50 keywords – 50 first page results on Google by Rachelle Money, 12 February 2008

Vegetarianism continues to power a growing online business market. There are now estimated to be around 12 million vegetarians in the US, and 4 million in the United Kingdom where the total vegetarian food market has been put at £670m per year.

It’s moved from counter-culture to a mainstream way of living, which also means more people are searching for advice and nutritious vegetarian recipes on the web.

Rachelle Money talks to SavvyVegetarian.com, a content rich site that now appears on the first page of Google search results for over 50 keywords.

SavvyVegetarian.com is one of the sites which have appeared to service online demand. It’s a content rich site that has drawn its inspiration from Wordtracker and now appears on the first page of Google search results for over 50 keywords.

For Judy Kingsbury her journey to becoming a healthy vegetarian was a rocky one. Born in the small town of Manitoba, 200 miles north of Winnipeg, she says the term vegetarian wasn’t even part of their vocabulary. In the late sixties Judy, who describes herself as cook, artist, writer and gardener, took her first tentative steps towards vegetarianism.

She tells Wordtracker what it was like. “I’ve been a vegetarian since my early twenties and it was really tough going. I had no support or resources and I didn’t know any other vegetarians. I really started to flounder.

"I didn‘t really have one reason for being vegetarian, I just felt better, and wanted to do something no one else was."

A lack of nutritional education, along with the fact that there were so few other people she could turn to, meant Judy had some dangerous pitfalls.

She threw herself into a macrobiotic diet of low fat and high-fiber foods and grew thin and dehydrated. She was malnourished and eventually sought help to restore her health and was shown a more nutritious way of living a vegetarian lifestyle.

Meat and potato town

Judy says she had to learn how to cook and prepare a balanced diet. “It was a huge learning curve,” she adds. "I was living in Minnesota, in a meat and potato kind of town. When I started to tell people I was vegetarian they all wanted me to help them because they knew of others who were vegetarian."

"I figured that as more people were starting to become vegetarian there was more demand for advice. I thought it would be a good idea to start up my own business as a coach. I soon learned that nobody wants to be told what to do, so the business failed."

Judy, who has now been a vegetarian for almost 40 years, says starting up an educational website dedicated to vegetarianism and vegan lifestyles seemed a natural decision. In 2003 www.savvyvegetarian.com was born - a website which Judy says has taken on its own personality and continues to grow in popularity.

The website itself offers a plethora of information and great tips on vegetarian living from advice and blog posts to recipes and articles.

Judy has spent years building up the site’s content in a bid not to exclude anyone who visits the site. There’s advice for mothers whose children have decided to be vegetarians, teenagers, pregnant women as well as advice on how to deal with weight gain, vegetarian social etiquette and her top ten tips on going veggie.

Keyword research triples sales

Judy now receives an average of 60,000 visits to her site every month. So how has she been able to generate this level of traffic?

"I can safely say that keywords are the basis for the growth of Savvy Vegetarian," she explains.

Judy uses Wordtracker to discover which related keywords are relevant for her site. Her first stop was recipes - a popular resource on her site.

Judy optimized her website and she is reaping the rewards.

"I started keyword research on tofu recipes and developed a tofu recipe section, with lots of tofu info, and so far about 20 tasty, tested, family friendly tofu recipes. I optimized page text and meta tags for that keyword phrase, and embedded links on other pages.

"When you realize how many people are looking for tofu recipes, see 1.8 million pages on Google, and then that I’m on the front page, you know you’re on the right track”, she said.

Thanks to this methodical approach SavvyVgetarian.com is above the fold on page one for about 50 search terms on Google.

Judy says vegetarian cooking and recipes were "off the radar for a long time" and few books were published or had only one tofu or lentil recipe.

Without keyword research she says it would have been very easy to go off on the wrong tangent.

"Once I started paying attention to keywords and optimizing my pages I could see the benefits almost instantly. I think looking at keywords and researching them is really the basis of starting up and running a website - any website," explains Judy.

By paying more attention to her keywords and optimizing her site Judy says traffic through SavvyVegetarian.com has tripled in the past year. She has taken keywords and peppered them throughout her blog spots and her articles on living healthily. She also has a resource page which links to related sites which may be of interest - such as environment, green living, organic food and holistic medicine.

Income from advertising

Careful arrangement of the site has helped her achieve 2,000 visits each day, and has also led to Savvy Vegetarian becoming a brand in its own right. Now Judy is receiving a steady income through advertising on the site.

"I think vegetarianism and healthy eating is taking on a natural upsurge in people’s consciousness, and it’s continuing to grow. It’s a growing industry and no one really has a grasp on it yet."

The success of SavvyVegetarian.com has been a fulfilling experience for Judy. As she suffered from poor health at the beginning of her journey, it has left her with an even greater desire to continue educating people on vegetarianism.

"The response I get from people is a big motivator because I really feel like I’m providing a great service.

"Things change all the time and you never know, the tofu bubble could burst."

Even someone as experienced as Judy is sometimes surprised by the emerging trends in vegetarian cooking.

"I’m continuing to develop the site, especially the advice section. I’m doing daily keyword searches which enable me to spot the trends. For instance I’ve recently noticed recipes for Quinoa are beginning to rise, so I need to start developing that area too."

See more Wordtracker Case Studies