References
Keyword Research
Keywords Everywhere is an extension for your browser and super easy to use. Research your keywords there and shoot for keywords with 2,000 – 12,000 monthly hits. This is super important, so I’ll try to clarify!
Keywords everywhere used to be free, but now charges for the service.
For example, with Keywords Everywhere, you can put a search in Google, let’s say Chocolate Cake, that has a monthly search rate of 450,000, at the moment. That is way too high!
Let’s try to narrow that down. Put in Chocolate Cake Recipe, that has 246,000 monthly searches, still too broad. Now try Homemade Chocolate Cake, that has a monthly search of 12,100.
You could go with that, but there is still a lot of competition from huge blogs on the first page. Now try Homemade Chocolate Cake Recipe, that search term is perfect for a beginner with 5400 monthly searches.
With this key knowledge in your mind, you can name your post, “Homemade Chocolate Cake Recipe.” Or, to make yourself stand out a bit, add easy to the beginning of the title and name your post “Easy Homemade Chocolate Cake Recipe”. Using this method will give you a huge leg up in Google searches.
The tool I use now is Keysearch.co, it’s also a paid service, but has most of the information that SEMRush has, plus a few others. Way cheaper than SEMRush and I find it is much easier to use than SEMRush, as well.
SEMRush has a limited free version and the paid version is fairly costly.
SEO
Yoast Free Training for Beginners
SEO Audits by MediaWyse, Casey Markee
SEO Podcast with Casey Markee from Dishing with Delishes
SEO Podcast with Casey Markee from Food Blogger Pro
Pagespeed tools
Google blog and page tracking
Plugins
WPRocket Caching Plugin
WP Recipe Maker Recipe Plugin
Grow by Mediavine Social sharing buttons Plugin