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Hey Reader,

Welcome to July's monthly newsletter! 🎉 We're excited to share the latest news in the food creator space with you, but before we do, we wanted to make sure you've tuned into our July podcast episodes:

• ​How Josh Gale Grew His Audience to 1.2M+ in Under a Year by Leading with Storytelling​​
• ​How Search Is Changing and What Food Bloggers Need to Do About It with Casey Markee​
• ​Why Personality Is the New Competitive Advantage with Sam Vander Wielen​​
• ​What's Actually Holding Your Food Blog Back in Search with Liane Walker from Foodie Digital​​

Now, let's jump into the latest articles! ⬇️

1. "Just Be Yourself" Isn't Brand Strategy 💃

We've been talking a lot lately about the increasing importance of storytelling, authenticity, and sharing more of you in your content to combat the rise of AI slop. But have you ever wondered what exactly "being yourself" looks like as a content creator?

Our friend Katie Trant from Foodie Brand Lab dives into the topic of authenticity in her most recent newsletter, and makes the case that people are mistaking authenticity for transparency.

When you're trying to clarify your personal brand, she encourages you to ask yourself "which version of yourself are you intentionally becoming known for?" every time you decide which recipes to share, which stories to tell, which brands you work with, and the moments of your life you make public.

​Read her full newsletter here.​

2. Google Search Console Adds Reports For Social Posts 📱

Exciting news for the data lovers out there — Google is rolling out a new property type in Google Search Console so that you can now monitor how your social posts and video content on Instagram, X, TikTok, and YouTube perform in Google Search and Discover.

This should make it easier for you to discover how people are finding all of your content on Google.

Ready to set-up your new platform property? Here are the directions.​

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​Read the full article on Search Engine Journal.​

​3. Google AI Mode Improves Links For Recipes, Again 🔗

It can be hard (and demoralizing!) to keep up with all of the changes to Google Search these days, but this most recent iteration of recipes in AI Mode is at least a step in the right direction for food bloggers.

Google has announced a new layout to how recipes display in AI Mode that should make it easier for users to discover the actual sources of the recipes and click-out to the original sites.

AI Mode now features links, images, blog name, recipe ratings, number of ingredients, and time to prepare at the top of the result (very similar in appearance to the Recipe section in Google Search itself). And while that's all well and good, it still proceeds to provide a mashed-up recipe below this new and improved section.

Our friend, Adam Gallagher from Inspired Taste (listen to his recent episode on the podcast for more information about this!), provided the following feedback to Google:

Hopefully stay tuned for more changes and improvements from Google.🤞

​Read the full article on Search Engine Roundtable.​

4. Raptive Analyzed 103,000 Content Refreshes. Here’s What Was Most Associated with Google Traffic Growth 📈

The SEO team at Raptive recently analyzed 103,000 updated blog posts over a 16-month period to compare Google pageviews and average search rank in the 60 days before and after a page was updated. The main finding?

While updating older blog posts is not a sure thing for increasing page views, Raptive did find that updated posts outperformed similar pages that were not updated in by 19%. Making the content more useful for the reader, changing the word count by >10% (i.e. a significant rewrite of the original post), updating the title, images, and paragraph structure were also associated with a bigger improvement in page views.

Raptive specifies that you shouldn't just update your oldest content. Focus on updating content that:

​Read the full analysis on Raptive.​

And that's it for us this month! See you back here in August. 🍉