broadlybrazen replied to your post “I need to find that post about how the issue with recipe blogs having...”
isn’t the long text included so that the post has a better chance of showing up in google search rankings?
I remember someone brought this up on that original post and here’s the thing: that’s both 100% correct and misses the point completely. The issue I have anyway isn’t huge blocks of texts, it’s huge blocks of badly written text. Write all you want if it’s engaging; if I’m in a rush I’ll scroll down to the recipe but there’s a decent chance I’ll go back and read it while I eat the food.
Also, while I’m completely uneducated in the intricacies of SEO I have to assume that having a dedicated repeat readership is part of the goal when it comes to selling and making money of ads, not just initial hits, and if you’re a good writer I might look at recipes I don’t otherwise care about or bookmark you as a blog to follow, vs. if you wrote some rambly nonsense I might click now, but I’m not going to stick around unless your recipe is truly exceptional and not something I could have just as easily found elsewhere. You get new hits but not repeats, at least out of me.
This is also assuming the goal is to get hits and not to be all new-agey but I’m very pro the idea of not feeling obligated to monetize your hobbies - I always felt that pressure when I was younger and it made me drop a whole lot of things I loved for years until I realized “oh I can just do this and make gifts for my friends and not feel like I’m squandering my time by not also creating an Etsy store or whatever.” Obviously the reality is many people do use this as an additional source of income, and hits and likes and comments are nice, but I don’t think we can assume that’s universally true of all people with recipe blogs.
Also I do genuinely mean that whenever someone is like “my husband hates so much of what I cook :)” it’s like well I’m glad you have an outlet to vent but I really hope you have IRL friends to vent to as well and that your ad money is going to pay for couples therapy.