Have you ever heard of Yummly? Have you just started a new food blog, and do not need any traffic? Do you have the “Yum” button on your food blog? If your answer to any of these questions is “no”, then this post is for you. Keep reading, and we will show you how Yummly can be a great asset to your food blog.
Before I wrote this post, I had a Yum button. I even use Yummly’s recipe plugin to display all my recipes. But what I was not doing, was using the full power of their site to help me gain traffic. I don’t really know why I did not start really using Yummly’s full power, They are my 3rd highest traffic referrer (only behind Pinterest and Facebook).
Grow Your Food Blog With Yummly
Why am I starting to really love Yummly? It automatically pulls your recipes via the Yum button, with no forms to fill out (once your registered). People visit Yummly looking for all types of recipes, all the time. This makes it the perfect opportunity to get your recipes in front of an audience that is specifically looking for something to cook.
To get started with Yummly just follow these few steps:
- Sign up on Yummly. Fill out your profile, just like on any other social media website. This will also allow you to link out to your other social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
- Install the Yummly bookmarklet on your browser. You can use the bookmarklet to add recipes to your recipe box. You can also create collections according to different categories as well as those dedicated to your blog
- Install the Yum button on your blog post so that your visitors can ‘Yum’ your recipes. The more your recipes are ‘Yummed’, the more popular it gets on Yummly. When someone yums your recipe, it gets saved to their recipe box, and they can come back and refer to them in the future whenever they want to. There are many sharing plugins that include the “Yum” button in them (I happen to use Shareaholic on my site).
- Join Yummly publisher network for an opportunity to get your recipe featured. Find out more on how to join Yummly publisher network here.
Adding the “Yum” button to your blog is the most important thing. Not every visitor you get will have the bookmarklet, but with the button being on every post, they do not really need it. I have seen some bloggers use very tiny “Yum” buttons in their post, and sometimes they can be very difficult to find. Even if some reader’s are able to find the button, it’s location may not encourage them to share your recipe. This is why using the right sharing plugin is important.
How Yummly Has Helped Me
As I said before, Yummly is my 3rd highest traffic referrer (only behind Pinterest and Facebook). Since I started my blog, I have gotten almost 2,000 visits from my recipes on Yummly! Without really doing anything! And I am sure with my heightened focus on their services, this number is going to just go up.
To give you an idea on how well Yummly has been working, my most popular recipe on Yummly, Healthy Grilled Mushrooms – has 930 Yums! That recipe also has a little over 1,300 pins on Pinterest. So you can see that Yummly’s numbers are right up there with what most of us porbably consider out largest traffic driver.
Don’t feel discouraged if you are not getting traffic from Yummly at first. Have some patience, and keep posting your recipes there. Soon enough, you too will start seeing your traffic increase. All care of Yummly!
Do you use Yummly? I would love to here about your experiences if you have. Share your thoughts in the comments section below.