In short
A restaurant's recipe articles attracted home cooks, not hungry customers, and could not beat food blogs anyway.
What I did
A restaurant client's blog had 14 recipe posts. Over 16 months they had 56,203 impressions and 43 clicks, a click rate of 0.08 percent. About 82 percent of those impressions came from one post, which a later entry looks at on its own. Each one taught people how to make a pizza at home, while the business sells pizza. For the main recipe searches they also could not compete with big food blogs.
Where
A restaurant website, 16 months to October 2026
What changed
In October I turned 3 of them into buyer pages: the first sentence now answers what the pizza is, and the end explains where to order it. The addresses did not change. I will measure from 1 November. The biggest of these posts already got a new title and an order box in August and still gets almost no clicks (next entry), so these three may show the same.
Did it work
Too early to tell
What you should do
If you run a local business blog, ask what each post makes the reader want to do. If the answer is not to buy from you, change the angle.
How long it took
About a day for three posts
Search intent is what the person searching actually wants to do. A recipe search means I want to make this myself.
Why it matters
A restaurant ranking for recipes earns views from people who will not order. It also competes with sites that do recipes far better.
Questions like how much pizza to order for 20 people are asked by people about to buy. That is where food posts can help the business.
How to check your own site
- List your blog posts by impressions and clicks.
- For each one, write down what the reader wants. Keep the ones that lead to your service.
At a glance
ResultToo early to tell
Effort to copyAbout a day
Type of businessRestaurant and food
SubjectContent and topical coverage
56,203impressions on 14 recipe posts
43clicks over 16 months
0.08%click rate
| Status | Running |
|---|---|
| Hypothesis | Rewriting recipe posts around what the dish is and where to order it will raise their click rate. |
| Started | 2026-10-04 |
| Measured by | Click rate of the 3 converted posts from 1 November |
What this changed in how I work
Traffic that does not match the business is not much use. I now write food posts around ordering and choosing, not cooking at home.
End of Lab entry No. 032
- I rewrote one pillar article and it went from 14 clicks in four weeks to 140It worked27 Oct 2026
- The product descriptions were the same text dozens of other sellers use23 Oct 2026
- I retitled a page that was seen 39,586 times a year, and four weeks later it still gets almost no clicksMixed result22 Oct 2026
- One cooking question was typed 33 ways, seen 1,251 times, and clicked neverToo early to tell20 Oct 2026