The Food Blogger Pro Podcast

Building a thriving food blog by putting YouTube first, growing to 2 million subscribers on YouTube, and using social media to drive blog traffic with Jeanelle Castro from Jeanelleats.
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Welcome to episode 583 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Jeanelle Castro from JeanellEats.
Why Jeanelle Castro Thinks YouTube Is the Most Powerful Social Platform for Food Creators
Jeanelle started Jeanelleats ten years ago while still working a 9-to–5 — but she knew she had always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and she always loved making videos. In 2016 she started posting on YouTube, got serious about tracking her metrics and posting consistently, and within a few months her channel started taking off. Today she has nearly 2 million subscribers on YouTube!
In this episode, Jeanelle shares how she built a content system where YouTube is the engine that drives everything else — including her blog traffic, her Google rankings, and her brand deals. She explains how she uses YouTube Shorts to drive traffic to her site (her CTA is simple: "head to Jeanelleats for the recipe!"), and why she believes that the success of a social post and the performance of a blog post are more correlated than most creators realize.
Three episode takeaways:
Promoting YouTube videos of your recipes can improve your Google ranking — Jeanelle has noticed a real correlation between pushing a YouTube video of a recipe and that recipe's performance in Google search. Since YouTube is owned by Google, there's a connection between video engagement and search visibility that food bloggers with a YouTube presence can take advantage of. Combined with the branded search that grows when your social content performs well, this is another reason to prioritize video even if SEO has felt out of reach.
What a YouTube first posting strategy looks like — Jeanelle publishes to YouTube first, then reposts to Instagram and TikTok. She explains her posting cadence, why YouTube is her #1 platform from both an audience and revenue perspective, and how she thinks about Instagram differently — it's less important for direct revenue, but it still matters for brand partnerships.
Why Jeanelle is leaning into her blog and how it fits into her overall revenue — While brand deals remain her number one income source, her blog revenue has recently surpassed her YouTube AdSense revenue. The blog has become her priority precisely because it's the most stable and predictable of the three — and she's noticed a direct link between promoting YouTube videos of her recipes and improved Google rankings for those same posts (a win win)!
Resources:
Jeanelleats
LinkDM
Raptive
Clariti
GRO
Manychat
Follow Jeanelle on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok
Join the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook Group
Thank you to our sponsors!
This episode is sponsored by Yoast and Clariti.
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.

Building and positioning your brand through earned media and PR with Lydia Bagarozza from Visibility on Purpose.
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Welcome to episode 582 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Lydia Bagarozza. 
Building Brand Authority Through PR with Lydia Bagarozza
Have you ever wondered how food creators and brands land coverage in respected publications, and whether that kind of press is even worth chasing? In this episode, Bjork sits down with PR expert Lydia Bagarozza to demystify proactive PR, showing that it's less about crisis control and more about shaping brand perception and earning credibility through the media. Lydia breaks down how to pitch timely, newsworthy stories to the right editors and producers, and why clear positioning and specific expertise can turn a pitch into a yes.
The conversation also makes the case for PR as a long-term investment. Lydia explains how appearing in respected publications and local news builds social proof, backlinks, and brand signals that feed into SEO, AI visibility, and trust, and she shares go-to tools like Qwoted, Connectively, and Help a Reporter Out for finding real media opportunities. If you've been curious about earning press for your brand, this episode is a great place to start!
Three episode takeaways:
PR is about long-term brand building, not just crisis management: Proactive PR helps shape how your brand is perceived, builds awareness, and earns credibility through the media well before you ever need it for damage control.
Positioning and specificity make pitches easier to say yes to: Editors and producers are more likely to cover you when your pitch is timely, newsworthy, and grounded in clear, specific expertise rather than a generic pitch about your brand.
Earned media pays off beyond just visibility: Appearing in respected publications and local news builds social proof and backlinks that can strengthen SEO, AI visibility, and overall trust — and there are accessible tools like Qwoted, Connectively, and Help a Reporter Out to help you find real opportunities, whether you go the DIY or agency route.
Resources:
Visibility on Purpose
GRAZA
The Minnesota Star Tribune
Food & Wine
Bon Appetit
The New York Times
The Atlantic
Good Morning America
Claude
Martha Stewart
VegNews
The Pioneer Woman
ChatGPT
Entrepeneur
Inc.
Forbes
Qwoted (affiliate link!)
WisprFlow
Featured
Connectively
Help A Reporter Out
Follow Visibility on Purpose on Instagram
Join the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook Group
Thank you to our sponsors!
This episode is sponsored by Clariti and 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.

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.
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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.

Financial freedom and the power of authenticity in the age of AI with Sam Vander Wielen.
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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.

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.
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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.