Have you wondered if a recipe index is necessary to have on your food blog? If you have, today’s episode is for you! I’ll be answering this frequently asked question about whether or not a recipe index is relevant for food blogs today. 

What is a recipe index?

A recipe index is a visual way to showcase your different categories and the way your website is organized by category. 

It differs from your homepage because your homepage should be set up in a way to highlight the best content as well as your latest content. Your homepage may also include non-recipe content, whereas a recipe index would ONLY have your recipe content highlighted. 

A recipe index is like a table of contents for your website. It helps someone to see what you have to offer or to find what they are looking for quickly. 

Homepage vs recipe index vs category pages

Homepage – curated look at your best and latest content (includes recipes/non-recipes)

Recipe index – like a table of contents for your website. At a glance view of how your website is structured. 

Category pages – view of latest recipes within one topic (category). 

Which categories should you include?

Your recipe index should highlight the best categories on your site. Ideally, you would not have a lot of categories that you wouldn’t want to highlight on your index, but if you haven’t done a category audit (episode 76 for more info on categories) you might find that that’s helpful to do before organizing your recipe index. 

You can organize categories into groups like course, protein, etc. if that makes sense for your brand. 

Tips for your recipe index

This shouldn’t be a list of all of your recipes. It’s not a blog feed. It should continue the user experience you created on your homepage to curate a journey for your reader. 

It’s okay to have a similar set up to your homepage but shouldn’t be identical. Someone may land on your recipe index first before your homepage. 

Make sure your recipe index is linked in your navigation. 

Call attention to your recipe index on your sidebar and within blog posts to help readers understand that it’s there to help them browse the website. 

Include a search bar on your recipe index. 

Keep the design interesting on this page. It shouldn’t just be the same layout and styling for different sections. 

Unless your blog features a lot of content outside of recipes, I recommend only ONE recipe index. Multiple index pages can be very confusing for readers. There are some exceptions to this but most food bloggers only need one recipe index. 

If you have less than 5 or 6 categories or under 50 blog posts, a recipe index is probably not needed, but can be super helpful once you have more content!

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