Taste of Home Recipe Search

Recipes are very popular on the world wide web. And rightly so since it takes only a few moments to zero in on a recipe for a dish of interest. But the most publicly available recipes aren't kitchen-tested and are therefore likely to disappoint. That's where Taste of Home comes in with their database of 15,000+ kitchen-tested recipes.

The Challenge: Take Market Share from Competing Sites

While the recipe search tool was being developed, it was my responsibility to ensure that a large amount of organic traffic came from the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The more traffic we attracted from search engines, the less that would be going to our competitors in this space.

Of particular importance was ensuring that the Reader's Digest branded version of this recipe tool was able to compete with other well-known recipe brands.

The Solution: Search Engine Optimizing (SEO)

The real challenge here was to attempt to take away market share from the already well-established recipe search sites. A daunting task, but one that was not insurmountable. The key was to find where these other recipe sites had failed and to identify niche areas that were not already popular. Once identified, these niche areas would allow us to increase our popularity and ultimately expand our reach to more competitive areas.

The Results

Although it took longer than expected, several months after launch, the organic search traffic to the recipe tool finally represents an significant amount compared to the total. In fact, search engine traffic now comes in at just under 50% of all traffic.

Role

Search Engine Optimization Specialist

Reader's Digest (2004 to 2006)

Akri Consulting (1999 to 2004)

Silver Systems (1996 to 1999)