WordPress recipe schema guide

Picture this: Your delicious chocolate chip cookie recipe is buried on page 3 of Google, while your competitor’s near-identical recipe sits at the top, complete with a gorgeous photo, 5-star rating, and cooking time — all visible right in the search results. What’s their secret? Recipe schema markup.

As a food blogger, the frustrating truth is that great recipes alone aren’t enough. The difference between a recipe that gets discovered and one that gets overlooked often comes down to technical optimization. Recipe schema is the code that transforms plain search listings into eye-catching rich results that readers can’t help but click.

This guide will show you exactly how to implement recipe schema in WordPress, whether you prefer using a plugin for simplicity or adding it manually for more control. By the end, you’ll have everything you need to make your recipes stand out in search results and attract more readers to your food blog.

What is recipe schema?

Recipe schema is a standardized code format that tells search engines specific details about your recipes. It can transform your recipe listings into rich results that capture clicks at the top of search results, often before users explore other options.

When properly implemented, it allows Google to display rich results that include:

• Cooking and prep times
• Ingredient lists
• Calorie information
• Star ratings
• Recipe images

What are the different types of recipe schema?

Recipe schema can be implemented in several formats:

• JSON-LD (recommended by Google)
• Microdata
• RDFa

JSON-LD is the preferred format because it’s cleaner and easier to implement than other methods that require mixing schema markup with your HTML content.

What does recipe schema look like?

Here’s a basic example of recipe schema in JSON-LD format (JSON-LD is the preferred method by Google):

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org/",
  "@type": "Recipe",
  "name": "Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Jane Smith"
  },
  "datePublished": "2024-01-15",
  "description": "Soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies",
  "prepTime": "PT15M",
  "cookTime": "PT12M",
  "totalTime": "PT27M",
  "recipeYield": "24 cookies",
  "recipeIngredient": [
    "2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour",
    "1 cup butter",
    "3/4 cup sugar"
  ],
  "recipeInstructions": [
    "Preheat oven to 375°F",
    "Cream butter and sugar",
    "Add eggs and vanilla"
  ]
}

Search engines look for those codes and present that information in a visually appealing way in results, like these rich snippets of recipes Google displays for “strawberry shortcake recipe”:

Schema markups and search engines

Schema markups work by telling the search engine about your recipe using structured data. The information you provide, like cook time or reviewer ratings, lets the search engine understand your recipe better, and then it can be presented to viewers in attractive and engaging ways. Schema markup allows Google to showcase your recipes in search and image results:

For newbie food bloggers, schema markups mean you can create more attractive and visible sites. On Google, users see a rich snippet recipe if your markup includes two or more of the following codes:

• CookTime, prepTime, or totalTime
• recipeIngredients
• Image
• NutritionInformation
• Review

However, just because you only need a minimum of two of these codes, that doesn’t mean that’s all you should include in the recipe schema. The more information users can get at a glance, the better. Take a look at these search results:

That’s what comes up on Google when you search for “eggs benedict”. The top three rich snippet recipe cards and the regular result below the cards all have recipe schema, which is why you can see each one’s featured image, rating, total time and ingredients list. These are all appetizing representations of the recipes, and the only trouble you’ll have is deciding which one to go with. 

Now, take a look at this result, which doesn’t have a rich snippet recipe:

After clicking through a page or two of Google results for “eggs benedict,” you’ll stumble upon that recipe above, which doesn’t have anything to enrich the result or make it appealing. I’m not sure anyone would click that unless they happen to love La Crema Winery. Even so, users probably wouldn’t even make it that far since there are so many mouth watering results they’ll see first.

Now, while schema markups don’t directly affect your blog’s search engine ranking, they do impact a link’s click-through rate (CTR). As a consequence, this signals to Google whether or not the link matches the query – the higher the CTR, the more likely it is that the article is a good match for the query. For a complete overview of SEO for food bloggers, check out this blog post.

On Google, there are different types of recipe enhancements depending on the markup. Here are two of the more popular ones:

Carousel

By adding ItemList metadata for a roundup post, like a “best recipes” article, your content will appear in a carousel format in Google results. You can create a batch of recipes that fall under a certain theme – like “Swiss Christmas baking recipes” in the example below – and show them all together with various rich snippet recipe cards in a carousel on Google.

Guided Recipes

By adding the recipeIngredient or recipeInstructions markup, Guided Recipes can be created. This means that the Google Assistant will be able to guide the user through your recipe on a smart display or Google Home, like this:

However, note that for Guided Recipes, you need to have an image for every single step of the recipe, so it may not be something you’re interested in as a newbie food blogger. You can learn more about Guided Recipes and the necessary metadata by checking out our article about it.

How to add recipe schema with WP Recipe Maker

The quickest, safest and most foolproof way to add recipe schema to your food blog is by using a plugin. Make sure to choose a quality WordPress plugin that:

• Adds key properties, such as calories, cook time and prep time.
• Automatically includes all recipe details in the metadata as you write the recipe.
• Can mark some content as non-food content. That way, recipe metadata won’t accidentally be sent out for non-recipe content.
• Includes a visual thumbnail.
• Uses JSON-LD metadata.

The free version of the WP Recipe Maker plugin is an excellent option for these purposes. Here’s why:

• It ensures that the correct metadata is always there for your recipes.
• JSON-LD and schema.org recipe metadata is used, making it optimized for Google search.
• Your content will show up as a rich snippet recipe in Google results.
• How-to instructions metadata means you can populate non-recipe rich snippets that will show up on Google, too. By upgrading to the paid version of the plugin, you’ll be able to access advanced features like custom recipe taxonomies (difficulty, price level, etc.).

You don’t have to fill in anything special when you use WP Recipe Maker – as you enter recipe information, the schema is automatically created for you. Here’s just a little bit of what it looks like when you add recipe information to WordPress using WP Recipe Maker:

Once all of the recipe info is added, you can double-check that it’ll show up as a rich snippet recipe on search engines by going to Google’s Rich Results Test:

Learn more about WP Recipe Maker here. And remember, you can start with the free version, which has plenty of functionality to get you started. 

Start optimizing your WordPress recipes today

Stop letting your amazing recipes get lost in search results. Recipe schema isn’t just another WordPress feature – it’s the difference between your recipes being buried on page three and showcased front and center in Google’s rich results.

Whether you choose the simplicity of WP Recipe Maker or decide to implement schema manually, taking action today will help your recipes get the visibility they deserve. Remember: every day you wait is another day your competitors’ recipes are capturing those valuable clicks with eye-catching rich results.

Ready to transform how your recipes appear in search? Get started with WP Recipe Maker today!