What is a recipe index?

A recipe index should be a visual representation of the recipe categories on your site.

It should NOT be a long list of all of your recipes.

In the past, a recipes page was just a long list of posts starting with the most recent, but we are now able to curate this page to showcase not only the most popular recipes and categories on our sites but also to help users easily find exactly what they are looking for.

We also want to use the recipe index to help Google navigate the site, so make sure to include mostly categories, not lots of blog posts, which makes the recipe index one of the most important pages on your food blog.

How is the recipe index different from the homepage?

They are different for a few reasons. 

The biggest reason is that the recipe index should almost exclusively display categories (use quick links for this) and the homepage should mostly list posts, with a few links to the most popular categories. (Use post listings for this.)

The next big difference is the purpose of each page.

The Recipe Index is used as a guide to help users find what they are looking for. They can start with an idea. Maybe they want to make a new Dessert; they would then follow a path on the recipe index going from Dessert into its subcategories (ideally on a Cultivate Category Page.) They see Cakes, Cookies, and Pies. They choose Cookies, then find a list of cookie recipes and look at a few until they decide on one that sounds good. 

The Homepage is more of a place for you to present an array of curated recipes to your readers and introduce yourself and your brand to them. You will show your most popular recipes and your latest recipes, introduce yourself, and include recipes from your most popular categories. (Use your favorite keyword research tool to find your most popular recipes and include them on the homepage!) We have a separate post about building a good homepage.

What else goes on the recipe index?

Find Recipe block

You can also include a search box, or in a CultivateWP theme, a “Find Recipe” block, because everyone knows how annoying it is to try to find something that just isn’t there. (A search box is the website equivalent of, “Speak to a representative!”)

A recipe index is a great place to include a call to action. As someone is scrolling by, they can drop in their email to get your “5 Best Recipes” or “Top 10 Instant Pot Tips” or just sign up for your email list.

Category Structure

How you structure your recipe index will partially be based on how your categories are structured, but the great thing about using Quick Links is that you can nest things and organize things however you want, and kind of create the illusion of categories that aren’t actually there.

Here’s an example:

If you have categories of Appetizers, Lunch, Dinner, & Desserts, but you don’t have a top-level category of Courses, that’s fine – you can make an H2 of “Browse by Course” and add the categories below it using the Quick Links Block.

Then, you can repeat the same thing with special diets or cooking methods, specific cuisines, etc. until you have a complete list of your categories.

This is just an example from our demo site. On a site with actual categories, you will have a lot more to use, so you can really build it out with a lot more categories. You can narrow things down by specific diets, cuisines, ingredients, cooking methods, seasons, holidays – whatever you want!

Here are some examples of a few CultivateWP sites with great recipe indexes –

Make sure that your readers can find your recipe index. Make sure to link to it in your Header/Footer Menus, on your 404 Page, on your Homepage, on your Author page, and you can even link to it in your emails. (I link to mine in my Save the Recipe emails to invite readers back for more recipes.)