A Recipe Index allows users and search engines to understand and browse the categories of your site. It’s also a good idea to include it in the breadcrumbs for your recipe posts.

You can use the Site Options page to control how the Recipe Index is added to the breadcrumbs. There are a few approaches you can take depending on your content structure.

Replace the Recipes category

If you have a mix of recipe posts and non-recipe posts, you likely have a top-level “Recipes” category, and subcategories for Appetizers, Main Dishes, etc.

When you view a recipe post, the breadcrumbs likely look like: Home > Recipes > Appetizers, with “Recipes” linking to the Recipes category.

In this case, it’s recommended that “Recipes” actually links to the Recipe Index instead of the Recipes category, as that’s a better way for readers to explore all of your recipes. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Go to Site Options and scroll down to the Breadcrumbs section (see screenshot above).
  2. Select your Recipe Index page in the first dropdown
  3. Select the Recipes category in the second dropdown
  4. Toggle “Yes” for “Replace recipes category with Recipe Index in breadcrumbs” (not shown in the above screenshot because it only appears once you have a Recipe category selected)
  5. Leave the other toggles set to “No”
  6. (Optional) Edit your Recipe Index page, go down to Yoast SEO > Advanced, and change the “Breadcrumbs Title” (you could set it to “Recipes” instead of the default “Recipe Index”)

Add Recipe Index to top level categories

If you do not have a Recipes category and your top level categories are your recipe categories (ex: Appetizers, Main Dishes), we can add the Recipe Index in front of them.

  1. Go to Site Options and scroll down to the Breadcrumbs section (see screenshot above).
  2. Select your Recipe Index page in the first dropdown
  3. Leave the second dropdown empty
  4. Toggle “Yes” for the two toggles to add Recipe Index to all posts and all categories
  5. (Optional) If you have non-recipe categories, select them in the “Exclude from these categories” dropdown
  6. (Optional) Edit your Recipe Index page, go down to Yoast SEO > Advanced, and change the “Breadcrumbs Title” (you could set it to “Recipes” instead of the default “Recipe Index”)