Inspiring Bloggers Podcast with Cathy Mitchell

In our inaugural season of Inspiring Bloggers Podcast with Cathy Mitchell, we're looking at the history and future of Twelve on Main. You will get a never-before-seen insider's view of what it is like to be a full-time blogger, the things that she is struggling with in 2023, and how she overcomes them!

Sara started in 2015 as a DIY/ decorating blog. We get to hear her origin story in this episode. And we get to hear how Covid changed things, how Pinterest has changed since 2021, and how it is affecting her website.

We address Google Analytics, finding the right information and determining any technical errors on her WordPress site.

Don't forget to review and subscribe to catch episode #2 where we dive into SEO on her site and what to do with all those old Link Parties posts!

The block editor is really powerful - but is it good for SEO too?? In this episode we'll get into how to make it all work for you.

The strategy behind a header is pretty important. As bloggers, we want our readers, to get value and inspiration from our words, but also to share them with friends, to post to social media, to sign up for email and to love our ads, purchase a thing we recommend, leave a comment and on and on.

But a person can't do them all. We do one thing at a time. If we're leaving a comment, we're not reading. If we're pinning to pinterest, we are not looking at another post on your site. We might when we're done... but we only do one thing at a time.

As a matter of principle, clarity is the utmost in standards when creating a user interface. Clarity is what creates a safe and straightforward environment for your readers. To be clear is to point the reader at one thing after another.

Have you heard of the paradox of choice? That is the principle that with more options, the users are less inclined to make a choice, but also - this is key - less satisfied with their choice after the fact.

After the fun discussion in Header Strategy we move onto tips and tricks in creating multi-media formats for your blog posts. In no more time than it takes to record your voice reading the post, you can create a video and audio versions and upload to over 10 podcast channels (for free!). I showed you my ooooold channels from Spotify from 2018. Embarrassing!!

The class then reflects on the availability of spruced up recipe results in the Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). There is a new version of a carousel available to recipe publishers called a host carousel. A host carousel is the same as a regular carousel except all the recipes are from YOUR site!! Its incredible the exposure that you can get if your recipes get picked up by Google!

And by default, nowadays most recipe plugins are supporting Recipes and Guided Recipes schema (rich results) without you lifting a finger!

But we provide some free tools for testing your results. And go through a couple different results so you can tell when a green checkmark means 'yes - all good' and when it means, 'yes - but not in a carousel'. You should know the difference!!

We got a little geeky when we got into the Jump-to-Recipe links and HTML anchors. But you'll be able to link to any block directly now! Without using code!

And lastly we talked about which elements to include in your footer - next/post links, author box, related posts, categories, date, etc. Again - which action do you wish your readers to take? I give you some tips for keeping them on the page for those of you with ad-based revenue, and some tips for service/product based businesses as well as brick-and-mortar stores.

It was a lot of fun putting those videos together - Enjoy!!