Recipe URL Structure

Fixing your Recipe URL Structure with these Tips

It’s a fact that many food or content websites have very poorly constructed Recipe URL structures. Our recipe search engineers typically see the following formats as not only the most popular, but also the the most hard to recognize;

1. Date as the Primary Key
   www.sitename.com/2012/6/13/chocolate-chip-cookies
2. Just the Recipe Name
   www.sitename.com/recipe-name or www.sitename.com/recipe-name.html

So what’s the best format for a Recipe URL Structure ?

If you’re looking for the ultimate URL structure then is what you should create ;
www.sitename.com/recipes/123456/recipe-name

Why ? As you can see there is a folder called “recipes” which logically says anything under this url should only consist of a page of recipes. Also it offers the ability to have a centralized recipe page at www.sitename.com/recipes. The id is the primary key (or id in the database) which is easily indexable. As is the name of the recipe in full in the URL helps from a search perspective.

Don’t forget that when you change from one URL structure to the next, you’ll have to put into place a series of 301 Redirects so as they pages does not lose its ranking in search engines.

Finally and adhering to best-practice, you should publish a sitemap.xml file with the list of recipe URLs. This will allow search engines like RecipeBridge (and many others) to easily identify recipe content and save them into the index. See – Recipe SiteMaps

For more information about Publishing Recipes Online, then please download our Recipe Publishing Online White Paper which is a comprehensive guide with lots of handy hints including Recipe URL Structure.