SEO for Recipes & Food Blogs
Geoff Allen, ZipList
July 24, 2011
SEO for Food Blogs: Overview
• Content is King, but Structure is Queen
• Let Search Engines Know You Have Recipes on Your Site
• Get to Know Rich Snippets & hRecipe
• Importantly, Make Your Food Blog More Findable
Above All Else, Be Consistent
• Recipe Title, Title Tags & URL Should Match
• Always Use the Labels “Ingredients” & “Instructions”
– This helps if you are not using hRecipe or other Rich Snippet formats
• Keep Heading Styles Consistent (e.g., <H2>, <H3>)
Source: Two Peas and Their Pod
Use HTML List Elements for Ingredients/Instructions
• Use Bulleted Lists for “Ingredients”
– Unordered Lists <UL>
• Use Numbered Lists for “Instructions”
– Numbered Lists <OL>
• Free Form Text Makes it More Difficult for Search Engines to Differentiate Recipe Content
– Don’t Use <BR> and <P> in Lists
• You still have control of styling – You can still use HTML lists without
showing bullets or numbers Source: Hoosier Homemade
Give Special Treatment to Special Sauces
• Ingredients for Sub-Recipes Need Special Sub-Heads
– Glazes, Sauces, Frosting, Marinades – Example, For the Glaze: – Use a different style from your other
headings, decide on your text and be consistent about it
• Do Not Include the Sub-Heads Within HTML List Elements
– Example, <OL>, <UL> Source: Steamy Kitchen, “Mother’s Famous Chinese Egg Rolls Recipe
Don’t Forget a Meta Description
• Always Include the Name of Your Recipe
• Stick to 150 Words (First 30 are Key)
• Recipe Searchers See This First Before They Click, So Make This Count
– A good meta description can increase your click-through rate
Optimize Your Recipe Photos
• Make the First Photo That of the Finished Recipe
• Your Post Title & Photo Name Should Match
• Describe Photos Beyond the First Photo in Your Post
• Put Dashes Between Each Word When You Save a Photo
• Beware of “hidden markup” – Photos included within an hRecipe
should not be hidden via CSS as Google may ignore it
– E.g. don’t use (display:none;) Source: $5 Dinners, “Spanish Stew – Vintage Recipe”
Converting Your Recipes to hRecipe
• The hRecipe Microformat Tells Google “This is a Recipe”
• hRecipe Makes Your Recipes More Relevant to Google
– Helps on search results, the search result description and further recipe #ltering
• Free hRecipe WordPress Plugins – ZipList Recipe Plugin
– EasyRecipe – RecipeSEO
Confidential & Proprietary, Copyright ZipList, Inc. 2011
Create an XML Sitemap (Automatically)
• Sitemaps help search engines: – Understand your site structure and locate
content accurately – Know when content is changed
(which not only increases freshness but improves your search results)
• WordPress plugins are available – Example: Google XML Sitemaps – http://bit.ly/Pl74T
Contact Me
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/ziplist
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/ziplist
• Email: [email protected]
• Free E-Book: 26 SEO Tips for Food Bloggers – http://bit.ly/foodblogseo
• ZipList Recipe Plugin – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ziplist-recipe-plugin/
– Questions on the ZipList Recipe Plugin? Email: [email protected].