Your website and specifically the homepage of your food blog should highlight the best content for someone who is brand new to you. The more defined this content can be, the easier it will be for someone to go from a cold organic search to eventually becoming a raving fan. In today’s episode I’m sharing how to use web design to highlight your best content. 

Best Content

• Use this as an opportunity to showcase the most ideal content for someone to read who is new to your site.
• Think of it as “start here” 
• The content you wish would rank well or that all of your readers would see/read.
• This may not always be a recipe post! 

Popular Content

• This is not always just the content that is most popular on Google
• It can be a mix of what’s popular with your readers, what is popular on Google, or again what is a good starting place. 
• Don’t be inauthentic by choosing to showcase something that has poor ratings or is a brand new blog post

Resources

• This is where I see a lot of food bloggers missing an opportunity 
• Don’t be afraid to write posts that are non-recipe posts. 
• These are supplemental to your recipe content but help your readers in a different way. 
• Talked about this more in Episode 122 and in some of the other recent episodes, but your readers are not looking for just another recipe. They are looking for a recipe that solves their problem – whether that is lack of time, skill, money, or something else. Getting to that deeper need for your audience is what will help you to create those resource blog posts that serve your readers. 

Freebies/Products/Services

• There are often so many things we want people to do on our sites, but we have to be careful of not using too many calls to action, which can lead readers to do nothing at all 
• Going back to the idea of defining your audience, when you know what your readers are looking for you can better understand whether a freebie, product, service or more free content makes the most sense. You CAN highlight multiple things in a post, but you’ll want to choose the most important next step for each blog post. 
• On your homepage or other spots on your website, you’ll use that same information and understanding of your audience to figure out the best placement for these things. 

Best Real Estate Spots On Your Website

• Nearest to the recipe card
• In the sidebar (desktop only but high conversion)
• A pop up
• Using Gutenberg blocks to help the content stand out and help teach return readers to look for these tips/helpful info/next step – this can be anywhere in the blog post, the design of this helps that content to stand out which makes it good real estate
• Footer – this is a good place to put a CTA for someone who hasn’t yet taken action. This won’t be seen as often on a blog post itself, but on other pages it could capture someone. It’s a great place for a strategic freebie or a sign up form to get recipes delivered by email. 

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