Not getting many visitors from google

[Terry75245]

Hi,

I have created a website that suggests recipes based on ingredients you search for and select. So you can select all the ingredients in your cupboards / fridge and find recipes to use them up and save money.

The database has been populated with links to 90,000 different recipes and many more ingredients than this, scraped from several large recipe sites, so this is quite a unique selling point.

The site has been tested throughly and works on all the major browsers, tablets and smartphones.

The problem is I have hardly any visitors, maybe 1 every other day on average from Google.

I fear they are not sending much traffic my way because there isn't much content on the main/home page for the site until you start selecting ingredients; then recipe links start getting suggested.

If this is the problem, I can't think of any relevant content I could load on the page by default that would enhance the site / not look out of place / pointless to a user..

If this isn't the main problem, then what am I doing wrong ?

Please, any help would be great

Thankyou !

[zico82]

So you have scraped content from other sites and you don't have an content on other pages. Your links are all outbound links to recipes on other sites, you don't mention if you have links from those other sites back to yours, so I am going to presume no.

Well I am afraid I am stumped, looking at the information above I can't think of any reason why Google wouldn't send you any traffic.

What you need to do is start off with some basic SEO by reading some of the posts in this forum to help you get started and understand where you have gone wrong.

[Noj]

Harsh, the guy obviously has had what I thinks a good idea but hasn't thought how to integrate with search engines.

The world doesn't revolve round SEO you know.

So you have scraped content from other sites and you don't have an content on other pages. Your links are all outbound links to recipes on other sites, you don't mention if you have links from those other sites back to yours, so I am going to presume no.

Well I am afraid I am stumped, looking at the information above I can't think of any reason why Google wouldn't send you any traffic.

What you need to do is start off with some basic SEO by reading some of the posts in this forum to help you get started and understand where you have gone wrong.

[Noj]

OK I like you idea and i am happy to try to help. Maybe its because I like to open the cupboard door and will cook with what ever is inside.

OK what Google is lacking here is content it can read, and a lot of new landing pages to hit long tail keywords.

you have the search terms such as

what can i cook with backed beans?
a recipe with lamb, celery and eggs?

Which you site has the ideal data for, you just need to create landing pages for these. An ideal landing page would be;

Search function with pre selected ingredients and the ability to add more ingredients to refine the search.

150 - 200 unique words based round the combination of pre selected ingredients that page refers to.

The resulting links for those pages.

Build up these static page son the site and you start to have real estate to attack a large number of phrases, and deliver traffic.

Hi,

I have created a website that suggests recipes based on ingredients you search for and select. So you can select all the ingredients in your cupboards / fridge and find recipes to use them up and save money.

The database has been populated with links to 90,000 different recipes and many more ingredients than this, scraped from several large recipe sites, so this is quite a unique selling point.

The site has been tested throughly and works on all the major browsers, tablets and smartphones.

The problem is I have hardly any visitors, maybe 1 every other day on average from Google.

I fear they are not sending much traffic my way because there isn't much content on the main/home page for the site until you start selecting ingredients; then recipe links start getting suggested.

If this is the problem, I can't think of any relevant content I could load on the page by default that would enhance the site / not look out of place / pointless to a user..

If this isn't the main problem, then what am I doing wrong ?

Please, any help would be great

Thankyou !

[zico82]

Harsh, the guy obviously has had what I thinks a good idea but hasn't thought how to integrate with search engines.

There is nothing harsh about that at all. Sarcastic, I think would would be more appropriate. But I did also tell them to start reading posts in this forum and learn the basics to see where they are going wrong.

[Terry75245]

Noj, I am confused (but very excited !) about what you are suggesting ;

Currently my site stores ingredient selections in session variables rather than the URL, but that would be easy to change, is this what you are suggesting ?

How would Google find the links to pre loaded searches you are talking about ? ;

a.) Would I submit them through googles submit url page,

b.) Or put these links somewhere on the sites home / landing page ?

[zico82]

Ok so how would Google find these new links to pre loaded searches ? Would I submit them through googles submit url page, or put these links somewhere on the sites home / landing page ?

I did have plans to preload the site by default with the top 100 most clicked / popular recipes from my site, would this help or hinder as they would all be links to other sites ?

Sorry for my sarcasm earlier Terry. I should have just pointed out where you were going wrong.

[Noj]

The idea would to build up a directory type structure with ingredients, with common ones moving down through combinations.

Link your simple top level through to your more complex lower level.

Top level - Recipes with chicken
Next level - recipes with chicken and cashew nuts
Next Level -recipes with chicken cashew nuts and jello

I would change the code to use session variables or URL variables, which I could do in my old coding days.

I would also do some URL rewriting so these pages, so they appear top have static URL's.

Also if you clever you can use your DB only show pages where the are potential recipes, and create interesting and useful data.

Noj, I am confused (but very excited !) about what you are suggesting ;

Currently my site stores ingredient selections in session variables rather than the URL, but that would be easy to change, is this what you are suggesting ?

How would Google find the links to pre loaded searches you are talking about ? ;

a.) Would I submit them through googles submit url page,

b.) Or put these links somewhere on the sites home / landing page ?

[DarrenHaye]

After your sort your SEO out..

If it is such a great site, why don't you promote it socially? pay for sponsored posts on popular food blogs, utilize twitter, facebook, youtube..

Make some cooking related infographics for pinterest?

You made what you think is a great site.. don't just sit there now and expect people to come without spreading the word a bit, get the ball rolling, then if what you have really is a great site you shouldn't even really need search engines.

[Terry75245]

Ok,

I have modfied the site, so now you can post an ingredient into a URL and it will then forward you to the homepage with recipe suggestions for that particular ingredient.

I have also put 5 randomly generated ingredient links from the database, which feed into this mechanism, really just for google to follow.

Have I gone about this in the right way ? If not, what am I doing wrong ? I made the changes a couple of days ago and haven't seen a big increase in my traffic yet..

I also created a google webmasters account and it seemed to mention how a sitemap could help me with such dynamically generated content ; Could it ? If so, what would the basic structure of the sitemap look like ?

I have experimented with a sitemap before and it wasn't a great success.

Also, I don't have a robots.txt file, should I be using one ?

[jetwalker102]

You might want to consider using some degree of content creation. It’s an easy and fast way to increase the volume of your website. Basically, you use someone else’s content and add some value to it, for example by inserting your own remarks and comments mixed with fragments of the original content. You also need to add link to the original source. The main idea is to choose topics that are really interesting, so your users don’t have to sift through all the garbage information on their own. Curation works great for online marketing and builds trust in your website and ensures a lot of users will return for more quality content. Curation and its application in online marketing are thoroughly explained here: rubymediacorporation.com/blog/why-content-curation-should-be-a-vital-part-of-your-marketing-strategy/

[fathom]

The problem is I have hardly any visitors, maybe 1 every other day on average from Google.

The problem is... most people don't search for recipes based on what they currently have in their cupboard or fridge. If they search at all it's to find best new recipes to impress their dinner guests.

You'll need to do your homework on websites that cater to your target audience and create literary works for what makes your project valuable to them... and then use social media to drive additional traffic to your domain.

[Noj]

lol ... im odd then.

but i suppose if im doing what is in cupboard/fridge cook i dont look at recipes

The problem is... most people don't search for recipes based on what they currently have in their cupboard or fridge. If they search at all it's to find best new recipes to impress their dinner guests.

You'll need to do your homework on websites that cater to your target audience and create literary works for what makes your project valuable to them... and then use social media to drive additional traffic to your domain.

[Dr.Marie]

I've searched for recipes this way in the past. I've looked for things like, "What can I make with chicken and coconut milk?"

I think it's a good idea.

However, one of the issues may be that Allrecipes.com (a well known recipe site) has a feature that does this for you - you put in what ingredients you want and don't want and it finds you recipes. Once I discovered that, I haven't done a lot of Google searches like I mentioned above.

[Terry75245]

My site has 90,000 + recipe links from allrecipes UK, BBC food and the food network UK and I have plans on ice to scrape more if worthwhile, so that might provide me with some kind of niche.

Also, as a brit, what frustrated me when looking for recipes on the internet was frequently finding recipes where the ingredient names and measurements were in an american format, which made it difficult for me to decipher.. hence why all my recipes are from UK sources.

Anyway, back to the SEO ;

I can see google and quite a few other search engine spiders (baidu, yandex, sistrex) are hitting my site every day and following internal links on the homepage, but the number of real visitors passed to me from Google has dropped to zero since I updated SEO information to do with my site 4-5 days ago like the title tag, header tag, sitemap and I played around with some things in my google webmasters account that I didn't fully understand.

Is this normal? The changes I made didn't seem particularly drastic to me..

I.e Do I just need to be a bit more patient, or have I made some kind of terrible mistake ?