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Store Recipe Setup & SEO Tips

Paul Dandurand
Updated

This page contains helpful tips on how to best describe your recipe to make it informative and compelling. It also covers Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips to improve your page's rank with Google search results. Please read each section for both instructions and SEO tips. Although SEO fields are not required (defaults are used), we highly recommend you modify them to be successful.

Sections in this article:

 

 

Pricing

You have the option to offer your recipe for free or at a price. The default is Free. If you want to charge a price, select the One-Time Price radio button and enter an amount in US dollars (excluding cents).

80/20 Revenue sharing:

If someone purchases your recipe, the transactions are processed by Pie. We will process the purchase and then provide you with 80% of the collected payment minus Stripe fees within 30 days of collection. The Pie system will auto send you an email whenever someone purchases your recipe.

Customer re-importing:

The person who purchased your recipe is importing it into an organization workspace in Pie. Therefore, the purchased ownership is at the organization level.

This means any team member under that Pie organization can import the same recipe multiple times, and also get any updates of the same recipe, at no extra charge as long as they are updating it in their same organization.

If the purchaser tries to import it into a different organization, then they will be prompted to pay again.

If you want to update your existing recipe and charge your paid customers for a new version, upload it as a new recipe item page rather than updating the existing one.

How it works for the customer:

If your recipe is for a price, the way it works for the purchaser is when they click the import button on your recipe page, we will first check to see if they already have a Pie account. If not, they will be given the Pie signup form to get their own free Pie account. Then we will give them a page for them to click checkout to get the Stripe enter credit card form for the purchase. Once completed, when they land in their new Pie account, your recipe will be ready for them to use.

If your recipe is Free, then the checkout for the Stripe credit card page will be skipped and they will land in their new account with the recipe ready for use.

Please contact us at support@pie.me if you have any questions.

 

  

Recipe Name (required)

Recommendations:

The recipe name in the store is pulled from your uploaded recipe. You can modify this name in your store configuration page. If you do, it will not change the name of either the original recipe or the store version recipe in your Recipe List page. (As a reminder, when you upload a recipe, Pie makes a new version in your Recipe List page which is the version connected to the store.) Feel free to change your recipe names to match any name change you might make in the store configuration page.

SEO Tips:

It is not critical that your recipe name contains your targeted keyword for Google search results. You will be using the Title Tag (see below) for search engine results. You do want your recipe name to be clear and relevant to avoid people leaving the page once they land there. Your Title Tag should be closely related to your recipe name.

 


Recipe Description & Benefits (required)

Recommendations:

This is the main content of your page where you need to best describe a compelling story as to why someone would want to use your recipe. Here are some writing tips:

  • Describe the problem and how your recipe solves the problem.
  • Quickly educate the visitor.
  • It should be clearly written with a simple, friendly, and natural voice while commanding real value about your recipe.
  • Present quick wins and how easy it is to execute.
  • Mention early that your recipe can be used with the Free version of Pie. If you have premium features in your recipe, such as dependencies, you can state something like "You can use this recipe with the Free Pie version even though we added premium features, such as task dependencies." 
  • Don't use acronyms or complex words.
  • Break up the content into many small paragraphs instead one or two large paragraphs.
  • For bulletin, you can use the dash symbol for each line. You want to keep the reader engaged enough that they will want to click the import button.

Description field SEO Tips:

Your recipe name, title tag, meta description should consider keyword search terms. We want people to find your page!

  • Consider long-tail keywords that are not too competitive and may have lower search volume.
  • Use your top keywords once within the first paragraph (first 100-150 words) of your description.
  • Don't over use keywords throughout the rest of the content as Google will penalize the page as keyword stuffing.
  • Mention keywords in the copy only in a natural, friendly way. Instead of repeating the keyword, use synonyms. For example if your main keywords are "onboarding software developers", you can later use "getting the developers started in their first week" as an alternative.

 


Video

Supported video hosting: YouTube, Wistia, Vimeo, Facebook, Streamable, and DailyMotion.

Play the following video to learn how to create a video for your recipe.

Although Pie doesn't require you to create and add a video, it will add tremendous value. A video helps a visitor not only learn about your recipe, but also learn a little about Pie. Here are tips on creating a video.

  1. Take a look at a store recipe created by PieMatrix to get an idea of how a video could be made.
  2. Start with a screen recording tool. For example, we use ScreenFlow by Telestream for the Mac. For Windows, there are a number of options in the market.
  3. Prepare before recording
    - It's important to use the standard 1600x900 video resolution
    - Set up a PowerPoint slide or a Mac Keynote slide with a blank page that is 1600x900 pixels
    - Slide your browser with your Pie recipe over that slide and align the browser's window to align with that slide's dimension. Ensure your alignment in the rectangle is fitted so only the Pie application is 1600x900. For example, the browser tool bar, URL, browser tabs, etc should not be in that rectangle.
  4. Record the video
    - Keep it between 2-6 minutes in length depending on how much you want to show.
    - Show highlights of the content and display one or two task descriptions where its detailed.
    - While recording, if you make a mistake, don't stop the recording but continue with re-stating and re-recording the bad section. You can cut out the bad parts in editing.
    - To help with later editing, try not to speak as you are navigating if you need to make some later cuts with editing.
    - Don't worry about pausing. In fact pausing and thinking about what you will say and show next is good since you will then edit out the paused sections during editing.
  5. Edit the video
    - Trim the video window to fit the Pie recipe screen. We recommend you don't include anything outside of the Pie app, such as the browser tool bar, URL, browser tabs, etc.
    - Listen to the entire video and edit as you go through it.
    - Cut out some dead spots where you paused. Keep it moving for the viewer.
    - Make it interesting, such as zooming in and out at various points.
  6. Publish the video to your preferred video hosting site, such as your YouTube Channel. At Pie, our favorite hosting service is Wistia.
  7. Once hosted, copy its URL and then paste it into your Pie recipe configuration page vide field. 
  8. That's it! Contact Pie Support if you have questions or would like more suggestions and tips.

Video SEO Tips:

The better your video, the more likely the visitor will watch it to the end. This means the visitor is spending more time on your recipe page, which can add credit to your page ranking.

 

 

Screenshot Images

Play the following video to learn how to set up your images.

Add images of your Pie recipe to show your key screens. We recommend two images if you are adding a video or three images if not adding a video. You can add text under each image. You can drag and drop to reorder your images if needed with the upper left corner icon.

  1. Prepare your Pie browser dimensions before doing a screen capture
    - We recommend you use 1200x800 at 72dpi for the image resolution
    - Set up a PowerPoint slide or a Mac Keynote slide with a blank page that is 1200x800 pixels
    - Slide your browser with your Pie recipe over that slide and align the browser's window to align with that slide's dimension. Ensure your alignment in the rectangle is fitted so only the Pie application is 1600x900. For example, the browser tool bar, URL, browser tabs, etc should not be in that rectangle.
  2. If you're on a Mac, you can use Shift-Command-4 key combo to bring up the crosshairs for selecting your screen for a screen capture. For Windows, use the Snipping tool.
  3. Next is to open your saved screenshot with an image editing tool to save it as a web-friendly small size. The Mac or Windows screen capture tools tend to save the image in a size that's too large. A good tool would be Photoshop. There are a number of free resizing tools in the market. Microsoft has a tool called Resize Image.
  4. Once ready, you can add it to your recipe page.
  5. Finally, add a description or caption under the uploaded image.

Images SEO Tips:
If your files sizes are too large, they will hurt your Google search rankings due to slow page loading. Follow the steps above to reduce the file size. Use descriptive text for explaining the image. This could be a good place to use alternative and referring keywords. (See Top Referring Keywords explanation in the Site Title Tag section below.

 

 

Category (required)

Categories is how the store organizes and groups recipe items. To add a category, click in the "select category" field and choose from the dropdown. You can add up to two categories and your recipe item will be listed twice, although they will be pointing to the same page. Each category has its own page banner background photo. If you add more than one category, the first category you select will the banner used.

 

 

Tags

(upcoming feature)

 

 

About the Creator (required)

The author, company, and description fields are all required. This is an important place to add your credibility. Also include a note about your accessibility, such as "see my email link below and contact me with any questions you may have about this recipe and I'll reply back as soon as possible."

  • Add your first and last name as the Author. If you want to credit more people as the author, just add the names with commas separating them.
  • Add your business name. If this a personal recipe with no business association, then you can just add your name again. 
  • Add a description to add recipe creator credibility. This is a good spot to explain why you're the expert and maybe how your company has used this recipe internally if that's the case. The description about you and your business should be relative to the recipe and its content. 

 

 

Copyright & Agreement (required)

The copyright and agreement field is required. This is helpful to let the public know that they have the rights to import and use your recipe. You can state resell restrictions if you have them. For example, if they modify more than 50% of the content, then they can take ownership of the recipe.

However, if they modify less than 50% or use it as is, they cannot resell the content as it's still copyrighted by you and your company. If you're selling your recipe on the store rather than making it for free, then you may have more strict terms.

We recommend you discuss this with your company's attorney for the best wording.

 

 

Keeping it Fresh

This section is where you can talk about how you will be providing future updates to improve the recipe. This field is not required, but if you offering a time-based process, such as how to submit tax filings for 2019, then it may be helpful to the user that you will be delivering a 2020 version.

 

 

Creator Links

We allow you to add up to three URL links that will be displayed on your store page.

Here are example links that may be useful for your audience:

  • Your support email (highly recommend)
  • Your company's home page
  • Your blog post talking about your recipe at length

If you want to add your email, in the URL use this format "mailto:[email address]". For example, in our case we would write it as "mailto:support@pie.me". This could be your personal business email or your support email.

Consider partnering with Pie to write a blog on your recipe as a guest blog writer. Send us an email and we'll reach out to you to discuss this possibility. 

 

 

SEO URL Slug

A “slug” is the text at the end of the URL. For example, if the URL is https://my.pie.me/store/my-recipe-name, the "my-recipe-name " is the slug. We auto create your page’s slug from your recipe title. 

You can modify this slug before publishing. This is to help improve what the slug says for SEO purposes. 

PLEASE follow these important guidelines if you are to change it:

  • Ensure you choose the correct slug before you publish. You can change it afterwards and our system will need to create a "301 redirect" to cover any previous Google crawler indexing so someone doesn't end up with a missing page. Please choose carefully before publishing.
  • Spaces are not allowed. Use dashes in between each word.
  • Use lower case. 
  • Remove any function works like "a", "the", "and", "to", etc.
  • Keep it short! Google ranking penalizes URL slugs that start to get beyond 5 words.

Here are some tips to optimize your slug:

  • Include your keyword. It has to make it clear what your recipe is about.
  • Try to keep it short as possible and descriptive while still making enough sense.
  • If your recipe process is popular and there are others in the store, you will want yours slug to be different enough to stand out without too much competition.
  • We suggest you don't use time-based text, such as the year 2020 in the slug. This will become a problem if you later update your recipe page with a 2021 recipe version. However, if your recipe is very specific to that period, then it can work well to include the date.

Note that Pie will auto add a unique ID at the end of the slug if your recipe has an exact duplicate slug of another existing recipe.

 

 

SEO Title Tag

The title tag is not the same as the recipe name. They are HTML elements that specify what the web page title is for Google search results. Pie automatically uses your recipe name for the page title tag, but we highly recommend you improve on it.

Modify your page's title tag to include your targeted keyword for search results. Be sure to include your keyword in the first 60 characters of your title tag. Your title tag's success will be from the click-through rate. The more people click your Google search results page title, the higher Google will rank your page. Here are some pointers (source: Moz):

  •  Length: Studies show that the sweet spot is 50-60 characters (including spaces). Try to fit the most important keywords at the beginning of the title tag.
  • Numbers: Including numbers in the title tag, such as "3 Easy Phases Hiring Onboarding Software Developer Contractors" when your recipe name might be "Onboarding Software Developer Contractors". People brains tend to catch numbers while scanning quickly.
  • Dates: Including dates can improve results. For example, if the recipe name is "QuickBooks Year End Tax Steps", the title tag could be "Important 2019 Year End Tax Filing Steps Using QuickBooks". When using dates, be sure to add a reminder task in Pie to update your recipe content and your title tag for the next time period to keep it fresh.
  • Synonyms & Variants: Consider using synonyms and variants such as in the above example, we could have "Important 2019 Year Tax Filing Steps QuickBooks Bookkeeping" where we added "bookkeeping" and removed "end" and "using" to keep it under 60 characters. To help find variants people search is to type your keyword in Google search and notice the dropdown Google shows as variants.
  • Call to Action: Starting your title tag with "Execute..." or "Follow..." or "Download..." could help, especially since you're offering a recipe that is actionable. People may not be using an action verb in their search, but when they see your listing they may be more enticed to click into your store page since this indicates they will be able to do something.
  • Top Referring Keywords: You may optimize your store recipe description section with one set of keywords but may find people are coming to your page using another set of keywords. For example, going back to the "Onboarding Software Developer Contractors" recipe name, people might find your page with other keywords like "interview steps" or "contractor agreement". If you learn about these other keywords in your page body that are working you might bring them up into the title tag.
  • Questions: Consider turning your title tag into a question, such as "How to Hire Software Developers?" This helps with people's curiosity attraction. This could also get your result in Google Featured Snippet if your page is ranking well.

We recommend you do your own Google search, such as searching "SEO title tag" and set the search tool to search for the last year or last few months to get the latest tips from the experts.

 

 

SEO Meta Description

The Meta Description is the text under the Google search result title tag. If written well, it can give your recipe page an advantage in Google search results, providing higher click-through rates. If you don't enter a meta description, Pie will capture the fist 220 characters of your recipe Description & Benefits section by default. Therefore, we highly recommend you consider updating this field. Following are tips on how to write a meta description:

  • Depending who you ask, the optimal length can vary. We suggest 180-220 characters (including spaces). The consensus is Google may cut it off after 300 characters, but no one knows for sure.
  • Provide value. Think of "what's in it for me" or "why should I visit your recipe page".
  • Make it inviting.
  • Include a call-to-action.
  • Watch out for completion from Google Ads listings. Don't make it sound like a sales pitch, but rather educational and executable.

An example: "Free QuickBooks step-by-step process on filing your 2019 state and federal payroll taxes. Run it like a simple project with action tasks."

We recommend you do your own Google search, such as searching "SEO meta description" and set the search tool to search for the last year or last few months to get the latest tips from the experts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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