8 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Food Blog
While a thriving Instagram following can be a dream for many food bloggers and recipe creators, it’s crucial to remember the importance of growing your website traffic and nurturing your email marketing list.
Building your website fosters control and depth. You set the rules, showcase a library of content, and explore diverse revenue streams beyond sponsored social media posts. Think cookbooks, online courses, merchandise, affiliate links, and ad placements! An email list, meanwhile, allows you to nurture your loyal fans. Share exclusive content, offer promotions, and build trust directly with your audience, driving them back to your website again and again.
Honing your focus between Instagram and your owned channels like website and email can make for the perfect balance that leads to sustainable, scalable, long lasting growth for your brand. In this guide, we’ll show you several simple yet effective ways to keep traffic flowing to your website — using both your Instagram account and other methods.
Driving traffic from your Instagram
1. Optimize your link-in-bio
Go beyond single links: Use a link-in-bio tool to create a mini-landing page with multiple links categorized by recipe type, occasion, or theme.
Track and analyze: Use tools with click tracking to understand which links perform best and optimize your layout accordingly.
Dynamic updates: Connect your link-in-bio tool to your blog’s RSS feed to automatically showcase new recipes or content.
Seasonal relevance: Highlight specific links during holidays or based on trending ingredients.
Showcase “shop now” options: If you sell cookbooks or merchandise, link them prominently in your bio. Whether they’re on your website or Amazon storefront.
Rotate links regularly: Don’t leave your audience with outdated links. Regularly update with new recipes and promotions.
See how MacKenzie Smith of Grilled Cheese Social utilizes her link-in-bio with many of the elements mentioned above.
2. Create clickable Instagram Story links
Leverage urgency: Use countdown stickers or highlight limited-time offers to encourage immediate clicks.
Story highlights: Create dedicated highlights for specific recipe categories, popular challenges, or tutorials.
Interactive elements: Use quizzes, polls, and questions in stories to spark engagement and naturally lead to your website for answers.
Behind-the-scenes glimpses: Share snippets of your cooking process or kitchen hacks, and use the link sticker to direct viewers to the full recipe or blog post.
See how Chef Catherine McCord of Weelicious utilizes her Instagram Story highlights to drive swipe-up clicks to her website.
3. Promote on Reels and Live videos
Hook viewers early: Start with a captivating introduction that highlights the recipe’s benefits or showcases the final dish.
Problem-solution approach: Briefly share a common cooking problem your recipe solves, then direct viewers to your website for the complete solution. For example, recipes for kids with picky appetites. Something many parents can relate to and are thus hooked to view more.
Showcasing techniques: Focus on unique cooking techniques or unexpected ingredients used in your recipe, then direct viewers to learn more and get the full recipe on your website.
Live Q&A sessions: Answer recipe-related questions live and encourage viewers to visit your website for in-depth tutorials or additional tips.
Run Contests and Giveaways: Encourage engagement and website visits by offering prizes related to your recipes or merchandise, requiring participants to visit your website and/or sign-up for your email list.
There are SO many ways to promote content from your website on your Instagram. Another example is Chef Catherine McCord promoting her live cooking class hosted on her site through an Instagram Reel.
4. Partner with other brand or recipe accounts
Partner strategically: Choose brands relevant to your niche and audience. Offer to create recipe content featuring their products.
Link to affiliate programs: If applicable, use affiliate links when tagging products to earn commission on sales driven from your Instagram.
Challenge ideas: Host joint recipe challenges, baking competitions, or cooking live streams with other food bloggers, encouraging cross-promotion and website traffic exchange.
Guest appearances: Feature guest chefs or bloggers on your Instagram Live or Reels, exposing your audience to new content and their websites.
Joint giveaways: Partner with other food bloggers to offer a giveaway with prizes related to both your websites, increasing engagement and website visits.
Tag each other: Always tag collaborators in your posts and stories to drive traffic to their profiles and potentially their websites.
See how Lexi’s Clean Kitchen cross-promotes her channel with Butcher Box, and then prompts Reel viewers to head to her website to grab the air fryer recipe, tips and tricks when cooking this recipe, and more. Two birds with one stone!
5. Offer followers a clickable link directly to your recipe
We all know instagram doesn’t enable clickable links in post or reel captions, but you can adopt service like grocerslist, that enable you to send an automatic DM with the recipe link by asking the follower to comment a specific keyword. It helps boost comment engagement on your posts, and gives the follower exactly what they want, a clickable link to that specific recipe. This also drives traffic significantly from each instagram post.
Here’s an example from What’s Gaby Cooking, a popular recipe creator on instagram.
Driving traffic outside of your Instagram
6. Grow your organic traffic with SEO
Keyword research: Use a free tool like Google Keyword Planner or paid tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to identify relevant keywords with high search volume and low competition. Focus on long-tail keywords specific to your recipes, niche, and ingredients.
On-page optimization: Optimize your website titles, meta descriptions, and headers with target keywords. Include keywords naturally within your content, but avoid keyword stuffing or adding tons of links right next to each other. This can be seen as spammy and hurts your reader experience.
Technical SEO: Ensure your website is mobile-friendly, has fast loading speeds, and uses a clean and structured code. Use tools like Google Search Console to identify and fix technical issues.
Recipe schema markup: Implement recipe schema markup to provide structured data about your recipes to search engines such as ingredients, cooking time, nutritional information, and ratings. This can improve recipe search results and click-through rates.
Internal linking: Link relevant recipes and blog posts within your website to improve user experience and SEO. In our guide to SEO for food bloggers, we offer the Hub and Spoke content marketing model that promotes one of the best internal linking structures for recipe creators! Check it out below.
Let’s use vegetarian recipes as the pillar content within the hub titled “The Ultimate Guide to Vegetarian Cooking,” offering an overview of vegetarian cuisine, nutritional info, diet benefits, and starter tips. Surround this with specific spoke content like “10 Best Vegetarian Air Fryer Recipes,” “15 Quick and Easy Vegetarian Dinner Recipes,” “How to Make Vegetarian Meals High in Protein,” and so on. Link these spokes to the hub and vice versa for easy navigation and to create a structured network of related content. This is one of the top internal linking methods for SEO.
7. Grow repeated site visits with email marketing
Opt-in forms: Place strategic opt-in forms on your website, like pop-ups, sidebars, or after blog posts (so long as they’re not intrusive to the reader experience). Offer valuable incentives like exclusive recipes, downloadable content, slots for live classes, and other assets in exchange for email addresses.
Lead magnets: Create high-quality lead magnets, such as discounts to your cookbook, your 10-step chefs checklists, or meal prep cheat sheets, specifically designed to attract your target audience.
Segmentation: Segment your email list based on subscriber preferences or interests to send targeted and relevant newsletters.
Content marketing: Every time new content releases, whether on your website, YouTube channel, or any other social channels, let your email audience be the first to know. Even if you’re driving clicks away from your food blog, this is how you keep your audience engaged and wanting more.
Integrate with Instagram: Encourage Instagram followers to sign up for your email list by mentioning it in your bio, stories, or captions. Many link-in-bio tools offer this functionality with Instagram.
See how What’s Gaby Cooking segments her newsletter sign up options so her audience receives personalized content. This also drives them back to the site again and again, creating a sustainable method for growing traffic from an audience that’s highly engaged.
8. Repurpose content on other channels
Repurposing your Instagram content isn’t just about squeezing more mileage out of your hard work, it’s about strategically reaching new audiences and driving them to your website for deeper engagement with your brand. Now, it’s best to diversify and master one channel before moving to the next (so you’re not spreading yourself too thin). So, if repurposing sounds like an intriguing tactic for growing traffic beyond Instagram, here are some methods for doing so:
YouTube
From snippets to masterpieces: Transform those eye-catching Instagram recipe snippets into full-fledged video tutorials on YouTube. Offer a comprehensive cooking demonstration, answer questions in detail, and showcase the final product in all its glory.
Intrigue with teasers: Share short, captivating “trailer” videos on Instagram, highlighting the key steps and ingredients of your recipe. Use compelling captions with a clear call to action, directing viewers to YouTube for the complete experience.
TikTok
Bite-sized delights: Adapt your recipes for the fast-paced, short-form world of TikTok. Focus on a single, impressive step, a creative food hack, or a visually stunning ingredient reveal. Use trending sounds and challenges to grab attention and seamlessly link to your website (or link-in-bio) for the full recipe.
Recipe hacks and inspiration: Share quick tips and tricks, substitutions, or alternative cooking methods in your TikTok videos. Leave viewers wanting more and direct them to your website for the in-depth recipe and additional inspiration.
Eye candy with a purpose: Create visually stunning Pinterest pins showcasing your recipes. Use high-quality photos, clear titles, and concise descriptions mentioning key ingredients and dietary restrictions. Include a clickable link to your website for the complete recipe.
Seasonal boards and collections: Organize your Pinterest pins by theme, occasion, or dietary needs. This helps users discover relevant recipes and encourages them to explore your website further.
See how Gaby Dalkin utilizes the highly visual nature of Pinterest to not only expand her reach on an entirely new channel, but use that reach to drive traffic back to her website. Diversifying your channels offers you the best defense against algorithm changes and keeps traffic on your owned spaces (website and email) steadily flowing.
Remember, repurposing isn’t just copying and pasting content across platforms. It means adapting content to fit the specific format and audience of each platform, and always include clear CTAs directing viewers to your website.
