Need some SEO/traffic guidance on my baking site!

I would start with the basics, such as you business listing and make sure its correct and claimed and verified all over the web.

Hey JohnCitizen,

Your blog is amazing. Great photos too.

I wouldn't waste money on lousy back links that will potentially sink your site.

Instead I would invest time and money in building up a following on Facebook and pinterest.

Also, and I'm not familiar with your niche, but I suspect because you and your wife are actually creating unique recipes you could easily get your content and images syndicated on some very popular baking websites. I would contact the big blogs in your niche (more than one million monthly visitors with large social following) and offer an article for syndication. You can find out the traffic volume by checking out their advertising page.

Avoid spammy SEO techniques. Your content is good enough to acquire traffic from other bloggers and social media. As your site grows in popularity you will rise in the search engines.

If you can, why not start a baking youtube channel with your wife showing the baking process? This can really build a great audience.

As for time, most of started while working full time jobs. Set a goal of one post and video per week along with you working syndicating content and building social media platforms. In time, your blog will grow as long as you continue with great content.

Also, come up with ideas on how you will make money from it. You have a few options such as display ads, promoting baking appliances on Amazon, selling a cookbook and/or promoting some good cooking/baking books. I'd probably just start with display ads. I use adsense, media.net and gumgum... Together all three do well for me. I also monetize my youtube channel videos which contributes to my bottom line.

I took a quick look at the site, you need to scale those images down, they're way to big & take way too long to load in a browser.

Example of one of your image/size:

• /wp-content/uploads/2014/08/cupcakes-n-macarons_Carrot-cupcakes-2.jpg
• 4725 x 3379 (actual image size)
• width="578" height="413" (HTML image size)

You have 24 similar images/sizes (4725 x 3379) trying to load on the Home page which is slow loading.

Scale the images down offline, upload the smaller images & replace the current large images in each blog post, in the image caption of the smaller images use keyword anchor-text internal links to link to the original large images for SEO or If traffic wants to see the large image.

The large original image can be on a new HTML page with optimized image caption & optimized <title>, <h1> tags, no need for a full blown article, just an image resource page (SEO).

Guys, really big thanks so much for your constructive feedback. It means a lot!

Hey there
Social profile should help you the most. You can try posting on forms and blogs to have some good traffic too.
Make sure your website contains unique contents.
After all, remember, it generally take some time to have the flow of traffic. Till then, you have to work to gain it.

Hi John,

It's great site. I love macaroons so much. But It will stand out if include real videos. Did your wife think about it? Make something special and visitors will bookmark this site and come back later.

You need to be patient, ranking and traffic won't come easily. I suggest using videos to promote your website through YouTube, DailyMotion and other channels, people now a days like to watch videos specially for recipes, you can add a video section also in your website and add these videos to channels.

Also, I like the simplicity of your website structure, but you might want to consider a more modern design, there are many available online free, premium and unique.

Please do some some Competitor analysis and find your competitor backlinks. And then, start your backlinks with Hike Ranking..

Infographic & Docs Distribution is best source for traffic gaining.

if you are not having much time then go for business listing and your site is so good then its waste of buying some backlinks which can effect your site badly so allot some time for yourself and try to do it and one more thing is to be active in facebook and pinterest.