Welcome to episode 550 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, we are sharing a replay of our December Live Q&A from within the Food Blogger Pro membership — our annual Ask Bjork Anything session.

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Every month within the Food Blogger Pro membership we host a Live Q&A for our members to attend. For most of these Q&As we welcome Food Blogger Pro Experts — people like Casey Markee, Andrew Wilder, and Allea Grummert — to answer questions based around their expertise. But every December we like to host an 'Ask Bjork Anything' to answer a wide range of questions from members!

We wanted to share an edited version of the Q&A with our podcast listeners over our holiday break so that you could get a taste of what the Q&As are like in the membership and learn from all of the great questions our members asked! Happy Holidays!

Here's a quick overview of the questions answered during the episode:

• Can you please refer a good SEO audit person for a small and newish blogger?
• What are best practices for URL slug? should you have the word recipe in them or does it not matter?
• I'm currently at 800k–900k page views/month in the high holiday season (usually 650k–800k throughout the year)- what do you recommend to push the site traffic to over 1 million page views/month as the baseline in even lower traffic seasons?
• After a hiatus from posting on my blog I'm wondering what are one or two things I should do that are the most important moving into 2026 for growth.
• Do you have any tips for Facebook? I see really little engagement on my posts and I'm wondering if it's worth it or not.
• Any suggestions for getting more comfortable on camera? I'm trying to film more videos/Reels and it's so hard!
• What is Pinch of Yum focusing on for 2026? Are you changing any strategies because of AI search?
• For someone starting this year, what would you prioritize? Social media? SEO? Newsletters?
• When should I start thinking about monetization? Is it still worth diving into onsite ads?
• What are some best practices for growing my email list?
• Is it still worth it to post on Pinterest with the rise of AI slop?
• Lately i've had a lot of spam ad comments on blog posts. I have to delete them and it's getting to be time consuming. I have the control to approve or delete the comments so the are not showing up on the blog thank goodness. How do you prevent these?! Is this a commen problem? I'm starting to notice the same issue with newletter signups.
• I'm curious how Pinch of Yum plans their content far enough ahead to thoroughly test recipes before publishing. How far in advance do they plan their editorial calendar, and how much time do they usually spend testing each recipe?
• If I want to run a food blog that focuses less on recipes and more on how to cook or how to use recipes in practical ways, how should I attract an audience, and how can I still use recipes to promote my work?
• How niche does one need to go these days? For example, I am in the toddler nutrition space, obviously very challenging to compete with the sites like yummy toddler food… do I need to go even further niche? I am a dietitian so I try and bring in that lens around supportive feeding and nutrition in the recipes/meals I create… but curious if I need to go further niched down
• If I want to shift my recipe blog into more of a "business hub" and focus on digital products rather than relying mainly on recipes and ad revenue, how would you approach that transition? I recently started a YouTube channel (thanks to your advice!), but I haven't monetized either my blog or YouTube yet. What would be the most strategic steps to move forward?

Resources:

• ChatGPT Vs. Gemini Vs. Claude: What Are The Differences?
• Inside Crowded Kitchen's Strategy for Growing to 2.4 Million Followers on Facebook
• Crowded Kitchen
• Budget Bytes
• Yummy Toddler Food
• Condiment Claire
• Grocers List
• Manychat
• Pinch of Yum's Trader Joe's Meal Plan Reel
• Akismet
• Quiet Light
• Memberful
• Circle
• Membership.io
• Stan Store
• Thinkific
• Join the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook Group

Thank you to our sponsors!

This episode is sponsored by Yoast and Raptive.

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 [email protected].

Learn more about joining the Food Blogger Pro community at foodbloggerpro.com/membership.