Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Tips for Food Articles

Follow search trends for your food related articles.
Many of you publish food related articles on revenue share sites and your own blogs. If food is your thing, you should know a little about food related search trends. As with just about everything else online, food articles follow trends. Visitor and search trends for seasonal articles, general tips, recipes and reviews are predictable to a point. The easiest way to watch these trends is with Google Insights for Search.

1. Food searches begin to rise on Friday, generally peak on Sunday and decline on Monday. This is a general pattern I have found to be true for most food related searches. Take advantage of these trends with well-timed articles, marketing and keywords.

2. Christmas food searches begin to rise around October, according to Google Insights history. They continue to rise in November and peak in December. January through September they bottom out. Plan and post your Christmas food articles well before the searches hit high volume. You can publish Christmas food articles anytime, including December, but you will get better results if you have posted in advance and taken the time to market your articles.

3. Restaurant search trends have remained fairly steady month-to-month for the last four years. Weekly trends, however, peak on Saturdays. Have your restaurant reviews and articles posted and ready for your weekend readers.

4. Cooking articles typically peak in December and drop significantly in January. Expect cooking searches to begin rising in October.

5. Look for trends within trends. Enter any food related term into Google Insights and you will see the top related searches for a given period and location, as well as the rising searches. You can customize results for a metropolitan area. If you are writing a local food blog or stories, use this tool to find what interests your audience.



Photo By Jason Lam (02 Buffalo Nickel Wingers - potato snacks) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons