This episode is sponsored by Yoast and Clariti.

Welcome to episode 564 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Carrie Forrest from Clean Eating Kitchen.

Carrie Forrest has been blogging since 2009 and has experienced the full range of highs and lows that come with building an online business. When Bjork first interviewed her in 2018, she was already growing Clean Eating Kitchen with simple, healthy recipes and a strong foundation in SEO and keyword research.

Between 2022 and 2024, that strategy paid off in a big way — Carrie grew her site from a few hundred thousand monthly pageviews to nearly one million. But with the rollout of AI Overviews, many of the keyword-driven and how-to posts she relied on were hit hard, leading to an 80% traffic drop almost overnight.

In this episode, Carrie shares how she’s navigating this rebuild season — from leaning into her email list and YouTube to focusing on what AI can’t replicate: human connection, empathy, and transformation. It’s an honest conversation about the shifting landscape for online creators and what reinvention can look like after years of success.

​See the show notes to find relevant links and/or leave a comment!

Three episode takeaways:

• Why it can be difficult to diversify when one strategy is working extremely well — We talk all the time about the importance of diversifying your revenue and traffic streams, but that can be hard to do in reality! Carrie talks about why she struggled to listen to that advice and how hard it is to focus energy on diversifying when your current strategy is doing so well.
• How Carrie is approaching a rebuild season after an 80% drop in traffic — Bjork and Carrie discuss the ebbs and flows of running an online business, how Carrie recovers from big traffic dips, and how a beginner mindset is helping her feel more creative than ever before.
• Why focusing on human connection, creativity, and audience relationships matters more than ever — Carrie shares her current outlook for her blog and explains why she is leaning into her humanity and connection with her audience instead of information and transaction.

Remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode! Please leave a rating or review if you enjoyed listening. 🎧

Thank you to our sponsors!

Upgrade your blog’s SEO game today with Yoast. If you’re a food blogger, you’ve probably spent years mastering traditional SEO. But here’s the big question: how does your brand show up inside AI answers? Are you being cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini… or completely left out? That’s where Yoast comes in. Included with Yoast SEO AI+, Yoast SEO Brand Insights scans how your brand appears across AI platforms like Perplexity, Gemini, and ChatGPT. You can: See when (and if) you’re mentioned in AI-generated answers Track sentiment around your brand Compare your visibility to competitors It’s a whole new layer of search visibility — beyond traditional rankings. Use code foodblogger10% at checkout for 10% off Yoast SEO Premium, Yoast WooCommerce, and Yoast SEO AI+.

​

Optimize your blog content with Clariti. Clariti is a content organization and optimization platform that helps you uncover SEO insights and monitor performance improvements by analyzing your WordPress and Google data in real-time — so you can audit your content, understand performance, and see real opportunities instead of guessing. Go to clariti.com to learn more. And, if you’re a Mediavine publisher, Clariti has a dedicated partnership just for you. Just go to clariti.com/mediavine to see what’s included.

​