Hi,

I noticed that Pinch of Yum changed their recipe post style from a traditional format to a simpler one.

They have:

• Removed step-by-step videos/pictures from the recipe card.
• Moved the Q&A section to below the recipe card.
• Removed some “extra” sections such as “What is ___?” and “What makes this recipe the best (or why you’ll love this recipe).”
• Changed the step-by-step instructions from the traditional text-based style to a simpler, image-based style.

Could you share the reasons behind these and other changes Pinch of Yum has made? I’d love to understand the thought process behind them.

Also, do you think it would be beneficial to follow their example and simplify recipe posts? As a reader of recipe blogs, I find Pinch of Yum’s newer style very appealing because I’m a visual learner, and the new format is easy to follow and understand. However, I’m concerned about the potential impact on Google SEO by not following the traditional format of recipe posts, especially since I’m a new blogger and don’t have a large number of followers like Pinch of Yum.

Hi Kurumi,

This is a great question – I’m happy to share some insight into this!

The main reason behind this change speaks exactly to what you said here:

As a reader of recipe blogs, I find Pinch of Yum’s newer style very appealing because I’m a visual learner, and the new format is easy to follow and understand.

The primary goal of this change has been to make the reader experience easier and more enjoyable, while also balancing that with our SEO goals – which is why we still include relevant keywords and H2s where we can, an FAQ to answer related questions, good internal and external links, a video of the recipe, and ensure the back-end of a post is clean and tight (alt text on every image, good structured data, etc.).

We think this structure also contributes to matching search intent – when a user lands on Pinch of Yum from search results, they’re able to navigate exactly to where they need to be with helpful, relevant information directly related to what they’re trying to find. It feels cleaner, clearer, more concise, and gets them exactly what they came looking for. We think that’s a win!

That being said, we did do some testing before moving forward with this change. We used SEOTesting.com to conduct a test where we migrated a large handful of existing mid-level posts to the new format, and tracked the performance over six weeks. What we found was there was no negative impact – in fact, we actually saw slight bumps in CTR and search position.

I hope this helps, Kurumi! Let me know if you have any other questions!

This is very helpful! Thanks for asking Kurumi and for answering Jenna!

Wow… I’m so surprised by how transparent the Pinch of Yum team is! Thank you so much for sharing such valuable information. I will try to follow their examples, balancing user experience and SEO. Thank you again for your response!