It's a popularity contest
These three recipes have been consistent favorites on google search
Hello all, and happy Friday!
Every couple of weeks I dip into Google Search Console, a free service that gives insight into how well pages of your website rank on Google search. It’s both helpful and interesting. It shows me which of my recipes are getting the most clicks, and also tells me some of the keywords people search for that ultimately bring them to Small Pantry. Since most people don’t leave comments on recipes telling me how they stumbled across the page, Google Search Console can help me better understand my audience and tell me if my recipe is reaching the right people.
Today I’m going to highlight three of my recipes that have recently been the most clicked-on, according to GSC. I want to share them with a bit of context regarding the more computery-SEO side of running a recipe website. It’s not a perspective that most people see!
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Hey there! Cooking for friends and family is a love-language, am I right? Well, let’s take that love and spread it as far as we can! Especially now, with an uncertain future looming, I suggest seeking out local nonprofits that support mutual aid endeavors like community fridges and advocacy for your unhoused neighbors? Or perhaps supporting organizations that provide critical support for Trans youth? I also encourage finding ways to support anti-genocide efforts and relief aid in Palestine, such as through organizations like Anera.
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Mascarpone Mousse
This easy little dessert has been my most popular recipe for a few months. Back in December it had a bit of a surge in number of clicks, and since it’s one of my older recipes I gave it a quick polish—uploading better quality versions of the images, reformatting the text to include a table of contents, etc.
This graph shows both number of clicks and search impressions for the last 12 months. Impressions (purple line) mean the number of times the recipe appears on the results page when someone does a relevant Google search. A click (blue line) is just as it sounds: someone saw my page on their search results (an impression) and then they decided to click on the link.
The reason people often talk about trying to rank in the top 5 search results is because the vast majority of people stop scrolling through search results pretty quickly, and instead click on what they see first. In the last 12 months, the average position of this mascarpone mousse recipe was 11th, which means that even though the impressions are pretty high (at least high for Small Pantry!), not many people are actually seeing it. It’s still too far down the page, and often not even on the first page!
I’ve been meaning to do a more in-depth refresh, including instructions and photos for springier flavor combinations. I want to highlight how seasonally versatile the recipe is! The photo above shows the mousse dusted with a bit of cinnamon and toasted sliced almonds. Shaved chocolate or a dusting of cocoa powder is also excellent, but next time I make it I plan to use fresh raspberries or a strawberry-basil coulis.
Pasta with Sun-Dried Tomatoes, Olives, and Garlic
This easy pasta is a recent high-achiever, to my slight chagrin. I love this recipe, but I’ve never been happy with how the photos turned out. (That’s not fishing for compliments, I just wish there weren’t such an orange cast to everything!) What’s interesting, though, is that even though relatively few people are seeing it in their search results, a higher percentage of them are actually clicking on the link. Take a look below:
This graph looks so energetic, doesn’t it? Let’s compare it to the mascarpone mousse. The mousse has been ranking higher (11th, while this pasta is averaging 18th) and getting more clicks in the past year, but the pasta has a higher click-through rate. (CTR is the percentage of impressions that result in clicks.) The mousse has had a 2.4% CTR over the past twelve months, but this pasta has a cheerful 5.1%.
To me that means that even though fewer people are seeing the recipe, the people who do see it are the ones looking for it. And, if we look at the overall trend of both clicks and impressions, we can see that it’s been steadily growing since June of last year. That’s good!
I love this recipe because it feels like the perfect example of a simple pantry meal. Choosing a few punchy ingredients is all you need to make a big impact. There is a little bit of knife-work involved, but it’s so minimal and quick that you can blast through it while the pasta water comes up to a boil. It is, I think, just as easy as a basic aglio ed olio, but it feels more like a complete meal. When I do finally update the page with fresh, less orangey photos I’ll include some basic step shots to really highlight how simple the recipe is!
Huevos Rotos (Spanish Broken Eggs)
Originally published in May 2022, this recipe is only a month older than the mascarpone mousse recipe and is currently my third most popular. Unlike the mousse recipe, it’s maintained a spot as one of the more popular recipes on the site for over a year. Despite that, it hasn’t shown much growth over the past 12 months.
For the most part, clicks have remained steadily below 15 per day, regardless of surges in impressions (like that big one in November and early December 2024). Both the mascarpone mousse and pasta recipes are hovering around the same number of average clicks (15-ish) but the other two recipes are slowly growing—the huevos rotos are staying stuck.
I did re-upload higher quality photos of the huevos rotos in December, but I have yet to update the post format with things like a table of contents for easy navigation and step shots. My hope is that a proper update will improve the click rates, but as the graph shows the recipe is already averaging 8th place on results pages. While it’s still not top 5, it’s much higher than the other two recipes which are also showing steady growth. That makes me think that it’s less about improving ranking and more about understanding what kind of recipe people are looking for when they search. Maybe mine takes too long (45 minutes as opposed to the advertised 30 minutes on the NYT recipe), or maybe Google isn’t loading the image next to the link, or maybe they are put off by the fact that it’s vegetarian!
When I circle back to give the recipe a proper update I plan to include photos of the different steps and more helpful information about the ingredients, serving suggestions, and adaptations. Regardless of the needed updates, I just love the textures of this recipe. Breaking a runny yolk over crispy fried potatoes is scrumptious enough, but the added tender-toothsomeness of paprika-spiked sauteed peppers and onions makes it that much better.
Thanks for reading! SEO isn’t the most stimulating subject, I know, but it’s constantly jangling around in the back of my mind, waiting for me to pay better attention or develop a sustained strategy. The boring, technical parts of running a website or a newsletter are often the most challenging and isolating parts of the process, since they rarely get talked about or seen. It’s cathartic to take a moment and give things like click-through rates and page ranking a bit of time in the spotlight.
Have a lovely weekend, and be well!
xoxo Julia