Posts and pages confuse some users so this is an attempt to clarify the key differences in how recipe sites implement them.
- Posts are used to write recipe posts, or anything that is substantially identical
- Recipe cards are a component of a recipe post, not a post themselves
- Posts should be organized into categories (see how to use categories)
- Pages are used for administrative-style content, such as about, contact, homepage, etc.
Ambiguity
The main issue comes down to ambiguity with the word "page". In general internet terms, every page that loads is a "webpage" (or just "page"). When someone lands on your recipe "post", the internet considers that a "page".
Within the context of WordPress, a "page" is a literal page type, not a post type. That's this section of your site:
Honestly this is frustrating and stupid but it's too late to change.
Landing page
Within the context of analytics, a "landing page" is any page that your user first lands on your website.
Within the context of internet marketing, a "landing page" is a page specifically designed to optimize for a conversion - a sale, contact, signup, etc.
Typically, if you're going to build a "landing page" to sell an ebook or sign up for a course, you're going to create a WordPress page-type.
Posts vs. Recipes
The terms "posts" and "recipes" are sometimes used interchangeably as well.
It's important to clarify that a recipe typically means a recipe card within a post. A recipe is written in a specific plugin such as WP Recipe Maker, which is inserted into an actual post.
When you're creating a recipe post to link your readers to, you'll link them to the POST, which contains the recipe card.
To add to this confusion, some outdated themes created a CPT (Custom Post Type) that creates individual recipe card pages - this is an incorrect way to create a food blog and anyone on this setup needs to migrate to a better theme and use a separate recipe card.
Technical note
Posts, pages, and any CPT (Custom Post Type) are saved in the same database format and are technically the same on the backend. The difference between these is what features they do or don't have access to. How these are decided are more or less arbitrary and not important to the average user.
Jill says
Hi Skylar! I started a food blog a few years ago and didn’t get the memo that I should do “posts” instead of “pages” for my recipes, thinking that recipe content is static information. Changing each page to a post would change the URL, making it hard to get them all back on google as it would seem to be a duplicate page. What should I do?! Keep doing pages? Start doing posts from here on out and leaving the old content alone? Advice would be much appreciated!
Skylar says
Hey Jill!
The only setup we've ever worked on is one where recipes are done in posts and organized into categories.
We've never worked with or tested a setup that converts from pages to posts, and what kind of implication that has. To safely do this, you'll want to hire an SEO expert like https://mediawyse.com/ to provide site-specific guidance.
You can always try to DIY after doing lots of research, but you'll have to accept the risk that you may have missed something and the consequences could be big traffic losses.