Create by Mediavine is the newest industry player, and a welcome addition to WordPress repository of recipe card plugins available for recipe SEO.

In this post, we share helpful step-by-step instructions for how to add a recipe into a card using Create by Mediavine. We highlight the plugin’s beneficial features for recipe SEO, nofollow compliance, and draw attention to features of the plugin that are easy to overlook.

But first, a bit of background on Create.

Create by Mediavine

Launched in the fall of 2018, Create by Mediavine—like Tasty Recipes and WP Recipe Maker—uses industry-standard JSON-LD Schema Markup to generate structured data.

Create supports ItemList schema in addition to recipe schema unleashing a whole new world of potential when it comes to publishing SEO-friendly, and voice search optimized content.

From recipes to craft tutorials, city travel guides, restaurant guides, and more—even instructions for how to add a recipe in Create by Mediavine—the plugin is designed for a whole host of content creators and publishers.

And best of all, it’s 100% free.

Create by Mediavine is also:

  • Built for speed
  • Mobile friendly
  • Compatible with WordPress’ new block editor
  • Open to everyone; it is not exclusive to Mediavine publishers

3 best WordPress recipe card plugins compared

Which WordPress recipe card plugin is right for you? In this comparison we look at Tasty Recipes, Create and WP Recipe Maker.

The plugin also has several well thought through bells and whistles in addition to the expected feature base, including:

Expected feature base

Diet metadata

Create users now have the ability to add Diet metadata (new as of March 2020 using suitableForDiet metadata) to specify what type of dietary preference recipes are suitable for.

Diet metadata displays in the recipe card automatically by default. There is a fixed list of options to choose from, including vegan, vegetarian and gluten free and several more.

Screengrab of the inside of Create by mediavine the plugin showing where to specify diet meta data in a recipe card

Category and cuisine fields

In Create the category and cuisine fields don’t include a dropdown list. You add your own terms by typing into each of the fields. Separate your terms with a comma.

Examples of categories include: 

  • Breakfast
  • Lunch
  • Dinner
  • Dessert
  • Snack
  • Soup
  • Salad
  • Appetizer
  • Beverage
  • Side dish

Examples of cuisines include:

  • American
  • Indian
  • Pakistani
  • Thai
  • Italian
  • Mexican
  • French
  • German
  • Chinese
  • Japanese

Prep time, cook time, additional time

Always enter minute information into the prep time, cook time and total time fields. Satisfying a user’s search intent is priority #1 for Google and time is paramount when it comes to cooking.

Don’t make searchers and site visitors dig for this information.

Consistently fill-in these fields so that searchers and site visitors know up-front the time it takes to prep and successfully make your recipe.

Screenshot of the prep time and cook time fields in Create by Mediavine's back-end

Video structured data

If you produce recipe videos they can easily be added in a Create recipe card. This results in video structured data (such as description, duration, and uploadDate) getting included in the recipe schema output, which is a great thing for recipe SEO.

In Create, you also have the option to hide or display video in a recipe card. This is ideal if you want to embed your recipe video higher in the body of a post (i.e., the top 1/3rd of a post) but still benefit from video structured data without showing the same video to users twice.

Pro tip! We always suggest including the URL in the recipe card video field specifically. This way, if you ever switch to a new recipe card plugin your video structured data will not be affected.

Screengrab from inside Create by Mediavine showing where the video URL is and how to hide or display a video in the recipe card.

Nofollow compliance

You can add links to freeform fields in the Create recipe card (such as description, ingredients, instructions and notes). Links, including affiliate links, are added manually in the plugin’s freeform fields by clicking the link icon in the WYSIWYG.

Screengrab of inside Create by Mediavine showing where to add a link in the description field

To add an affiliate link to an ingredient, switch the toggle button to Detail and expand the arrow to the right of the ingredient. A nofollow tag can easily be applied to specific links here too.

Screenshot of Create by Mediavine plugin showing where to add nofollow tag in the ingredients list

Create uses the standard WordPress link editor, but adds in a nofollow checkbox globally, so that nofollow can be leveraged the same way in both the recipe card and post editor for compliance.

Pro Tip! With Create if you use the classic editor, the nofollow checkbox shows up under the checkbox to open a link in a new window.

If you use the block editor it’s a differently approach entirely, which we outline in our post on nofollow compliance for food blog SEO.

Learning how to use Create isn’t difficult

Don’t let learning the ins and outs of a new WordPress recipe card plugin block you from achieving your food blog’s SEO goals.

Success with food blog SEO is when a series of small daily actions add up. Today, that includes learning how to use Create to your advantage.

Note: Foodie Digital participates in affiliate programs for select recipe card plugins and hosting providers. The opinions we share are based on our own in-depth research, and the ongoing need for our members to use SEO tools that are future-proofed, credible, professional and well supported.