We are happy to announce a new SEO for Recipes tool that bloggers can use to optimize recipe text for search engines using the hRecipe microformatting.
There was a very interesting article in GigaOm by Kevin Fitchard about the idea that digital cookbooks should be more like digital music. Similar to how the standard of iTunes has revolutionalized digital music, the idea is that a standard media file for recipes could make it easier for people to store, organize, sort, and use digital recipes from all over.
There are millions of recipes online, but the challenge is they are spread across numerous sites and blogs that each have their own recipe formats, making it hard for end users to manage recipes in one place. Even the big search engines like Google can’t figure out the different formats well, and they have put out some guidelines on a standard hRecipe format for webmasters and bloggers to use, but it can be hard for non-programmers to figure out what it all means.
There are some ways to make standardizing recipes easier for bloggers, and if they are on WordPress there are some plugins of varying quality. The hRecipe plugin appears to be one of the better ones from our experience. But for food bloggers on other platforms, figuring out how to structure HTML the way Google and other search engines like it can be a challenge.
To help these bloggers, we have created a SEO for Recipes page that makes it easy to optimize recipe text. You just put in the recipe information and it will add in the right microformatting to the recipe HTML code. Then copy the HTML into the HTML view of your recipe post. We have also built in an option to include an automatic grocery list with nutritional info for the recipe, one of our popular Say Mmm features. This will add a simple “Grocery List” link that will open a new window where our technology will convert recipe ingredients to items you would get in a store, organize everything by category, and estimate nutritional values for the recipe. For more info on how it works and for other things bloggers can do with Say Mmm check out our page on grocery lists for blogs.
