Points for Food Bloggers

Not a day goes by that I do not surf the Net for recipes. For almost any dish I can think of there are pages and pages on line.

Almost every second person I know, myself included, has a food blog.

However, in this jungle of availability, there are all kinds of recipe websites. Some like, like certain trees, hog all resources but are not really that rewarding in themselves. For a long time now any dish I sought on Google would vomit Yummly pages galore. Clicking on them just led to a Yummly page where you could search for your recipe! Time consuming and, more often than not, a futile quest. This is no longer so and I might have had something to do with it as I took a survey sent by YUmmly where I managed to voice this complaint.

Why would such a thing happen?

It is possible that some wise guy working for the website begins to use a specific tool: a Keyword generating tool... I'm glad that Yummly, at least, has, at least for me, stopped this hogging of search resources.

While a good blog can get swallowed up in this ocean of plenty, it is, always, in the long run, better to use common sense strategies. 

When you blog about a recipe, take shots of the commercial products used and, perhaps, provide links to local supermarkets where one can obtain them. Creating a link with brands is a good step. But that does not mean you can claim anything from them. Some more work is required so that the companies realise that you are, in fact, "reviewing" their products, perhaps even endorsing them.

Much subtlety is required for, even in cooking, it is rarely a good idea to use dollops of anything.

Another reason why one is more attracted to some food blogs rather than to others is the blog background, especially the background colour. Novice bloggers leap at the choices offered by blogspace providers and you get pages of every hue of the rainbow. A simple white page with black lettering wins hands down-a basic matter of readability. 

Keep it simple for content is, unquestionably, the criteria.
A overly fancy looking cake or ice cream or any dish renders us quite suspicious about the taste. Elegance is, most often, a question of simplicity.

Lastly, all too many food bloggers assume that all there is to sharing the making of a dish is to type, typos included, the basic steps. It's a problem with all those who seek to teach, impart, anything at all-the inability to see from the point of view of the other. All the person thinks is needed is to basically tell others" Yipee! I can do it!" A mere boast, in other words.
And I do not blame them for it's what recipe books, which are sold in large numbers, do-although, flip through any recipe book and you will find that if you follow the instructions blindly you're more than likely to land up with an unpalatable mess. So, Food Blogger, do you want to boast or do you want to share with us the secret to making such and such dish?

Thus, one finds oneself drawn more frequently to blogs where a recipe is explained in steps, where the blogger even confesses to messing things up, analyses what went wrong, etc.

Finally, space! Provide lots of space for the eye to relax and you will make reading so much the easier.

A word to the wise: many photos can slow down blog page loading by which time your reader has run off to a blog which loads faster: so use photos sparingly. Let a photo have a purpose. One can always provide a link to another blog page where you keep an album of recipe pictures. Perhaps each dish can have it's album and on the page where you provide instructions, keep photos to a minimum.

Take the time to provide links to books or items which have something to do with the recipe.