Why are food blog recipes so long?
If you’ve ever used an online recipe, you probably know this scenario: you click on a food blog and scroll down. And down. And just a bit further. And for a second, you wonder if this promised recipe even exists.
Eventually, you find it, and after that initial moment of frustration, you move forward with your meal. But that moment of frustration has spawned an extensive debate over the purpose and structure of food blogs. The problem of the food blog is so ubiquitous, it's become a cliche. The internet is strewn with comics and viral tweets complaining about the endless scroll. But these pithy critiques obscure a complex communication problem.
The SEO Problem
Food bloggers use long-form content because it improves their search engine optimization (SEO). While SEO depends on many intersecting metrics, experts maintain that long-form content corresponds to higher search rankings. Search engines assume that web pages with longer content are more likely to fully answer a user’s question. Because of this, SEO strategies can directly contradict user preferences for more concise and scannable content.
Search engines also reward original content (and penalize what experts call duplicate content). As many have pointed out, recipes tend to be copied and shared. That recipe for zucchini bread might be almost exactly the same across ten different blogs. But the addition of original long-form narrative content—called headnotes—boosts its SEO.
A number of other practical concerns affect the way blogs are structured. For example, search engines cannot always recognize the unique structure of recipes (often a combination of steps and lists). And some search engine metrics are based on how long a user spends on a page. Longer content also creates space for ads, and ad revenue is a central source of income for food bloggers.
Because of these problems, food bloggers can’t post standalone recipes without risking the viability of their blog. And posting the recipe before the narrative content doesn’t seem to work either. Though no one has tried to reproduce this experiment, one blogger tried putting her recipes above her narrative blog content and found that her pages decreased in the search results.
In response to this problem, food bloggers have largely adopted the “skip to recipe” button. Yet the complaints about scrolling continue unabated. So what’s the real problem here?
Genre Trouble
Like any other type of writing, food blogs follow genre conventions. You can trace the contemporary structure of food blogs to two main influences:
The memoir-style cookbooks that rose to prominence in the mid 20th century, and
The genre of web logs (blogs) born in the late 80s and early 90s
Before the mid 20th century, cookbooks focused on clear-cut recipes (and it’s probably also safe to say that they were not very user friendly). In the ‘40s and ‘50s, demand rose for cookbooks with memoir style headnotes. Today, most cookbooks incorporate a mixture of memoir-style writing and recipes.
Early blogging has strong roots in the ‘90s culture of online diaries. Highly personal and narrative writing was a formational element of the genre. In the transition from page to computer, writers also gained (theoretically) unlimited space.
As blogs began incorporating comment functions at the turn of the century, blogging increasingly focused on building community—one function of food bloggers’ narrative content. This community-building content develops a sustainable following, resulting in more consistent ad revenue.
Genre conventions help writers meet their audience’s expectations. However, the food blog’s conventions may conflict with other conventions of web content. For example, web writing best practices typically recommend shorter content organized for easy scanning. This tension of genre conventions may drive some of the frustration over food blogs.
Audience and Expectations
Imagining a specific reader helps you write more effective content. It also helps you to identify your reader’s needs. But when a dramatically different audience encounters your content, they may feel frustrated that the content doesn’t meet their needs or expectations.
Experienced food bloggers consistently recommend writing toward a specific audience, rather than a general one. Community-building content caters to one type of reader: those individuals who would dedicate time and energy to a long-term relationship with a food blog. Some bloggers even contend that they read other food blogs exclusively for the narrative content and rarely cook the recipes (and academic research supports this as a common approach). However, there’s another audience with very different needs: one-time readers who want the recipe now. These “fly by” readers want utility and convenience, not entertainment or sociality.
Some food bloggers try to produce comprehensive content, including step by step instructions with images of each step. Such comprehensive content attends to the needs of beginner and nonexpert audiences. Yet this same content may frustrate the expectations of more experienced readers, who don’t need a step-by-step guide on how to properly measure flour.
Utility and Context
Writing for Eater, Jenny Zhang satirizes food blog complainers by pointing out the economics of “free” blog content. She argues that the reader pays for the recipe by scrolling through the narrative content. While readers literally produce revenue by scrolling through ads, they are also paying with their attention. The proponents of this argument point out that if the reader doesn’t want to give their time and attention, they can always acquire recipes elsewhere (including by paying for cookbooks).
Headnotes can also give important context about the recipe’s origins or why a certain ingredient is essential. Australian-Malaysian cook Adam Liaw points out that the recipe itself is a flawed and imprecise format. Ingredients can vary in size and strength of flavor, so resulting meals will necessarily vary from a recipe-writer’s intentions. Standalone recipes cannot communicate cultural knowledge either. The large scale separation of food from cultural context has resulted in systemic issues like unsustainable food systems and public dietary health problems. In this sense, stand-alone recipes fail to effectively achieve their purpose.
Food blog defenders also point to convenience as a key problem in this debate. One food blogger draws on the work of lawyer and net neutrality activist Tim Liu, who claims that society’s devotion to convenience can produce adverse effects. For example, think of your cell phone email app. 24/7 email may be more convenient, but it also drives unhealthy work habits. For food bloggers, the crusade for ultimate convenience detracts from food culture.
While a strictly utilitarian approach—a recipe with no headnote—erases other important contexts, good writing should be easy to read. An effective writer does the majority of the work (by distilling their messages or clearly organizing ideas) so the reader doesn’t have to. Long-form narrative content may necessarily conflict with utility and convenience. But you can still write content that enhances the recipe rather than distracting from it.
Is there a middle ground?
As a case study, food blogs exemplify how writing, user experience, and technology intersect. They also raise questions with important implications for anyone writing on the web. Is there a way to satisfy both SEO needs while also composing content that your readers enjoy and find useful? Is it possible to reconcile the needs of opposite audiences? Is it possible to preserve the generic conventions and history of food blogging while helping the genre change for the better?