The Food Blogger Pro Podcast

Bjork Ostrom
  • 4.9 (387)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Weekly

Welcome to The Food Blogger Pro Podcast, hosted by Bjork Ostrom from Pinch of Yum! Our goal is to help you create a beautiful, functional, and profitable blog. We interview successful food bloggers and industry experts in an effort to surface strategies that can help you more efficiently grow and monetize your site. You'll learn about recipe SEO, food photography, plugins, monetization, traffic, and more. New episodes every Tuesday! Learn more at foodbloggerpro.com/podcast

  1. 2d ago

    What's Actually Holding Your Food Blog Back in Search with Liane Walker from Foodie Digital

    Mitigating risk in search marketing, cleaning up link spam on your site, and getting your technical SEO foundation right with Liane Walker from Foodie Digital. ----- Welcome to episode 581 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Liane Walker from Foodie Digital. What's Actually Holding Your Food Blog Back in Search with Liane Walker from Foodie Digital Liane Walker has seen just about every SEO mistake a food creator can make. In this episode, she's sharing her expertise about the two things that matter most right now for food blogs — getting your technical SEO foundation right and creating content that's structured to reach the right reader. One of the biggest issues Liane has noticed time and time again with food bloggers is link spam — something that might seem harmless but can quietly become an SEO success killer. She breaks down exactly what Google considers as spam, when to mark a link as nofollow, and how this is all a part of mitigating risk in search marketing. Three episode takeaways: Technical SEO comes first (and link spam is a bigger deal than most food bloggers realize) — Liane sees link spam issues often in her SEO audits, and she's clear that it's a really common barrier to search success. She explains what link spam usually looks like for food bloggers, why Google's spam algorithm targets it, and the practical steps you can take to identify and clean it up on your site — including when to mark a link as nofollow. Once your technical foundation is solid, content strategy becomes the priority — Liane explains that the real work is in your content strategy: organizing content in a way that signals meaning to search engines and structuring posts to serve both readers and algorithms. Reader-first and robot-first don't have to be in conflict — One of the most practical takeaways from this episode is Liane's framework for balancing SEO best practices with genuinely useful, readable content. She walks through her tips for writing and formatting posts in a way that serves both audiences — and explains why, in a world of semantic search, these two goals are more aligned than ever. Resources: Foodie Digital Why Search Intent Matters for Food Bloggers with Liane Walker from Foodie Digital Siftr Google Search Central Link Spam Policies A Couple Cooks Pinch of Yum Lily Ray's Algorythmic Follow Liane on Instagram Join the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook Group Thank you to our sponsors! This episode is sponsored by Yoast. Interested in working with us too? Learn more about our sponsorship opportunities and how to get started here. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to podcast@foodbloggerpro.com. Learn more about joining the Food Blogger Pro community at foodbloggerpro.com/membership.

    What's Actually Holding Your Food Blog Back in Search with Liane Walker from Foodie Digital

  2. Jul 21

    Why Personality Is the New Competitive Advantage with Sam Vander Wielen

    Financial freedom and the power of authenticity in the age of AI with Sam Vander Wielen. ----- Welcome to episode 580 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Sam Vander Wielen.  Why Personality Is the New Competitive Advantage with Sam Vander Wielen This episode digs into the gap between the idea of entrepreneurship and what it actually takes to build a business. Sam shares how she was first drawn to food blogging and online business because they felt like a path to freedom, only to realize she was in love with the outcome, not the daily work required to get there. That realization led her to a better-fitting path: combining her legal background with the creator economy to build a business that helps online creators with legal templates and advice. From there, the conversation opens up into something deeper: success, "enoughness," and what actually creates fulfillment. Sam gets candid about major personal hardships, including brain surgery, caring for her father through leukemia, and losing both of her parents, and how those experiences forced her to confront a hard truth: business success and financial growth can solve a lot of problems, but not the personal ones. She and Bjork talk about protecting your time, building with intention, and why leaning into story, personality, and authenticity matters more than ever in an AI-shaped world where purely informational content is easier to replace. Three episode takeaways: The outcome you're chasing isn't always the work you love: It's easy to fall for the idea of freedom and flexibility that entrepreneurship promises, without realizing that the daily grind of running a business is a completely different thing to love or hate. Sam's pivot to serving creators with legal expertise came from getting honest about that gap. Financial success can't solve personal problems: Going through brain surgery, caring for a parent through illness, and losing both parents pushed Sam to separate the two. Business growth can build security and options, but it won't fix grief, burnout, or a sense of "enoughness" — that work has to happen elsewhere. Story and authenticity are your defense against AI: As purely informational content becomes easier to automate and replace, personality, voice, and lived experience are what keep creators irreplaceable. Protecting your time and building with intention isn't just a lifestyle choice — it's a competitive strategy. Resources: Sam's website Sam's book, When I Start My Business, I'll Be Happy The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel Morgan Housel says he's met a half dozen billionaires — and his new book shows how you can be wealthier than all of them — Yahoo The 5 Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom Sam's newsletter, Sam's Sidebar Craft + Commerce — Kit The U.S. Copyright Office This Week in Startups ElevenLabs Sam's podcast, On Your Terms Follow Sam on Instagram Join the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook Group Thank you to our sponsors! This episode is sponsored by Raptive. Learn more about our sponsors at foodbloggerpro.com/sponsors. Interested in working with us too? Learn more about our sponsorship opportunities and how to get started here. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to podcast@foodbloggerpro.com. Learn more about joining the Food Blogger Pro community at foodbloggerpro.com/membership.

    Why Personality Is the New Competitive Advantage with Sam Vander Wielen

  3. Jul 14

    How Search Is Changing and What Food Bloggers Need to Do About It with Casey Markee

    Navigating the new rules of search in SEO, building credibility and authority as a food blogger, and prioritizing clarity in your writing with Casey Markee from Media Wyse. ----- Welcome to episode 579 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Casey Markee from Media Wyse. How Search Is Changing and What Food Bloggers Need to Do About It If you've been feeling like search and traffic have gotten harder to figure out lately — you're not imagining it. The rules are genuinely changing, and they're changing fast. In this episode, Casey breaks down the biggest shift happening in search right now — the move away from the traditional "10 blue links" model toward a semantic, AI-powered model where Google constructs answers from multiple sources and tries to keep users on Google rather than sending them elsewhere. For food bloggers, this means that publishing a well-optimized recipe is no longer enough, and Casey explains exactly what it takes to thrive in the search landscape that's replacing it. Bjork and Casey cover the technical fundamentals that still matter (core web vitals, internal linking, structured data), the growing importance of building a content ecosystem and genuine topical authority, and — perhaps most importantly — how to make yourself and your brand visible beyond your website. Casey also walks through what knowledge panels are, how PR mentions and media appearances feed into Google's knowledge graph, and how a new feature called the "preferred source" button could be a real competitive advantage for food bloggers who move quickly. Three episode takeaways: Search is shifting from lexical to semantic — and that changes everything — Google is no longer just matching keywords. It's building answers from multiple sources and increasingly keeping users on its own platform. Casey explains what this "semantic model" of search means in practice for food bloggers and why traffic patterns are changing. Authority and ecosystem matter more than ever — The technical best practices haven't disappeared, but Casey makes the case that food bloggers now also need to build credibility off their site: through local media features, PR mentions, cookbooks, and other signals that feed into Google's knowledge graph and help establish a knowledge panel for you or your brand. Clarity and formatting are your new competitive edge — As LLMs and AI-powered search tools become a bigger part of how people find content, the way you structure your posts matters more than ever. Casey shares practical advice on formatting blog posts so they're easy for both humans and AI to navigate. Resources: Media Wyse Surviving (and Thriving) in an AI-First Search World with Casey Markee Advanced SEO Q&A with Casey Markee E-E-A-T, Static Homepages, AI, and More Food Blog SEO Advice with Casey Markee Understanding the Google Algorithm – Tracking Google Updates and Analyzing Traffic Drops with Casey Markee Optimizing Your Food Blog's SEO with Casey Markee How to Boost Your Blog's SEO with Casey Markee from Media Wyse Urban Farm and Kitchen Leite's Culinaria Feast Hubbub Shareaholic Help your readers find your site through preferred sources in Google Search Microsoft Clarity Pinch of Yum Content Square (previously Hotjar) Email Casey Join the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook Group Thank you to our sponsors! This episode is sponsored by Yoast. Interested in working with us too? Learn more about our sponsorship opportunities and how to get started here. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to podcast@foodbloggerpro.com. Learn more about joining the Food Blogger Pro community at foodbloggerpro.com/membership.

    How Search Is Changing and What Food Bloggers Need to Do About It with Casey Markee

  4. Jul 7

    How Josh Gale Grew His Audience to 1.2M+ in Under a Year by Leading with Storytelling

    The power of storytelling and diversifying across platforms with Josh Gale. ----- Welcome to episode 578 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Josh Gale.  How Josh Gale Grew His Audience to 1.2M+ in Under a Year by Leading with Storytelling In this episode, Bjork interviews Josh Gale, a content creator who has rapidly grown his online presence in the food industry through his blog, The Chef Out West. Josh shares his journey from being a private chef and participating in food competitions to becoming a successful content creator within just a year. He discusses the initial challenges he faced, such as learning to film and edit, and how he overcame the fear of starting something new. Josh emphasizes the importance of storytelling in content creation, explaining how his personal experiences and passion for food have helped him connect with his audience. He also highlights the role of social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook in his growth, sharing insights on how different types of content perform across platforms. Three episode takeaways: Just start, even if it's not perfect: Josh waited until he felt ready, but the real growth came from simply hitting record. Imperfect early content is part of the process, not a reason to delay. Storytelling is the differentiator: What's driven Josh's rapid growth isn't just great food, it's the way he frames it. Audiences connect with the why behind a dish as much as the dish itself. Know which platform does what: Josh treats Instagram as his traffic engine and his blog as his revenue hub. Understanding each platform's role, rather than chasing all of them equally, has been key to building a sustainable business. Resources: The Chef Out West Toronto Sun — Josh Gale Talks Cheesecake Flop on MasterChef Canada Season 33: Episode 5 of Beat Bobby Flay: Another "Flay" in the Office Episode 527 of The Food Blogger Pro podcast: How Storytelling Helps Creators Stand Out Online with Brita Britnell Check out Josh's potato waffle recipe on TikTok! Episode 125 of The Food Blogger Pro podcast: Monetizing as an Entrepreneurial Chef with Shawn Wenner and Chris Hill Episode 561 of The Food Blogger Pro podcast: How Food Dolls Turned Facebook Into Their Top Traffic Source Meta Business Suite GRO (formerly Grocer's List Episode 547 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast: Inside Crowded Kitchen's Strategy for Growing to 2.4 Million Followers on Facebook Episode 2 of Food Empires by Grocers List: He Quit Cooking for The Rock to Go All In On Instagram Tastemaker Conference Mediavine Raptive Substack Follow Josh on Instagram and Facebook! Join the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook Group Thank you to our sponsors! This episode is sponsored by Clariti. Learn more about our sponsors at foodbloggerpro.com/sponsors. Interested in working with us too? Learn more about our sponsorship opportunities and how to get started here. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to podcast@foodbloggerpro.com. Learn more about joining the Food Blogger Pro community at foodbloggerpro.com/membership.

    How Josh Gale Grew His Audience to 1.2M+ in Under a Year by Leading with Storytelling

  5. Jun 30

    How to Stop Relying on Traffic and Start Building a Business with Emily Baksa

    Building a content ecosystem, turning readers into buyers, and solving problems for your audience with Emily Baksa. ----- Welcome to episode 577 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Emily Baksa from Craveworthy Copy. How to Stop Relying on Traffic and Start Building a Business Most food bloggers think about monetization in terms of ads, sponsored content, and affiliate marketing. But what if your content could do something more — actively nurturing readers into buyers and building a business that doesn't depend entirely on traffic? In this episode Emily and Bjork dig into the full picture of how to build a content ecosystem that converts — from the copy on your homepage to your email opt-ins to the products and experiences you sell. They talk about why your email list is the single most powerful connection-building tool you have and why you should focus on solving problems and offering solutions for your audience. Bjork also shares how Pinch of Yum made the leap into selling meal plans and got comfortable with selling — and why starting simpler than you think you need to is almost always the right move. Three episode takeaways: The three types of content every food blogger needs (and how they work together) — Emily breaks down the content framework she uses with food creator clients: visibility content (getting found), connection content (fostering relationships), and trust-building content (positioning you as the go-to resource). She and Bjork talk about how these three types of content form a marketing funnel and how shifting your focus from generating more traffic to building a more loyal audience changes everything about how you show up as a creator. How to get started selling products — Whether it's a meal plan, course, membership, or digital download, Emily makes the case that most food bloggers are closer to selling a product than they think. She walks through how to use lead magnets as beta tests to validate a concept before you invest in building it out and why solving one problem really well will always outperform trying to solve ten problems at once. How to get comfortable with selling and overcome the identity crisis that comes with it — For many food bloggers, the leap from free content creator to product seller comes with a real psychological hurdle. Bjork and Emily discuss how a focused niche makes both your marketing and your products stronger and how to position and market yourself in a way that feels authentic rather than salesy. Resources: Craveworthy Copy Plays Well With Butter 1000 True Fans Gro.co Tastemaker Manychat Pinch of Yum Follow Emily on Instagram and LinkedIn Join the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook Group Thank you to our sponsors! This episode is sponsored by Yoast. Interested in working with us too? Learn more about our sponsorship opportunities and how to get started here. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to podcast@foodbloggerpro.com. Learn more about joining the Food Blogger Pro community at foodbloggerpro.com/membership.

    How to Stop Relying on Traffic and Start Building a Business with Emily Baksa

  6. Jun 23

    How Rebecca Blackwell Turned Food Blogging into a Six-Figure Digital Business from an RV

    Diversifying income streams, building community, and personal storytelling with Rebecca Blackwell. ----- Welcome to episode 576 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Rebecca Blackwell. Last week on the podcast, Bjork chatted with Jenna Arend. To go back and listen to that episode, click here. How Rebecca Blackwell Turned Food Blogging into a Six-Figure Digital Business from an RV Rebecca started out as a food blogger, but somewhere along the way, she traded a stable paycheck for a life on the road, running her digital business full-time from an RV! In this episode, she opens up about what that transition actually looked like: the risks she took by leaving a steady job, how the RV lifestyle reshaped her thinking about work and creative freedom, and why she made the strategic decision to manage multiple websites rather than rely on a single income stream. The conversation also gets into the community side of Rebecca's business. Specifically, how she's used Substack to build genuine connections with a growing audience of food writers. She shares practical advice on growing a newsletter, engaging readers, and landing sponsorships that feel like a natural fit. You'll also hear her talk about how she's navigating the challenges of AI and shifting search algorithms, why leaning into personal storytelling has been her biggest differentiator, and what she's learned from building community through mastermind groups and in-person retreats. Three episode takeaways: Diversify your income streams: Branching out to different avenues instead of relying on a single blog or platform gives you more creative freedom and financial stability, especially important in an era of unpredictable algorithm changes! Personal storytelling is your biggest differentiator: As AI and search engines continue to evolve, what sets your content apart isn't information. it's your unique voice, perspective, and lived experience. Rebecca's journey from food blogger to RV-dwelling digital creator is a perfect example of a story no algorithm can replicate. Community is a growth strategy: Whether it's building a newsletter on Substack, joining a mastermind group, or hosting retreats, investing in genuine relationships with your audience and peers pays dividends that go far beyond traffic and page views. Resources: A Little and a Lot Of Batter and Dough Rebecca's Substack: Let's Get Lost Tiny Shiny Home Designing Your Life Substack Mastermind for Food Writers The Food Writers Business Lab Kit Follow Rebecca on Instagram here and here Join the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook Group Thank you to our sponsors! This episode is sponsored by Member Kitchens. Learn more about our sponsors at foodbloggerpro.com/sponsors. Interested in working with us too? Learn more about our sponsorship opportunities and how to get started here. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to podcast@foodbloggerpro.com. Learn more about joining the Food Blogger Pro community at foodbloggerpro.com/membership.

    How Rebecca Blackwell Turned Food Blogging into a Six-Figure Digital Business from an RV

  7. Jun 16

    Inside Pinch of Yum's Strategy for Email Growth and Content Distribution with Jenna Arend

    Welcome to episode 575 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Jenna Arend. Inside Pinch of Yum's Strategy for Email Growth and Content Distribution with Jenna Arend This week, Bjork sits down with Jenna Arend, General Manager of Pinch of Yum, as part of our ongoing GRO mini-series. In this episode, she shares how Pinch of Yum is navigating the biggest shifts in the digital landscape right now, from the decline of third-party cookies to the rise of AI, and why those changes have pushed the team to double down on email and Facebook as their most reliable channels. Jenna also gets into the strategy behind keeping a long-running food blog relevant and thriving — from improving older content to creating targeted resources like meal plans and freezer meals. She shares how GRO has helped streamline the process of converting social media followers into loyal email subscribers, and why building that direct line of communication with your audience matters more than ever. If you've been thinking about how to future-proof your content strategy, this one is worth a listen! Three episode takeaways: Adapt your strategy as the digital landscape shifts: With changes like the decline of third-party cookies and the rise of AI, relying solely on search traffic is risky. Pinch of Yum has leaned into email and Facebook as more stable, direct channels — and it's paying off. Don't overlook your existing content: Improving older posts can be just as valuable as creating new ones, especially for a long-running blog looking to maintain relevance and traffic in an ever-changing algorithm environment. Make it easy for followers to become subscribers: A clear call to action paired with genuinely helpful resources — like meal plans or freezer meal guides — gives your audience a real reason to join your email list, and tools like GRO can make that conversion process even smoother. Resources: Pinch of Yum GRO Episode 547 of The Food Blogger Pro podcast: Inside Crowded Kitchen's Strategy for Growing to 2.4 Million Followers on Facebook Pinch of Yum - Freezer Meals Get Pinch of Yum's Trader Joe's Meal Plan for free here! See the Trader Joe's DM automation in action here! Episode 563 of The Food Blogger Pro podcast: Using AI to Eliminate Busywork and Unlock Creative Time with Jason Glaspey OpenClaw Live Q&A with Jenna: Marketing Your Content Follow Pinch of Yum on Instagram and Facebook Join the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook Group Thank you to our sponsors! This episode is sponsored by GRO. Learn more about our sponsors at foodbloggerpro.com/sponsors. Interested in working with us too? Learn more about our sponsorship opportunities and how to get started here. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to podcast@foodbloggerpro.com. Learn more about joining the Food Blogger Pro community at foodbloggerpro.com/membership.

    Inside Pinch of Yum's Strategy for Email Growth and Content Distribution with Jenna Arend

  8. Jun 9

    How Mika Kinney Turned Her 480,000 Instagram Followers into Site Traffic and Revenue

    Increasing revenue without increasing your workload and mastering Instagram strategy with Mika Kinney from Joy to the Food. ----- Welcome to episode 574 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week, Bjork is back with part two of our GRO mini-series — this time chatting with Mika Kinney from Joy to the Food. How Mika Kinney Turned Her 480,000 Instagram Followers into Site Traffic and Revenue Two years ago, Mika Kinney had 1,000 Instagram followers. Today she has 480,000 — and both she and her husband work full-time on Joy to the Food. That kind of growth doesn't happen by accident, and in this episode Mika breaks down exactly how she did it. Mika started her site in 2021, left her job in September 2023, and went all in on Instagram in January 2024. What followed was a masterclass in understanding what social media can do for a food business — not just as a vanity metric, but as a genuine traffic and revenue source. In this episode, Bjork and Mika dig into the super intentional content strategy behind her growth, how she uses GRO to capture the value of her Instagram audience and drive traffic back to her site, how she (easily!) increased her affiliate income, and why she and her husband recently launched a membership program — all without dramatically increasing their workload. Three episode takeaways: What's actually driving Mika's Instagram growth — Mika breaks down the difference between videos that get reach and videos that get followers and the role of calls to action in Reels. She also shares why showing your face and bringing your personality to your content is one of the most important things you can do and how she structures her content schedule in a way that keeps her consistent without burning out. How Mika uses GRO to turn Instagram attention into real business results —Mika walks through how DM automation and story replies work to reduce friction for her audience, why carousels are her go-to format for reaching a large portion of her existing followers, and how conversational hooks have changed the way she thinks about content. Most importantly, she shares how direct traffic to her site has increased continuously because of GRO — including during a stretch of six to eight months without a single viral video. How Mika is diversifying her revenue without adding to her workload — From sharing two to three affiliate deep links per day (generating an extra $2,000–$3,000 per month) to launching a weekly exclusive recipe membership program with GRO, Mika has built multiple revenue streams on top of her existing content workflow rather than in addition to it. She and Bjork talk through how each revenue stream works, how the membership is structured, and why diversifying away from a single traffic or income source has become essential for food bloggers navigating the current landscape. Resources: Joy to the Food From 1K to 250K: The Instagram Growth Strategy That Transformed Joy to the Food GRO LTK Butcher Box Creator Coach Shop My Maximizing Affiliate Revenue with Deep Linking Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook Feast Mika Creative Follow Mika on Instagram Register for the Q&A: Google Updates, AI Search, and What Actually Matters for Your Blog in 2026 Thank you to our sponsors! This episode is sponsored by GRO. Interested in working with us too? Learn more about our sponsorship opportunities and how to get started here. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to podcast@foodbloggerpro.com. Learn more about joining the Food Blogger Pro community at foodbloggerpro.com/membership.

    How Mika Kinney Turned Her 480,000 Instagram Followers into Site Traffic and Revenue
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Welcome to The Food Blogger Pro Podcast, hosted by Bjork Ostrom from Pinch of Yum! Our goal is to help you create a beautiful, functional, and profitable blog. We interview successful food bloggers and industry experts in an effort to surface strategies that can help you more efficiently grow and monetize your site. You'll learn about recipe SEO, food photography, plugins, monetization, traffic, and more. New episodes every Tuesday! Learn more at foodbloggerpro.com/podcast

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