Blog Tip Thursday: Writing Recipes like a Pro

Every week, we share one of our favorite ‘how-to’ posts about blogging, social media, and the community we LOVE to love. Our desire is you consider HLB a resource in your efforts to blog BETTER – we want to be stronger bloggers ourselves, and we see the desire for stronger posts and cleaner designs. We understand wanting to know the BEST plug-ins, aps, programs, and resources to keep your site in tip top shape. And nothing makes us nerd-out more than getting super meta about all things blog-world. We’re not experts, we’re simply bloggers ourselves – sharing our own experiences, tips and tricks of the trade each Thursday with a BTT post. We welcome your questions, your suggestions for future topics, and your ‘how-to’ post recommendations at healthylivingblogs@gmail.com!

I wonder how the Top Chef contestants would fare in a recipe-writing competition versus food bloggers. Of course, their culinary knowledge is outstanding but that doesn’t guarantee a coherent recipe. Food bloggers publish recipes on a regular basis and know how to write for an audience.

Do you have what it takes to be on top… of Google’s recipe results?
Follow these steps to ensure that your recipes are picked up by search engines and understood by readers. Some of these steps seem like no-brainers, or edging on tedious, but are essential for search engine optimization.

• Make the title of your post the name of your recipe.
• Use the same format every time, being sure to include the following elements:
  • Name of the Recipe
  • Foreword – tips, advisories, substitutions
  • Prep Time | Cook Time | Servings
  • Ingredients
  • Directions
• Put your ingredients in a bulleted list under the heading ‘Ingredients’.
• Keep the directions easy to follow. This is not the time to explain why you love the recipe or what to do if you don’t have an ingredient. State that in the foreword or as a note at the end.
• Don’t split up the directions with step-by-step photos. Take the pictures if you want to, but post them after the text of the recipe. Interjecting photos between written steps can confuse the reader.
• Try to keep servings in even numbers.
• Name all the images in the post after the title, e.g. worlds-best-spaghetti-3, instead of leaving them as the generic IMG3752.

Don’t forget to flaunt your stuff! Fantastic photography and interesting ingredients sometimes help to draw a crowd, too. Be creative and descriptive. Chances are there are similar recipes already out there, written by another blogger, or Fabio Viviani.

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