What's the deal with these online recipe sites?

[puzzlegal]

@Stoid

I always begin at seriouseats.com, because they are, well, serious. Der.

I like epicurious. Because I am. But I also read allrecipes and some others.

[carrps]

@Athena

OMG you have changed my life. Thank you! That’s great!

Thank you from me, too!

Sometimes I’m interested in the history or family backstory, but 90% of the time I just want the freaking recipe.

[Biggirl]

@Reeses_Monkey

Chrome has an extension called Recipe Filter that takes you straight to the recipe. I love it!

I love you soooo much!!!

[CarnalK]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Top searches are for allrecipes.com and foodnetwork and the like, because they’re enormous. How does a tiny little blog get into the top searches for a recipe like dal? I figure there are only two possibilities: either have an ultra-kickass recipe, or manipulate the search results.
.

Well, there are both more and less possibilities than that. One big one being how often other people link to your website. And I doubt the awesomeness of recipe matters, except in that many people may link it.

People get paid big money for google optimization. “Make it longer” seems, I don’t know, not what a smart search engine would worry too much about for recipes

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@CarnalK

Well, there are both more and less possibilities than that. One big one being how often other people link to your website. And I doubt the awesomeness of recipe matters, except in that many people may link it.

People get paid big money for google optimization. “Make it longer” seems, I don’t know, not what a smart search engine would worry too much about for recipes

If you’re right, you’d expect to see a proportional number of non-bloggy recipes from small cites among the top results. And you’d expect that people who do this for a living wouldn’t tell recipe writers to “make it longer.”

I don’t know how to calibrate the first, but professional SEOs have some advice:

Long-Form Is The Best Form

Write recipe blog posts that hit 800-1200 words.

Despite what you might have heard, longer content still works well for recipe SEO.

Don’t pay attention to the haters that complain about long recipe posts. The trend for food bloggers is to write the story behind a recipe and give some background history. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s a good thing. Those complainers just want you to do the hard work but get nothing in return. Ignore those people.

If you publish a bare recipe, the likelihood is that nobody will see it. Instead, add context and life to a recipe so that google can understand what it’s about and who it’s for.

Edit: note that I didn’t do much research, just searched for “How does google rank recipes” and clicked the first link. I figure that’s the best way to find the best SEOs :).