6 replies to this topic

[chapulin]

One of the sites I have is for houseware products (utensils, bottles, pans, etc). Appart from the shopping section, there are sections talking about the brands we sell, benefits of the materials, and so forth. 

 

Now the marketing people are asking me to add a new section for meal recipes, which I'm dubious about. We don't sell ingredients or anything just cooking utensils, guess we could have links from things like "bake this in an iron skillet" and link that to the product page and what not, but I'm not sure recipes are really related to the site and belong more in the site's external blog. I fear it might confuse SEs a bit as to what the site is about, or am I overthinking this?

 

EDIT: I just noticed there's a forum for Content so feel free to move it there if this doesn't belong here.  Thanks.

Edited by chapulin, 24 January 2013 - 03:48 PM.

[chrishirst]

SE don't "theme" sites and how are recipes NOT related to kitchen utensils??

 

People use recipes when they cook something. so where's the problem with:

 

Take a 7" frying pan (<< link to one of your products) etc. etc.

 

 

Put linked product images around the recipe "method" It's good MARKETING who cares about search engines.

[chapulin]

well my concern is that the recipes will probably be like this:

- List of bullet points with ingredients (nothing related to the site)

- several paragraphs of text explaining the recipe ("cut the tomatoes in little pieces, bathe in olive oil, pour parmesan cheese, bake at 350 for 1 hour, serve in small portions with rice", that kind of thing, probably little to no relation to the site)

- picture of the final meal (nothing related to the site)

 

So, we'd be adding a whole lot of text that has little relation with the site's normal focus terms, and my fear is that our normal results might suffer.

[piskie]

What SEs do like, is far less important than what they don't like.

I see absolutely nothing about your plan that SEs won't like as opposed to much that visitors will/may find very useful.

[torka]

If you pick recipes that can be made using the utensils and cookware that you sell, use Chris's suggestion to call out specific items (7-inch cast-iron skillet) and link to them from the recipes.

 

You could even include the utensils and cookware needed as part of the list of "ingredients" (or maybe a second list called "Equipment You'll Need" or something like that). Link to whichever of the items on the list you actually sell. And be sure to call out specific items in the recipe instructions ("Using your 4-inch ceramic paring knife, slice tomatoes thinly...")

 

By your comments about things being "unrelated to the site" it sounds as though you're still thinking that search engines "theme" sites. Really, truly, they don't. Seriously. There are plenty of sites out there that don't have any discernible "theme" to their content, and yet they still seem to do well in the search engines. For a few well-known examples, think: Wikipedia, Amazon, eBay. There are many, many others.

 

That's because search engines rank pages, not sites. When you look at the SERPs, what you see are individual pages, not entire sites. (Unless the site is only one page long, there's no way to link to an entire site at once in the first place. The links in the SERPs have to point to individual pages.) The URL (i.e. an individual document/page) is the "base unit" of the search engine, not the "site."

 

If your individual pages were a real pig's breakfast, with automotive spark plugs on the same page with knitting yarn and football cleats, that might be a little confusing to both the search engines and your site visitors. But that's not at all what we're talking about here.

 

Recipes are related to cooking, which is related to cooking utensils and cookware. Even if we accept that search engines think about "themes" (which they really don't), you'd still have a pretty good theme going with the inclusion of recipes.

 

Including recipes will potentially bring you more traffic, from people who are potentially more interested than average in buying cookware and utensils. That certainly seems like a good thing to me.

 

My

 

--Torka

[chapulin]

gotcha, thanks for the advice. Guess my fears are unfounded.

[Jill]

Recipes would appeal to your target market. Therefore it's a great idea!