, and you plan on quickly throwing posts together while using other people’s photographs, perhaps you should look at another line of work.

Research Other Food Blogs

Before, during, and after launching your food blog, you’ll want to research what others are doing. Take it from me – the food blogging wheel has already been invented. Don’t go trying to invent it again. The most successful practices have been shown as tried and true time and time again. Many very intelligent folks have done all the heavy lifting to determine what works best, so what you need to do is visit their cooking blogs to see what they’ve achieved and how they’ve achieved it. Luckily, I’ve listed the most successful food bloggers on the planet, all on one page. View the list, click the links, peruse the content. See what you think might work for you and what you’d like to avoid. And then repeat the process long after you’ve begun working on your own website. The landscape changes frequently, so you’ll need to stay ahead of the curve.

What Type of Food Blog Will You Start?

You may be thinking right now, “Hey, I’d like to start a food blog.” There may be many reasons for this. Perhaps you’d like to keep track of all your recipes. Perhaps you’d like to share those recipes with others. Maybe you simply want to quit your current job to become rich and famous or maybe you’re a chef and you’d like to teach others what you know. No matter the reason, you’ll need focus before you begin putting anything technical together. The question you’ll need to ask yourself is, “What type of food blog would I like to launch?” In general, there are four types. It’s good to choose one to start out with. By choosing just one, you’ll have formed some direction and direction is important when working with websites.

4 Primary Types of Food Blogs

There are obviously sub-sections under each one of these types, but what I list below is a good jumping off point.

1. Recipe Blogs – We’ve all seen these many times. The author either develops recipes him/herself or borrows them from someone else and modifies them to share with others. Whatever the case, the blog is all about recipes and incredible photography. Step-by-step, ingredient lists, how to prep, how to cook, how to eat, and how to serve. This type of food blog is the most popular out there.
2. Cuisine Specific Food Blogs – This type is very popular too. Most often seen is probably the dessert blog. Think Brown Eyed Baker, My Baking Addiction, Dessert for Two, and Sally’s Baking Addiction. There are others types too, such as only meat blogs and vegetarian/vegan blogs. What’s nice about this type is that users really connect with them and save them for regular use. Users don’t always connect with websites on a personal basis, but if a vegan finds a very helpful vegan food blog, he or she will likely come to appreciate it greatly over time. He or she will become a fan.
3. Region Specific Food Blogs – If you’ve been following the foodie scene online for the past few decades, you may have noticed the emergence of cooking blogs that focus on particular locations or regions. Gordan Ramsay’s Master Chef is all about regions this season; the Northeast, the South, the West, and the Midwest. Each area offers is own way of doing things and its own type of food. Some foods can be broken down by country, such as Mexican or French food. Some types of food are unique to the region of the country it’s in, such as Cajun food in New Orleans or Lobster in Maine.
4. Healthy Food Blogs – This type of blog is awesome at guiding visitors to a healthier lifestyle. It offers tips for meal planning, features healthy recipes, healthy and alternative ingredients, nutritional tips, and even focuses on specific types of diets. Think paleo, gluten-free, keto, vegetarian, or vegan. There may be crossover with the cuisine specific type of food blog here, but if it’s a true health food blog, it’ll also give information on the nutritional aspects of certain foods as well as how to schedule eating and how much food to eat. Diet, exercise, and everything else you can think of.

I hope you get the idea here. Basically, before you move on to any of the next steps below, it’s critical to consider what you’ll be spending your time on. If a blog is years and years old, it may contain aspects of every type I just told you about above. Remember though, it takes years to generate that much content. In the early stages, it’s best to focus and develop a niche, which is what I’ll cover below.

What Will Be Your Blog’s Focus or Niche?

Let’s say you’ve decided to set up and go with a recipe blog. From the above section, you’ve chosen the first option. That’s good. That’s actually what I did with my first food blog. In the beginning, I thought I’d cover all different types of recipes, but as time went on, I discovered that I was primarily preparing Italian dishes. I was cooking pasta to meatballs to tiramisu (not that you cook that). So for my second food blog, I thought I’d add some more focus to my recipes. I thought I’d use Italian food as my niche.

Niches are great. First, people love them because they know where to find specifically what they’re looking for. Second, it’s easier on you, the blogger, because they give you the opportunity to go into so much more depth while you’re cooking and writing. Diversity is fine, but depth is oftentimes what makes your followers, really, really loyal followers. When you go deep, you earn credibility and trust and that goes a long way online.

How can you find a niche to focus on for your food blog? That’s easy. You can take a look through my Top 50 Food Blogs page and see what others’ niches are. I’ll do just that and list the most popular ones below.

Most Popular Food Blog Niches

• Baking
• Health Food
• Pasta
• Vegetarian
• Cooking on a Budget
• Minimal Ingredients
• Casseroles
• From Favorite Cookbooks
• Vegan
• Chocolate
• Cast Iron Cooking
• Desserts
• Sandwiches

Seriously, as I scroll down the list, I find that nearly everyone’s got a niche. It’s actually very cool. For more ideas, you can browse through the cookbook aisle of a bookshop. Many cookbooks focus on specific niches as well.

If you’d like to sit back and think of your own niche, you can do that too. All it will require is you answering a few simple questions.

How to Think of a Good Food Blog Niche

Ask yourself the following food and cooking related questions:

• How do I stand out from my friends and people I know?
• What makes me better than them? What makes me different?
• What’s missing from the internet? What can I offer that others can’t?
• If a visitor decides to recommend my food blog to someone else, what makes them do that?
• Do I have any special training in food preparation? Do I have a specialty?
• What makes me wake up in the morning? What kind of food do I absolutely love?
• Do I have special causes I care about? Do I find anything ethically related to certain foods?
• How can I help others?
• Who exactly would I like to see reading and using my blog? What would I like them to get out of it?

If you can answer just three or four of these questions, you’ll be well on your way to finding your niche. And once you do, you’ll plaster that all over your new blog. You’ll want others to know exactly what you’re about and what you can offer them. It’s that detail that’ll have them loving everything you do. Don’t believe me? Think about what you focus on when you’re shopping online or when looking for a specific recipe. Think about the details you search for and delve into. It’s not inconceivable to think of others doing the same thing. Just give people what they want.

Food Blog Name Ideas

Let’s get something straight right off the bat. There are very few “stupid” food blog names. Creative? Yes. Stupid? No. Perhaps many names are silly or playful or overly descriptive, but over time, visitors get used to them. If you get caught up in the “this name sounds so stupid” thing, you’ll never decide and settle on anything. Everything sounds stupid the first time it crosses the mind. Think about the names Google or Yahoo. Those are ridiculous sounding.

Just so you know, there are many, many food blog names left that haven’t been registered as domain names yet. By the same token, you’re not likely going to find the one you really want available to purchase, and honestly, that’s what it’s all about. Buying the name you like as a domain name. Having the names you’ve fallen in love with unavailable is just the way it is. Food blogging has been around too long and a large majority of desirable domain names have been snatched up by everyone else who’s had the same ideas as those you’re having right now. But, if you look hard enough, long enough, you’ll land on something that’ll make you smile. I was at my wit’s end when I thought up RecipeJay. It seems so simple now, but believe it or not, it took a lot of time to work through the process of weeding out a bunch of other names that didn’t strike me like RecipeJay did. By the way, I’m running a recipe blog and my name Jay. How much better can you get than the name I chose?

Example Food Blog Names

I’m going to share a few creative food blog names, just to get your juices flowing. Notice how different ideas are pasted together to come to something that makes sense. Some of these names are serious, some are descriptive, and some are playful and fun.

• Unicorns in the Kitchen
• The Little Plantation
• The Petite Cook
• Taste of Home
• Foodie Crush
• Chef De Home
• The Savory Stage
• Culinary Culture Quests
• Sweet Meditations
• The Baker’s Diary

As you can see, there’s oftentimes neither rhyme nor reason when devising a name for a cooking blog. Let’s say your name is Kathy. Let’s also say you’d like to name a recipe blog you’d like to launch. To do so, it wouldn’t be outlandish to use your name within the blog name. You could also play on the letter “K” that’s included in your name. So something like KathysKulinaryKreations would be kind of cool. What if your name is Linda? You live on a farm and you’ve been collecting recipes and cooking for years. How about LindasFarmingJourney? I hope you get my gist here.

While setting up your blog, think about your personal name, the niche and focus you’ve decided upon for the website, perhaps your location, type of food, and anything else you can think of that’ll set you apart. Then you’ll need to brainstorm ideas, write them down, run them by a few people, and then search to see if the respective domain name is available. I’ll discuss options for searching for and purchasing a domain name in the next section.

How to Buy a Food Blog Domain Name

A domain name will cost you anywhere from $9 to $20 per year. You can use Cloudflare, GoDaddy, Squarespace, Namecheap, Domain.com, Network Solutions or any of the other hundreds and hundreds of domain registration companies. You can also likely purchase your domain through the hosting company you use (more on hosting later).

To purchase your domain name, simply visit a domain registration website, type your name in the box, and see if it’s available to buy. If it is, make the purchase.

More Tips for Deciding Upon a Name

Before I continue on to the website setup section, I wanted to offer some tried-and-true, easy to follow tips for choosing your food blog’s name. I’ll list them below:

1. Keep It Short & Simple – Just remember, Carrie’s Kitchen is a much better name than Carrie’s Fantastic Kitchen for Home Farm Cooking in Duluth, Minnesota. While descriptive names are fine and good, there comes a point when they become ridiculous.
2. Make it Memorable – Continuing on from the above tip, people like catchy and memorable website names. That’s why you see almost all of the most famously branded ones using just one word. For food blogs, you’re probably not going to find a one word name, so two or three is fine. Any more than that, you’re pushing it. I don’t think many folks out there would be able to mentally retain a four word domain name.
3. Make it Lovable – Imagine your son’s name is Jack. You have been teaching Jack how to cook and thought that making a blog that revolved around that idea would be a good thing to do. If you named the website Learning with Jack or Cooking with Jack, I can imagine that you’d love that name until the day you die. When you love something, you pour your heart into it and that goes a long way when cultivating a successful cooking blog.

Also, keep these additional considerations in mind:

1. Check the Name on Social Media – It sure would be a shame if you came up with and bought the domain for the best food blog name in the world and then started setting up social media channels to accompany the website, only to find that your name has already been used. My advice to you would be to, before buying the domain name, check social media to see if it’s available there as well. Remember though, while @RecipeJay by itself might be already taken on Facebook, @RecipeJaycom most likely isn’t. So you can always just stick the “com” at the end if you need to.
2. Stick With Your Niche – When developing a name for your food blog, it’s helpful to include your niche into the name. Just think about it: can you figure out what a website named Vegan Mary is about? Or how about Grillin’ with Joe? When niches are included, they’re memorable and easy to remember.
3. Buy the .COM – You can buy any TLD (top-level-domain) you want, but we all know that .coms are the most widely used and most memorable. Before purchasing a .us, .net, .co, or .blog extension, exhaust all options with .com. You’ll be happy to did down the road.

How to Set Up Your Food Blog Website

Through the years, you’ll learn new things and tweak your blog countless ways, but initially, there isn’t an overwhelming amount of work to be done. In the most simple sense, you’ll need to (in this order):

1. Register a domain name.
2. Set up a website hosting account.
3. Install a CMS (content management system) such as WordPress.
4. Install a WordPress theme.
5. Install WordPress plugins.
6. Start posting!

This is an huge section. It’s the most technical of everything I’ve written so far and much has been offered on the internet that covers each of these steps. If you intend to truly start food blogging and make a living from it, I suggest you begin reading and learning and working. It’s not for the faint of heart. True, anyone can set up a blog quickly and start typing. But not everyone can do that correctly. To do it correctly and thoroughly, it’ll take time, patience, and a willingness to learn. No one starts off an expert. I’ve personally set up dozens of blogs and the one you’re currently reading from has taken weeks to complete. And it’s nowhere near perfected yet. It’ll never be. There’s always something to adjust and change.

Below, I’ll flesh out the five setup steps I posted above.

Register a Domain Name

I touched on this step in an above section. Registering a domain name for your food blog is easy. In all, it can take about 60 seconds to complete. After you’ve decided on a name, you’ll visit a domain registrar (search Google for that term), search for your chosen name, and, if available, purchase it. Again, it’ll likely cost under $20.

An option that many bloggers take advantage of is to first decide on a website hosting company, set up the hosting account, and then register the domain name through that company. The benefit of doing it this way is that you won’t need to change any settings on the domain side of things. Not that the settings are difficult or challenging to make or change, but injecting some ease into the process is always nice.

Set Up a Hosting Account

Before I continue, I’d like to let you know that each step I lay out here is the pared down version of what should take place. Because WordPress has become so popular through the years, hosting companies have created what they refer to as managed WordPress hosting solutions. Basically, they do all the work for you. You’ll sign up for a hosting account and with the push of a button, WordPress will be installed automatically for you. Below, I’ll discuss what you’ll need to do if you aren’t interested in that option.

To set up a hosting account, you’ll need to choose a website hosting company. Today, the top companies you’ll find on the first page of Google are all good. When you compare one to another, you’ll be splitting hairs. To locate a good website hosting company, search Google for either WordPress hosting or website hosting. You’ll likely be presented with many, many results. Top companies include Liquid Web, GoDaddy, Hostinger, DreamHost, Bluehost, Siteground, and so many more. Just go ahead and choose one of the options I listed above.

Once you choose a hosting company for your food blog, you’ll need to purchase an account. A quick call with their sales department can get you all squared away. Just tell them what you plan on doing and they’ll handle the rest. They’ll even tell you the settings you’ll need to make for your domain name to point to the hosting account. Again, this stuff can get technical. Hosting companies have created processes to make the setup so much easier and more streamlined than it’s ever been. Simply make a phone call to talk to one of the companies and they’ll offer tremendously helpful assistance.

Install WordPress

Again, you’ve got options when you get to this step. If you’d like to, you could skip the separate purchasing of a domain name and buying of a hosting account and jump straight to a hosted solution provided by WordPress. If you visit WordPress.com (notice the .com at the end), you can sign up for an account, register a domain name right inside of that account, and buy a plan that’ll host your WordPress website. They’ll do it all, right there. Granted, you won’t have the control over the website you’ll likely want and need as you become more popular, but it’s a great place to start.

If you’d like full control over your WordPress website, you’ll definitely want to download your own copy of the CMS and install it at your hosting account. To do this, you’ll need to visit WordPress.org (notice the .org at the end) and download the software. Then, you’ll need to unzip it and upload the files to your hosting account. There are tons of tutorials on the internet that explain exactly how to go about doing all this, so please search for and use those resources. The topic is far beyond the scope of this post. This is part of the reason so many hosting providers have created the one-click setup for WordPress right in their accounts. Also please know that all the big dogs out there host their own files of WordPress. It’s the cool and professional thing to do.

Install a Food & Cooking Related Theme

All WordPress websites need to utilize what’s referred to as a theme. A theme is what gives a WordPress website its look or appearance. There are probably more themes available on the internet today than WordPress websites. Themes have been around for decades; you can either buy one or download one for free. If you search Google for WordPress themes, you’ll first find the WordPress Theme Directory, where you’ll discover thousands upon thousands of available themes. After that, you’ll find an endless list of websites and directories that offer even more themes. Don’t get overwhelmed by the sheer number of available themes and directories that offer them. The truth is…

Something you’ll notice while cruising all the top food blogging websites is that many of them use the same theme. What theme is that? Probably Foodie Pro put out by Feast. While you can use any theme you want, sometimes it’s helpful to choose one that’s been crafted to work well with many of the food related plugins available for food blogs. Personally, I use a theme called Essence Pro that was developed by StudioPress. StudioPress is a popular theme company that’s been around for a very long time. It offers a free framework upon which many themes operate. The goal while wading through the long list of themes is to settle on one that’s super popular, tested by thousands of people, and generally not too expensive. Oh yeah, if you can get one that’s already related to food blogging, all the better.

To recap, first you’ll need to buy a domain name. Then, you’ll need to purchase a hosting account plan (usually monthly or yearly), and then, you’ll need to install WordPress and find a nice theme that pleases the eye. What’s next? Ah, plugins.

Install the Best Food Blogging Plugins

When you discuss WordPress plugins with people who are in the know, they’ll take it for granted that you’re aware of what one is. In reality, the average person has no idea what a plugin is. Since you’re likely one of these (perhaps not so average) people, I’d like to take a moment to let you in on all the hubbub. A WordPress plugin is a small program that’s installed inside of the WordPress administration area that enhances an installation of WordPress. You can install as many plugins as you wish. They do all sorts of things. Let’s say you’ve already installed WordPress, have chosen and installed a theme, and you’ve written a few posts. Everything is great until you realize that you’d like to write a recipe post that looks like the ones the famous food bloggers write. You know the type – the ones with those cool recipe cards (consolidated recipes) inside of them. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, click this link. It’ll bring you to the recipe card area of a recipe post I’ve written right here on this very blog. In order to have your post look like mine, you’ll need to install a plugin. Which one? Well, luckily, I’ve written an entire post that discusses all the best and most popular WordPress plugins for food blogging. And now that you know what a plugin is, you can read that post to see which ones you’d like to install for your own website.

Writing Content & Taking Photos

This is the part of food blogging that comes to mind the most. Cooking, photographing, and writing is what you’ll be doing for years and years after the website is all set up and running. And while the process of posting might seem daunting at first, trust me when I say that it gets easier as time goes on. As with most things, a process develops and it’s luckily a fairly straightforward one at that.

Let’s talk about the classic recipe post. There are generally three parts:

1. The food itself.
2. The photographing of the food.
3. The writing about the food.

That’s pretty much it. Pretty cool, right?

The Food

To start off, you’ll need to deal with the food. To prepare something worthwhile, you’ll have to do your homework and find a good recipe. Then you’ll need to make sure you’ve got the tools to prepare whatever it is you’re preparing. Then you’ll need to gather the necessary ingredients and cook said ingredients. Finally, you’ll need to plate your dish and make it look spectacular. This step of the process is admittedly pretty tough when starting out, but once you learn what you’re doing and what’s necessary for a plate to appear presentable, the entire process will calm itself down. But yes, there will be some screaming and frustrating moments, especially if you’re not yet versed in the art of cooking and plating.

The Photography

Again, this type of task is intimidating for the uninitiated and again, you’ll get used to it as time goes on. Your first efforts at plating and photographing are most likely going to fall flat, but once you learn the handful of tricks award winning food photographers take advantage of, you’ll be rocking like a star.

Food photography is a gigantic subject and the only thing you can do to become proficient at it is to learn and practice. The trick is to avoid wasting your valuable time. Every single step of capturing every single photograph will require a piece of knowledge. I encourage you to learn this knowledge up front as to minimize “learning on the job.” Become friends with YouTube and search often using the phrases “food photography” and “food photography tutorials.” YouTube won’t let you down and you’ll be photographing at expert level before you know it.

I can recommend Skyler Burt when it comes to learning how to take excellent food photos. Below is one of his videos. I definitely encourage checking out all of the videos on his channel.

The Writing

Gone are the days you could toss a simple food post on the internet and win traffic from the search engines. Today, you’ll need to present something that’s absolutely mesmerizing and that answers every single question a visitor may have about the dish in which they’re interested. The competition in this arena has become fierce and to succeed at food blogging, you’ll need to become better than the best of them.

I’d like you to take a look at a sample post on my blog. Notice how many sections there are. Take a look at all the photography. Read the writing. Notice the diversity of subjects. This is what you’d call a complete food blog recipe post. I can’t think of anything else to add. I knew I was finished writing the post when I made it to that point.

Linguine with Tomatoes, Anchovies, & Chilis Recipe by Gordon Ramsay

When constructing and writing a cooking post, think about what it would take for a visitor to your website to share said post on social media or through email. Yes, it’s got to be that good. It’s either got to include the recipe for a dish that’s enticing, present photography that’s remarkable, or writing that’s captivating (or ideally, all three). How do you know what sections are necessary? How do you know what to write? Visit top food blogs to see what their owners are doing. Check out their posts. Gain a consensus. But make sure of one thing: that you NEVER EVER copy anything from anyone else. Look at and take ideas, yes. Steal someone else’s work, NEVER.

Food Blogging Tips

I mentioned above that over time you’ll develop a method for your posting. Below, I’d like to offer a few tips to get you started off on the right foot. Remember, your goal is to create and cultivate a website that’s fun and lively for the person viewing it. It also needs to be engaging and informative. It needs to answer the question of the visitor: “Why did I come here? Oh yeah, for this awesomeness!”

1. Create a posting schedule and stick to it. To start, you might want to post once per week. Over time, increase that to two or three times per week. Stay consistent because your visitors and followers will come to expect posts at certain times from you. Successful bloggers and YouTubers are notorious for their consistency.
2. As you write more and more, your writing may start coming across as somewhat robotic. You’ll want to avoid this. It’s something that naturally occurs with writers. An easy trick to keep robots at bay is to reread what you’ve written out loud. Sure, you’ll sound crazy to people who might be in another room, but at least your post will come across naturally and will flow coherently.
3. When naming your post, be descriptive. For a pasta dish recipe, don’t name the post, “The Best Dish Ever!” Give the post a more descriptive name so search engines won’t have any trouble returning it in their results when someone searches for it. This may be a better choice for a title: “Cheesy Ziti with a Mushroom & Garlic Tomato Sauce Recipe.”
4. Food posts are full of headings and language that’s used over and over on multiple pages. Be sure to stay consistent with this language. For instance, for recipe posts, you’ll likely use the heading, “Ingredients” in all of them. Try to keep that title the same everywhere. Don’t change it to “What You’ll Need” and “Food Items” randomly. Search engines and fans of your site will come to expect certain things. Give them what they want.
5. Again, thoroughness is key. Three hundred word blog posts used to be fine. They’re not anymore. Today, search engines gobble up 2,000 word posts. They love them. Be sure to create an outline of headings to start and then fill in the spaces. As you can see in the sample post I linked to above, I included sections for wine pairings as well as the history of linguine. This is the type of thing you’ll need to do to separate yourself from the masses.
6. The world of food blogging consists of people who “borrow” recipes from one another. When borrowing, it’s important to give credit to the person from whom you borrowed and it’s also just as important to make the recipe your own. Change things around and modify ingredients and cooking methods so your post isn’t a carbon copy of what someone else already shared on their own website. Take your own photos and write your own text. Never steal.
7. Finally, be sure to create posts that are engaging and interesting. You can do this by including photography and video. Visitors love this stuff.

How to Promote Your Food Blog

There are two types of bloggers out there; one who creates outstanding content and the other who is outstanding at promoting content. In my days as a blogger, I’ve seen the most remarkable blogs go absolutely nowhere and I’ve seen marginal blogs scream to the uppermost heights of popularity. At one point, I saw a blog ranked as one of the most popular on earth. It contained 13 posts. Yes, that’s right – 13 posts. I’ve run blogs that have contained over 1,300 posts and that received very little traffic. Try to figure that one out.

The truth is, if you’d like to own and operate a popular food blog, you’ll need to somehow merge your exquisite blogging skills with your far reaching marketing skills. And if I had to assign a percentage to each of those skills, I’d say 60% needs to go to marketing and 40% needs to go to content creation. It’s such a shame – for all the work we do creating incredible content, that content creation alone won’t get us very far.

In this section, I’d like to offer you a few ideas that should help when it comes to getting the word out about your food blog. Before I begin though, I feel compelled to mention that in order to gain traction, you’ll need to become excessively social online. If you’re like me, someone who enjoys remaining behind the scenes, that’ll be a hard pill to swallow. It’s true though. Food blogging is a social game and in order to win it, you’ll need to plaster your face and website URL all over the internet. You’ll need to become extraordinarily present on social media and you’ll need to get to know other food bloggers by name. If you try to avoid these things, you’ll ultimately find that you’re writing to only one person – yourself. That’s not a great place to be.

Please take a look at the food blog marketing tips below. If you have others, I’d love to read them in the comment section at the end of this post.

1. Interview Other Food Bloggers – The fastest and most effective method for meeting and befriending other bloggers is to offer to interview them for your blog. I’ve done this a lot and have enjoyed great success with it in the past and even feature an Interviews category on this very website today. Interviewing others benefits everyone involved. For you, it’ll give you content, will allow you to connect with a potential friend in the same blogging space, and will hopefully earn you a link back to your site from theirs. Or at least their social media channels when they mention to their followers that they’ve just been interviewed by someone as special as you. For them, they’ll earn a link to their website and social media channel from the interview page. You’ll also be introducing the person to your own followers. It’s a win-win.
2. Go Big with Social Media – Once you’re up and running with your blog, you’ll need to set up at least four social media channels; Facebook, Twitter (X), Pinterest, and Instagram. If you like video, then add YouTube and TikTok to this list. The trick with social media is that you need to obsessively add content to it for your channels to grow. As you take photos, post them. As you write posts, link to them. The top food bloggers all use social media scheduling and management tools, such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social. Canva, Buffer, and others. These tools take the repetition out of your posting and help tremendously with your long-term success. Really, you need to get in on social media. I’ve yet to see a top food blogger not using it. Also – one last thing – be sure to link to your social channels from your blog. People love following bloggers and those links need to be accessible.
3. Guest Post on Someone Else’s Blog – This is huge. I’ve seen bloggers go from obscurity to obscene popularity simply by writing a guest post on a highly recognized food blog. It’s not an easy thing to accomplish though. I receive guest post solicitations all the time and I’ve yet only allowed one person to actually write a post for me. Most of the time it’s spammers who want to post on someone’s blog and that’s part of the reason it’s so difficult to connect with a blog owner. If you’re friends with them first though and if you’ve proven to write high quality posts on your own site, a post on another food blog has the potential to introduce you and your website to an entirely new audience. And with that post may come a complementary link back to your site. That’s big! Interested in guest posting for me? Click here to learn more.
4. Leave Comments on Food Blogs – This has been going on for ages. Food bloggers from near and far find the time to leave friendly comments on those favorite cooking blogs they follow. After writing a post, it’s always a boost to have a comment left at the bottom of that post. As a commenter, be sure to leave a link back to your own blog so people can find you. To enjoy success as a commenter, find about 25 popular food blogs to follow and check for new posts often. When one appears, comment!
5. Perfect Your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – SEO is a huge topic and it’s been around as long as the internet and search engines have been around. Basically, it’s the process of making a website visible to search engines and having it optimized in such a way as to have its pages appear before others’ in the search results. Out of the box, WordPress is pretty good at optimizing the websites that run on it. WordPress plugins help in this regard as well. But really, it’s you as the content creator of your blog who has the most control. Without compelling content that’s formatted correctly, your website won’t get very far. What areas can you focus on to easily improve your food related website’s SEO? Keywords, image ALT text, a recipe plugin, proper headings, excellent and thorough content, and fast speed. These things will take you very far if attended to appropriately.
6. Build an Email List – Imagine having a method for collecting email addresses and then delivering an email message to each one of those addresses every time you wrote a post. Or had a message to share. Believe it or not, such a thing exists and in many cases, for completely free. For years, food blogs have been building their email marketing lists and they’ve grown their audiences and have made a lot of money as well. People swear by their email lists for their marketing. Needless to say, one should be a part of your efforts too. Which list solutions are the most popular? Which ones should you look into? MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, and Constant Contact.
7. Join Facebook Recipe Groups – There are thousands upon thousands of people out there who are looking for the latest and greatest recipes for dishes to prepare. There are also thousands upon thousands of people out there who are looking for your recipe posts to add to their “round up” posts on their own blogs. The only thing getting in the way of all these people doing what they’d like to do is that no one knows where the others are. Well, not anymore. Today, these people live inside of the countless Facebook groups and they all share recipes, use recipes, and add recipe posts to their blogs. My advice to you would be to join some Facebook cooking and food groups, read the rules, get used to how these groups work, and then make a habit of cleverly marketing inside of them.
8. Use Pinterest to the Fullest – Pinterest can drive some insane traffic to your website. I once saw a girl’s food blog stats and they read something like 700,000 visits from Google and 600,000 visits from Pinterest. That’s crazy. I never knew Pinterest was so popular. When optimizing your recipe posts for Pinterest, be sure that you’ve got rich pins enabled. You can do this through Yoast, various plugins, or through the WP Recipe Maker plugin. Rich pins add many details of the recipe directly to the pin on Pinterest, making it rich. It’s a huge boost when it comes to someone saving and clicking on your pin inside of Pinterest.
9. Link Internally – An excellent strategy for getting visitors to stay on your website longer is to give them something to click. If they’re browsing through one type of pasta recipe, why not add a related pasta recipe link in the post? Sometimes though, internal linking can become arduous and tedious and that’s why some clever developers have created plugins to handle the heavy lifting for you. Personally, I use three plugins to handle internal linking: Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP), Inline Related Posts, and Internal Link Juicer. Using these three plugins saves so much time and by adding all those related links, it doesn’t only give human visitors something to click, it also gives search engine crawlers links to crawl, which is great for SEO.
10. Link Out to Related Websites – Many bloggers are hesitant to link to other websites for fear of receiving some sort of search engine penalty. There’s generally nothing wrong with linking to others as long as the site you’re linking to is 1. related, and 2. high quality. The last thing you want to do is link to a lousy website that might connect you with a “bad neighborhood.” If you write a recipe post though and it’s about some sort of food, go ahead and search Google for a similar post and link to it. Also, if you borrow a recipe from someone, link to them as a way to say thank you. Google has mentioned that part of their algorithm recognizes high quality links, pointing both to and from a website. Also, the person you link to might one day see that link and you may just fall into their good graces. That’s always a plus.

Make Money With Your Food Blog

Ah yes, the reason we all work tirelessly to build and promote our food blogs – to earn some coin. Are you looking for the tried-and-true methods for monetizing your food blog? If so, you’ve come to the right place. I actually wrote an entire in-depth post that covers all the ins and outs of making money in this little corner of the internet. To read my post, click here.

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Yes, this post has finally come to an end. I hope you found the information helpful and if you’ve got any additional tips or advice related to what I’ve discussed above, please feel free to comment down below. I’d certainly appreciate it. Also, if you have any questions, drop a comment down below as well. I’m always here to help. Thanks for reading!