Why SEO is important for food & beverage brands - and how to handle it.
The investment in SEO pays off. There is no doubt about that. But we are so often distracted by the latest social media trends or other sources that deliver direct results, as opposed to SEO, which usually takes much longer time. After all, Google Ads and Facebook campaigns are set up in no time and we can watch how visitors land on the website and add products to the shopping cart. A great feeling that of course catches our attention. As a matter of fact, we of course also WANT our media spendings to have a direct, measurable impact on our web traffic, so it is great to look at those sources and check how they have helped us improve our site´s performance.
SEO is much more complex and requires a certain amount of structure, research, diligence, and simply patience.. After all, it can sometimes take months for changes and/or new content pieces to be discovered and indexed by Google’s crawlers, and a steady stream of organic traffic to land on our website as a result. Which is also why the organic traffic curves in Google Analytics usually grow much more slowly and steadily, without those crazy peaks we know from paid advertising.
However, organic traffic is actually far more sustainable than, for example, social media or ad traffic.
Why is SEO more sustainable than paid advertising?
It does not come as a surprise that paid traffic only lasts – as the name implies – as long as payments come in. Once you end the advertising, your traffic goes down again to whatever level it was at before. Putting new content pieces on to your website and thereby improving your site ranking month by month is a much more sustainable way, as your content (provided that it is “good”) stays on your site for as long as you want, and it can over time attract visitors as long as there is interest in the topic you wrote about. Especially food brands have a big advantage here, as classic food content such as recipes, nutrition advise, table decoration ideas and such things are evergreens on the net and you can therefore create a long lasting interest with such content pieces
Our 3 tips for successful food brand SEO
1.Clear your website of everything that slows it down:
A page can be slowed down by too large pictures (loading time of the largest picture on your site should
actually be below 1.2 seconds), too many “fancy design elements” that are actually not needed, a badly structured menu and many other factors. Run a page speed analysis (for example at GTMetrix) and find out what your overall score is – if it has a clear red flag, you should do something about it.
2. Write for human users, not search engines
A common myth is that the search engine rankings have such a high impact on your website´s performance, that you should do everything that is possible to make the engine “like your page”. However, the search engine also takes into account how users behave on your site, and it will realize if users are generally interested in what you have to say, find exactly the information they needed on your site and come back through direct search after a while. Therefore, you should always focus on how people engage with your brand, prioritize the content your target audience would like to see, and take time to find out what is really interesting for them. Of course, using the right keywords in this approach is important, but your content should never only circle around a keyword if you do not have anything else to say. Write for people, make sure they like what they find and the performance will follow.
3. Write good meta descriptions for each site
Your meta description is the first little section that people see when they find your site or blog article. You
should therefore always try to have a unique meta description in place, that explains the content of your site and gets users interested. If you only publish new pages and blog entries without meta descriptions, the
search engines are not really able to index them, and you loose valuable traffic of users that actually might have loved your content. In other words: Always make sure to not publish a cook book without a nice, informative cover!
As mentioned before, SEO for food brands is a relatively simple task, as food products and recipes carry a lot of information people like to consume. For questions regarding your ideal SEO setup, we are happy to guide you through all our learnings and help you find the best solution for your company.
We are looking forward to receiving your e-mail at: hello@spoonful-solution.com.
