Best Recipe Plugin for SEO Including Schema Markup and Speed

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A recipe plugin can do way more than give you a pretty layout or print option. It can dramatically help your SEO and get your recipe featured on Google, including Voice Search. That’s huge for foodie bloggers!!!!

See which recipe plugin fared the best in my tests for both the SEO schema markup Google now requires, and which plugins have the fastest page load time. Plus, see what each plugin natively outputs to Pinterest.

See This Plugin Features Post Too

HUGE thank you to Marilyn Lesniak of Marilyn’s Treats for her invaluable expertise and help with all the recipe plugin testing!

She has used all of these plugins and knowns their features by heart.

READ Marilyn’s post: Best Recipe Plugin Review for Schema for insights into each recipe plugin’s features, plus the pros and cons of using them.

Plugins Tested

Based on Marilyn’s experience, plus the plugins my site audit clients reported using, we decided to test the plugins below.

The plugins are listed from best to worst according to our tests and other factors such as support.

WP Recipe Maker – free version, with notes on the paid versions
Tasty Recipe – paid plugin
Easy Recipe – free plugin
Cookbook – paid plugin

We chose not to test Ziplist Recipes, as it has not been well supported in the recent past, and may not be supported in the future.

NOTE: There is a wide difference in fields available between the different templates each plugin offers, especially between the free and paid versions. So, the schema markup shown for each plugin below is just on the version we tested. Check with the plugin vendor for more info on extended input fields for additional recipe info you can include.

Testing Parameters

The testing site is on an A2 Hosting (aff link) Swift account.

The Genesis framework and the Foodie Pro child theme were used.

The Scriptless Social Sharing plugin was used to provide share buttons for our Pinterest tests. No special image was input for Pinterest in either the sharing plugin or Yoast SEO. We wanted to see which image was picked up natively.

A test Pinterest business account was obtained, and Rich Pins were turned on.

The test post contained:

Summary
Embedded image
Featured image
Recipe with description, image, all ingredients and steps, and video. Nutrition info was added, if the plugin allowed.

All fields available were filled out for each plugin.

Performance tests were conducted using WebPage Test. (See a tutorial on how to run your own speed tests.)

No local caching plugin or Cloudflare were used to speed up the site.

Base speed results on Hello World post, with no recipe plugin installed:

What’s the Big Deal with Recipe Schema Markup?

Google wants to feature recipes in both their regular SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and in Voice Search.

Special schema markup in your recipe plugin can make or break whether your post rises to the top and gets found by more readers.

This is a HUGE ground floor opportunity for foodie bloggers to get way more traffic to their site.

Here’s how it works.

In early 2018, Google released new guidelines and a list of the schema markup it requires on recipe posts to be eligible for inclusion in Voice Search.

Then in May, Google openly called for foodie bloggers to send their recipes to Google Assistant, which is their Voice Search device.

Recipe plugin developers quickly scrambled to ensure their plugins met Google’s schema markup standards.

What is Schema Markup?

Schema markup includes special tags around certain items to give search engines a better idea of what the content is about.

Schema markup is a hierarchy, meaning it has a top-down structure.

This hierarchy is why schema markup is also referred to as structured data.

For instance, the schema markup for a recipe starts with:

@type Recipe

And the sub-markup below that includes items that only a recipe would have, like:

recipeCategory
prepTime
recipeIngredient

That sub-markup also includes items that are similar to the schema markup for the post, like:

image
datePublished
keywords

So, you may have two sets of some schema markup in the post that look similar, but if you read the top-down structure like Google does, it will become clear what top-level schema item each of these properties belongs too.

In other words, with the help of the schema hierarchy, Google can tell the difference in a featured or embedded image for the post, and the image that you included in the recipe itself.

It’s the same with the Description and datePublished schema markup. You should have one Description, or summary for the post, and then another Description for the recipe.

Structured Data Testing Tool

This structure will make better sense if you look at the markup for yourself.

Simply grab the link to one of your recipe posts and run it through Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.

On the right, you’ll see sections of all the top-level structured data that Google detected.

Click on Recipes to see all of the schema markup tags being output by your plugin.

FYI: You may not see all of those other top-level sections on your post. They have to be supported and output by your theme too. That’s just one more reason why I use and recommend the Genesis framework and child themes made for it. NOTHING beats it for outputting great top-down schema markup for all of your content.

Google Recipe Schema

Below is a full list of the schema markup Google suggests for recipes.

NOTE: A minimum of recipeIngredient and recipeInstructions is required for inclusion in Google Home and Google Assistant.

@type – Recipe

Name – of the dish
Description – summary
Image – completed dish
recipeYield
prepTime
cookTime
totalTime
recipeCategory – dinner, entree, dessert
recipeCuisine – French, Mediterranean, American
recipeInstructions – followed by HowToStep markup
recipeIngredient

Author – who wrote it

@type Person
name

Nutrition.calories

datePublished

Keywords – additional such as summer, easy, authentic. Don’t use tags for category or cuisine

Review

aggregateRating – will only appear if there is at least one review

video

TIP: To take advantage of all schema markup possible, you must fill in every field of the recipe plugin. Leaving fields blank will likely result in empty schema markup being output, and Google will flag it as an error or warning. In fact, Google has taken to sending emails via Google Search Console, advising you to check your schema when this happens.

WP Recipe Maker

Below are the test results for the free version of the WP Recipe Maker plugin.

In brief, it provides all of the markup Google wants, and then some.

One of the big differences in this plugin and the others is that it has HowToStep markup. It’s a huge SEO bonus, but, it may require you to reformat the instructions of your current recipes, if you switch to this plugin. Be sure to read Marilyn’s post for more.

The free version of this plugin does not have a nutrition list available, but the premium version does, and it properly outputs that schema markup (not shown in the list below).

Schema Markup

The markup is listed in the order it is output by the plugin.

@type – Recipe

Name – of the dish
datePublished
Description
Image
recipeYield
prepTime
cookTime
totalTime
recipeIngredient – each ingredient has its own line
recipeCategory
recipeCuisine

Keywords

Author

@type Person
name
Video

@type – VideoObject

Name
Description
uploadDate
Duration
thumbnailURL – derived from custom thumbnail on YouTube
embedURL – oEmbed code from YouTube

recipeInstructions

@type HowToStep – for each step – this is BIG, and most other recipe plugins don’t have it
Text

Nutrition

@type NutritionInformation
Calories
servingSize

aggregateRating

@type – AggregateRating
RatingValue
ratingCount

NOTE: When the video is removed, Google flags a warning for Video schema. In other words, the plugin outputs empty schema when that field is blank.

Bonus Feature

This plugin also offers a setting to use its template for non-recipe posts, like essential oils and such. If you plan to use it this way, turn on that feature in Settings. Then in the non-food post, select that Type at the top of the Recipe Details tab.

Pinterest Test

It picked up the image in the recipe. No other images were available to chose.

The following Rich Pin items were also picked up from the recipe plugin and displayed on Pinterest:

Description in recipe
Review
Hours
Ingredients
Rating

Speed Test with no Recipe

(to see how many requests the plugin loads, even though there is no recipe on the page)

The plugin adds 3 requests, and minimum load.

Speed Test without Video

The recipe only adds 2 more requests and the speed and page weight are barely impacted.

Speed Test with Video

As you can see, embedding a YouTube video is super heavy, and doubles the load time and page weight.

However, a video can significantly enhance user enjoyment, and increase good metrics like time on site and YouTube watch time. (No matter where a YouTube video is viewed, it collects watch time metrics.) And, there may be ways to decrease the load of a YouTube video.

Speed Conclusion

The WP Recipe Maker plugin is very light weight, even on posts that do not include a recipe.

Tasty Recipe Plugin

UPDATED: 9/8/18 new schema markup in version 1.7.0

I purchased the Tasty Recipe plugin for these tests.

It includes most of the schema markup Google suggests. But, it has no HowToSteps. While Google does not require those, I believe they will at some point, and they make for better structured data overall.

This plugin also outputs a warning when no video is present, and knocks out other schema markup when a video is present.

When a video is present, warnings are issued for two video schema properties as having no value, meaning empty:

Description
uploadDate

We contacted support and, at the time of this writing, those warning are due to the developer not wanting to “cheat” and give estimates on some YouTube data.