Your Food Blog Traffic Isn't Coming Back (Unless You Do This) ft. Casey Markee
If your blog traffic dropped and has not come back, this episode is going to explain exactly why. Casey Markee from MediaWyse is back, and he is not sugarcoating it. Google is not the same search engine it was 18 months ago, and the SEO advice most food bloggers are still following is based on a model that no longer exists.
In this episode, Casey breaks down the shift from keyword-based search to semantic, intent-driven search and what that means for your blog right now. We cover what Google is actually evaluating in 2026, why your word count and keyword score do not matter the way you think they do, and what to do with low-performing content (hint: do NOT unpublish it). We also talk AI summaries, internal linking, pop-ups, robots.txt files, and the one thing Casey says is the most underutilized ranking factor on most food blogs.
Whether your traffic tanked after a Google update or you are trying to future-proof your blog for AI-driven search, this conversation will give you a clear action plan.
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction and Casey Markee's background at MediaWyse
01:19 Google's shift from keyword matching to semantic search
02:09 AI Overviews, the walled garden, and fewer clicks to your site
05:08 Why traditional keyword tools are becoming unreliable
06:47 What Google actually evaluates now: intent, clarity, and experience
09:00 The problem with optimizing for RankIQ and RankMath scores
11:29 How to decide what content to create without keyword tools
14:12 Optimizing for AI extraction: summaries and highlighted quotes
19:22 The garden analogy: flowers vs. weeds and why you should NO-INDEX not unpublish
23:26 FAQ schema is gone but FAQs still matter: here is why
29:00 AI summaries and AI buttons: the new discovery layer for your blog
30:46 The 116% LLM traffic stat and why this is the next battlefield
31:50 How AI buttons send users to pre-populated prompts and save your site to memory
33:07 Web Stories are dead: what to do with your old ones
38:53 Mediavine vs. Raptive: which ad network is blocking your AI visibility
43:34 The truth about GEO and AIO services (and why Casey says skip them)
46:17 Semantic roadmaps and entity disambiguation: content strategy for 2026
51:04 Real talk: audits are leading to 20 to 100% traffic increases
51:29 Internal linking mistakes that are cannibalizing your own rankings
53:22 Pop-ups and how they are quietly destroying your SEO
Find Casey at https://www.mediawyse.com/ and follow him for ongoing SEO updates.
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