by As the online recipe niche shifts and evolves and becomes increasingly competitive, recipe publishers are always searching for that elusive SEO edge.
Using structured data—and ItemList schema specifically—is a great way to enhance your site’s visibility in the search results.
Enter Tasty Roundups!
It’s the newest paid WordPress plugin from the team behind Tasty Recipes.
In this post we look at the Tasty Roundups plugin, its SEO benefits, share examples of it on The Toasted Pine Nut food blog, and explain the tool’s advantages if you already use Tasty Recipes.
The goal? To help you determine if Tasty Roundups is the right fit for your food blog.
Pro tip! Yes, Tasty Roundups can be used for non-food items. The plugin simply adds Carousel structured data to a post. Carousel structured data must be used with one of the following supported content types in order for it to display as a rich result that people can swipe through on mobile devices: recipe, course, movie, restaurant.
But first, what is ItemList schema?
The definition of ItemList schema on Schema.org is:
A list of items of any sort—for example, Top 10 Movies About Weathermen, or Top 100 Party Songs. Not to be confused with HTML lists, which are often used only for formatting.
Translated:
ItemList schema allows a recipe roundup post and/or category archives to display as a carousel in the mobile search results. Searchers can swipe through up to 10 cards in a carousel.
Pro-tip! Use Google’s free Rich Results Testing Tool to verify if a roundup post is correctly outputting ItemList schema, also known as carousel structured data.
Google also has specific guidelines for how and when ItemList schema should be used.
A few noteworthy rules are:
- All items in the list must be of the same type
- All items in the list must contain two or more list items
- All items in the list must be similar to the information contained in the structured data on the page (i.e. a roundup post of vegetable side dishes should include recipes for roasted carrots, roasted beets and sautéed asparagus, not cupcakes.)
The benefits of using ItemList schema
Outputting ItemList schema can have many benefits for recipe roundup posts in particular, such as:
- Higher clickthrough rates
- Greater visibility in mobile search
- Deepening Google’s understanding of the recipe topics on your food blog
Who should use Tasty Roundups
A known gap of the Tasty Recipes plugin is that the plugin does not support ItemList schema.
This means that food bloggers who already use Tasty Recipes to output recipe schema are the ideal users of Tasty Roundups.
It’s important however to understand the different types of schema at your disposal, and when to use a specific schema type—like ItemList schema—to your advantage before purchasing Tasty Roundups. This ensures that you’re making the most of your investment and that the plugin’s functionality aligns with the type of content you produce.
For example, if do not publish recipe roundup posts and have no plans in the future to publish recipe roundups, Tasty Roundups is not a useful plugin for your food blog.
But, if you’re a Tasty Recipes customer who publishes roundup posts regularly (or has plans to start publishing roundup posts) and have yet to use ItemList schema to your advantage in the mobile search results, Tasty Roundups is a smart tool to start using.
If you use WP Recipe Maker or Create to output recipe schema, we recommend you use the round-up blocks that are already available in each of these tool’s product offering to output ItemList schema. This reduces the plugin load on your site.
Tasty Recipes vs. Tasty Roundups
Put simply, Tasty Recipes outputs recipe schema. Tasty Roundups outputs ItemList schema. The plugins are not redundant. If publishing roundup posts is a consistent part of your editorial strategy, it’s perfectly okay to use both plugins on your Wordpress food blog.
Recipe schema example:
ItemList schema example:
Of course, there are countless ways to boost traffic! Using ItemList schema to your advantage with the help of Tasty Roundups is just one opportunity in a multi-faceted SEO strategy.
If you’re ready to gain other valuable insights into your food blog’s schema opportunities join the Foodie Digital mailing list today.
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.
