If you use WP Recipe Maker and are searching for tips for how you can use the recipe plugin more effectively, this post is for you.

A lot of Foodie Digital members use WP Recipe Maker for recipe SEO.

Created and maintained by Bootstrapped Ventures, WP Recipe Maker is a widely adopted, and well-thought through recipe card plugin for WordPress. 

About 80% of the Foodie Digital community uses WP Recipe Maker, and during our series of onboarding audits we catch a lot of mistakes with how the recipe card plugin is configured and used, which we share here for your benefit.

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WP Recipe Maker’s four bundles

  • Free
  • Premium – $49 USD / year
  • Pro – $99 USD / year
  • Elite – $149 USD / year

Like most WordPress plugins that follow a freemium model, the free version of the plugin is good while the paid versions each offer more advanced and helpful features for recipe SEO. All versions of WP Recipe Maker are good options for structured data markup for Google and Pinterest, including rich pins. 

What’s nice is that the plugin also supports Carousel structured data in addition to outputting recipe structured data. This gives you the ability to publish schema-rich recipe roundup posts without needing to use another plugin.

Pro tip! The majority of Foodie Digital community members use WP Recipe Maker premium.

Free version of WP Recipe Maker

If you’re just starting a food blog, and have plans to grow the site’s traffic over time with the end goal of monetizing with an ad network, it’s best to not use WP Recipe Maker free; simply invest in WP Recipe Maker premium from the beginning.

Premium bundle — $49 USD per year

Of the Foodie Digital members who use WP Recipe Maker, more than 98% use WP Recipe Maker premium. It satisfies all their publishing needs.

WPRM Premium highlight #1 — Nofollow compliance is easy

With the premium version of the plugin, in settings, you can enable the nofollow attribute to be added by default to all external ingredient and equipment links included in the recipe card. This way, nofollow compliance inside the recipe card is automatically taken care of. A nice time saver!

Screenshot of WP Recipe Maker, the recipe card plugin's settings show how to enable the nofollow tag so that it apples by default to external equipment and ingredient links.

WPRM Premium highlight #2 – You can customize author name

With WP Recipe Maker premium, in the plugin’s settings, you can also include author name with an internal link (i.e., to your About page) so that recipe author information displays in each new recipe card by default.

Screenshot shot of the WP Recipe Maker plugin showing where in the plugin's setting you can include an author name and internal link by default.

Pro bundle — $99 USD per year

The biggest difference between the premium and pro bundle is that with WP Recipe Maker Pro readers have the option to switch between unit conversions, such as metric and imperial.

You can introduce a custom field in the recipe card, too.

There’s also the option to use the nutrition API integration, which calculates nutritional values automatically, and you can create your own nutrients for the nutrition labels. This is something registered dietitians we work with like about WP Recipe Maker.

Pro tip! From experience, the configuration of the nutrition API does require a developer skill set.

Elite bundle — $149 USD per year

The elite bundle includes two sophisticated features geared toward boosting reader engagement.

Visitors can create their own recipe collections on your site (Google does this too as of January 2020) and also generate a grocery shopping list for the recipes collected. That, and Elite can field recipe submissions from outside contributors.

If you’re managing a large team of contributors, Elite may be the right fit for your business.

Recipe card templates and customization

WP Recipe Maker provides several default recipe card templates to choose from.

It also provides the ability to customize each recipe card template. You have full control over the colors and styles of your recipe card template with WPRM.

For information on how you can customize a recipe card template to match the look and feel of your site, read the plugin’s Template Editor 101 documentation.

Here’s a few examples of custom-designed WPRM recipe cards for inspiration:

Instacart integration

It’s easy to make your recipes shoppable using WP Recipe Maker.

That and, you can earn affiliate commission from the recipes and lists you share when you participate in Instacart’s tastemaker program.

To enable the Get Ingredients with Instacart button for your site, log in to WordPress and go to WPRM settings > Integrations. WPRM also has helpful instructions that show you how to enable the button. The instacart button cannot be styled to suit your brand colors—we already checked!

Adding images or video for an instruction step

WP Recipe Maker allows you to add image and video alongside each instruction step. The image and video assets assigned to each instruction step add to a post’s existing recipe schema.

Screenshot from inside WP Recipe Maker showing how to create a guided recipe.

If you choose to add visual instruction, know that tweaks to your recipe card template are likely needed to get the image or video for each instruction step to look the way you want, or at least that’s our experience working with Foodie Digital members.

Nofollow compliance in fields in the recipe card

WP Recipe Maker allows you to add links to certain fields in the recipe card (such as summary, ingredients and instructions). The link editor is custom (not the standard Wordpress link interface), and provides a handy checkbox to tag the links nofollow for compliance.

Screenshot of the inside of the WP Recipe Maker recipe card plugin, showing how to add a link in the plugin's freeform fields
Screenshot of the inside of the WP Recipe Maker recipe card plugin, showing how to add a link in the plugin's freeform fields and then tag the link for nofollow for compliance

Servings

As of Aug 2024, Google Search Console has been reporting recipe structured data errors when the ‘servings’ field in a recipe card is empty, even though it’s still documented as a recommended field, not a required field.

That means, in addition to the recipe name and the recipe card image, filling in the ‘servings’ field in a recipe card is not a step to skip!

Prep time, cook time, total time

Always enter minute information in the correct format (i.e., 10 minutes not 10m) 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.

Pro tip! Never make searchers and site visitors dig for time-related information.

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

SEO tips for food bloggers prioritized

In this post we help you identify where you’re at with SEO, and then outline the actions you need to take to accomplish your SEO goals.

Courses, cuisine, keywords and diet

Completeness is key when it comes to success with structured data so do not skip entering information into these fields. They matter for recipe SEO.

Pro tip! In the premium, pro and elite versions of the plugin internal links can easily be set for taxonomy terms (i.e., courses, cuisines, keywords). This is great for adding internal links to category archives (i.e, breakfast, dinner, desserts, snacks).

Courses and cuisine

WP Recipe Maker includes a dropdown list of terms to choose from for courses and cuisines. But you aren’t limited to what’s in this list. You can add your own terms by typing into each of the fields.

Screenshot of WP Recipe Maker showing the fields for course, cuisines and keywords.

Examples of what to put in the courses field:

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

Examples of what to put in the cuisine field:

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

Keywords

The keyword field doesn’t include a dropdown list.

Use keywords that are helpful to a reader like specific ingredients they’ll need to have on hand to successfully make a recipe. For example:

  • Coconut aminos
  • Maple syrup
  • Oregano, etc…

Or even specific cuts of meat, such as:

  • Chicken breast
  • Chicken thigh
  • Rump roast
  • Ribeye steak, etc…

Or kitchen equipment that denotes cooking method, like:

  • Dutch oven
  • Crockpot
  • Instant pot
  • Skillet, etc…

More examples of useful keywords to include in the keywords field are those related, but not limited to the season (i.e., winter, spring, summer, fall), holidays (i.e., Thanksgiving, Easter, Hanukkah, Christmas) and special occasions (i.e., Halloween, Birthday, Valentine’s Day).

Diet

WP Recipe Maker users have the ability to add Diet metadata (also called suitableForDiet metadata) to specify what type of dietary preference a recipe is suitable for. There is a fixed list of options to choose from, including vegan, vegetarian and gluten free and more.

Screenshot of WP Recipe Maker the recipe card showing where diet metadata has been added in recipe fields

Diet metadata is disabled by default, but it can easily be enabled in the plugin’s settings.

Screenshot of WP recipe maker for suitable diet meta data field in the plugin's settings

How to enter ingredients in WP Recipe Maker

The interface for ingredient information is relatively easy to use and intuitive. Unit measurements are in set fields and flexible (i.e., 1 can, 1/4 cup, 1 tbsp, 1 bunch).

Here’s a helpful video that takes a closer at ingredients in WP Recipe Maker:

Video structured data

If producing video content is a part of your content strategy, recipe videos can easily be added to WP Recipe Maker recipe cards. 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 video SEO.

Pro tip! We see food bloggers uploading videos directly to the plugin, which isn’t ideal for site speed and performance. Instead, embed a Youtube URL, Vimeo URL or a video URL from your ad network into the recipe card.

A screenshot of WP Recipe Maker, the recipe card plugin, that shows where to copy and paste a video URL

Roundups and Carousel structured data

Recipe roundups are common in the food blogging niche.

They’re a good way to resurface and repurpose existing content, and a great chance to share recipes with your audience from other talent food bloggers in your niche.

WP Recipe Maker has a set of helpful instructions for any WP Recipe Maker devotees who want to leverage Carousel structured data for recipe round-ups.

Recipe star rating requirements

As of April 2024, by default WP Recipe Maker requires a comment for any star rating provided a reader, regardless of the rating’s value (1 or 5 star). Anonymous 5-star ratings for a recipe are no longer recommended when using WP Recipe maker.

With this change, WP Recipe Maker aims to improve the trustworthiness, and integrity of the star ratings a recipe receives.

To support the change, when ‘user ratings’ are enabled in WP Recipe Maker’s settings (and yes, they should be!), the plugin offers recipe site owner’s two options to collect comments and ratings: open a modal interface, or jump the reader directly to your site’s comment form.

This image is a screenshot of the new user ratings configuration options in the WP Recipe Maker plugin.

Pro tip! The majority of Foodie Digital community members choose to jump the reader to the comment section when stars are clicked, rather than opening the modal interface.

Also, in the plugin’s settings, WP Recipe Maker does provide the option to disable the requirement for a comment to be left with a recipe rating. Foodie Digital does not recommend disabling the requirement for a comment to be left with a recipe rating.

It’s far better to earn a meaningful comment along with recipe rating, rather than tons of anonymously provided 5-star ratings that aren’t as trustworthy, and lack context.

How to feature reviews in structured data

WP Recipe Maker version 9.6.0 included the following enhancement: Feature: Mark comments as featured or excluded for Recipe Review Metadata.

For context, WPRM outputs ‘review snippets‘ structured data. The content within ‘review snippets’ is a maximum of 9 comment reviews added by your readers.

This has been in place since April 2024 (it’s not new!).

What is new as of October 2024 is that WPRM now provides you with the ability to feature certain comment reviews within the structured data, or to exclude certain comment reviews within the structured data.

Featuring and excluding reviews has no impact for the reader on the front-end (yet). These updates take place under the hood, within the ‘review snippets’ structured data only. Why is this important?

Well, as Google tests new ways to display discussion forums like Reddit in the search results, these signs are pointing toward Google wanting to feature real user experiences directly in the search results.

Why not put your best foot forward, and feature reviews that you know add helpful context to a recipe!

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.