Attention all Food Bloggers – please step into my office for an emergency meeting!
Hey there, welcome. Have a seat. Yeah, any chair is fine. How’s your day been? Good? That’s good to hear!
Now, listen. The reason I’ve brought you in today is to talk a little bit about what you do. As food bloggers, you provide a wonderful service. Your content inspires the minds of culinary dullards with simple to follow directions to create delicious meals. You share how much of each ingredient we need to use. Then you go through the simple steps on how to execute the meal creation. We love when you share a few photos of the particularly complicated steps – just to reassure us that we’re doing it correctly. Some of you even include nutritional information making it easy for the lot of us that spend too much time ordering delivery and not spending enough time in the gym. Those are all things we appreciate and want you to continue doing.
But, there’s one problem we need to discuss. It’s your storytelling. No, storytelling isn’t the correct term – it’s the EPIC TALES you weave into the recipe beforehand. We’re not talking about a paragraph or two about your inspiration behind the recipe… those are totally fine, and we’re going to happily read them. The issue is the novel about your inspiration, your muse, the first time you tried the ingredient… Or how your child’s hair danced gracefully on his forehead in the cool autumn wind, with the smell of apple pie in the air. It’s not that you’re a bad writer, quite the contrary.
We just want the RECIPE!
When we’re hungry, with some random things in the fridge – we’re not looking for a food treatment of War and Peace. We want a quick guide on how to turn these random ingredients into something edible. Your stories get in the way of our stomachs. Do you really want to be dealing with a hangry audience? So just give us the recipe!
That said, (some) of us understand why you do it. Google rankings benefit content that shares more rich details. The more words and the better written a piece of content is, the higher likelihood it will rank on that much coveted first page. Would we find your delicious recipe if you didn’t include your Parmesan Manifesto beforehand? Arguably, no. So let’s meet in the middle. Let’s combine the SEO value of your Food Bibles with our stomach panging recipe necessity so that everybody wins! Here’s what we propose:
Anchor Links
Oh, you don’t know about anchor links? It’s a type of HTML element that once clicked, goes somewhere else on that same page. It’s as simple as adding the some basic code to a text that indiciates it jumps to the recipe. All us recipe readers could instantly find what we’re looking for! You get the payoff of keeping us on site, we get the payoff of getting the content we want. While the code itself is rather straightforward, it does take some basic HTML understanding. So, let’s make it even easier for you with a simple WordPress Plugin. This one called “Scroll to Anchor” is easy to use, updated recently and does exactly what we’re looking for. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. (It’s on you to make that into a recipe though.)
That’s it! That’s all we ask for. If you food bloggers make the user experience better for us, you’ll see your traffic numbers grow, your retention increase and even help with your Google ranking. It’s a win for everyone!
Thanks so much!
Sincerely,
Everyone
Tweets to Food Bloggers
Dear Food Bloggers,
I just want the recipe.
❤️ Me
— Gretchen (@lifenut) September 22, 2017
Attn: food bloggers. Please add a “jump to recipe” link. I’m tired of the chatter.
— Lisa ☀️?? (@LisaGNV) September 22, 2017
food bloggers who give you an epic novel & 15 pics of a the pot at different angles before getting to the recipe <
— Court (@EatDrinkDoWear) September 21, 2017
Food bloggers gotta stop wasting my time and put the recipe at the top of their blog post.
— Chris McMahon (@mctopherganesh) September 21, 2017
Food bloggers GOTTA stop writing multi-page diatribes about their recent experiences at the gym before they give me their recipe.
— ?Jimmy Clark? (@TrapRegent) September 19, 2017
Why is it that food bloggers write a novel before they get to their recipe?!
— Kim Myers (@kimcasemyers) September 18, 2017
Freaking food bloggers, I don’t want to read your life story when looking up a recipe. Just tell me what to buy and how the fuck to make it.
— SaltyAF (@saltysarcasmOG) September 12, 2017
Food bloggers: either post an anecdote OR a #recipe. I don’t want 1500 words of your grammy’s life story when I need to look up a side dish.
— Nopetopus (@WompratMUA) September 12, 2017
Food bloggers: I do not need a pic of your mixing bowl. Or your ingredients. Or your face. Just give me the damn recipe and I will love you.
— laurie petrou (@lauriepetrou) September 12, 2017
Food bloggers,
Why do you like cramming in life stories about the #recipe before the actual recipe?
— Zac Pappis (@zacpappis) September 9, 2017
I am SO CURIOUS what food bloggers could talk about for 10 paragraphs proceeding the recipe but I will NEVER READ IT out of principle
— Chloe Helser (@chloeehelser) September 9, 2017
Some of these food bloggers need a talk show instead of a cooking blog. I came for a recipe, not your life story.
— Lanna Campanelli (@RhymesWithDonna) September 3, 2017
Dammit, food bloggers. I don’t need to hear your story of how a rice bowl changed your life just give me the freaking recipe!
— ParvynR (@parvcore) August 29, 2017
Learn to scroll.
A valid thing that people currently have to do. But quality of life improvements will mean your blog will grow. You keep your existing readership and gain access to those that need a quick fix. One should never be against progress/organic growth opportunities.
easier said than done. blogs now have if you scroll you are redirected to ads.
I prefer to use a very short intro and jump right into recipe mode. I also don’t have the patience for long winding posts. It’s a personal choice. It seems reasonable to me that you aren’t asking anyone to change their style. Just suggesting a plug-in that brings the reader directly to the recipe. Perhaps food bloggers who include advertising don’t want the ads to be passed over?
Absolutely! Long form content does benefit SEO, and we’re not saying to remove that. Many people love stories! But they are neglecting a large audience that they could turn into fans by being stubborn to change.
However, ads are certainly a possibility as a reason to hold out on a better user experience.
I too am SO TIRED!! Of having to scroll past a mile of freaking story telling. I just want The DAMN RECIPE!!!. and I couldn’t believe it when I just googled I just want the damn recipe, that i came across this. Thank you, there are others besides me that feels the exact same way. I would like to expand paste taste of home. But it’s so frustrating to click on a recipe that looks good, just to find there is a huge story. Someone please make bloggers on recipes stop.
I know how to scroll, thank you, but I’m not going to. If I have to scroll more than 5-10 turns of the wheel, or if there is not a jump-to link, I am out and off to find a less egocentric recipe page.