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: geoff.allen@ziplist.com

•  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: plugins@ziplist.com.