The Recipe block lets food creators publish fully structured recipes on their UniLink page — with ingredients, step-by-step instructions, nutrition facts, and automatic Recipe schema markup that makes your content eligible for Google's rich results.
- Always fill in prep time, cook time, and at least one photo — Google requires these fields to qualify for recipe rich results in search.
- Ingredients listed as "a pinch of" or "to taste" are fine for print, but the servings calculator only scales quantities that have numbers — be specific.
- UniLink generates Recipe JSON-LD schema automatically from your block fields. You do not need a separate schema plugin or manual markup.
- Use the video-per-step feature for technique-heavy steps: showing a fold, a knife cut, or a dough consistency is worth more than a paragraph of description.
Food creators have a specific problem with link-in-bio pages: a link to a blog post or a PDF recipe has no context, no visual appeal, and no reason to click. The Recipe block solves this by embedding the full recipe directly on your UniLink page — photo, ingredients, instructions, nutrition facts, and all. Visitors get the recipe without leaving your page, and Google gets structured data that qualifies your page for recipe cards and carousels in search results. If you publish recipes anywhere in your content — as a blogger, nutritionist, chef, cooking channel, or restaurant sharing a signature dish — the Recipe block is the most SEO-useful block in your UniLink toolkit. This guide covers every setting, how the schema works in practice, and the common mistakes that prevent rich results from appearing.
What the Recipe block does
The Recipe block is a structured content display for a single recipe. You fill in named fields — recipe name, description, serving size, prep time, cook time, total time, difficulty, ingredients, and instructions — and UniLink renders them in a clean, formatted layout on your live page. The block also supports nutrition facts as an optional section, a notes and tips field, dietary tags (vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, etc.), cuisine type, and course type (breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, snack). Each field maps to a specific property in the Recipe schema spec.
The most important thing the Recipe block does behind the scenes is automatic schema generation. When you save a Recipe block, UniLink writes a Recipe JSON-LD object into the page head using the values you entered. You do not configure this manually — filling in the fields is enough. Google reads this schema when it crawls your page and uses it to determine whether your recipe is eligible for rich results: the visual recipe cards with photo, star rating, cook time, and calorie count that appear above standard search results in recipe queries. Getting into that display format requires structured markup, and the Recipe block handles it for you.
Beyond SEO, the block has two features that improve the experience for visitors who actually cook from the page: a servings calculator that scales ingredient quantities when a visitor changes the serving count, and a print button that generates a clean single-column print view without your page's navigation, sidebar, or design. Both are optional but worth enabling for any recipe you expect people to cook from directly.
Before you start
- Gather the complete recipe details: Have prep time, cook time, total time, serving size, and a full ingredients list ready before you start filling in the block. Partial entries — especially missing time fields — will prevent recipe rich results from appearing in Google. It is faster to fill the block once from complete notes than to go back and add missing values after publishing.
- Take or find a high-quality hero photo: Google requires an image for recipe rich results. The photo should show the finished dish clearly, ideally in good natural light against a clean background. Minimum recommended size is 1200×628 pixels. A blurry or low-resolution photo will suppress your eligibility for the visual carousel even if all other fields are correct.
- Write instructions as numbered actions, not paragraphs: Each instruction step should be a single action with a clear result — "Whisk eggs with milk until frothy" not "First you will want to combine your eggs along with some milk and whisk them." The schema uses each step as a HowToStep object. Short, imperative actions are more scannable for cooks and more useful to Google.
- Decide which optional sections to include: Nutrition facts, dietary tags, and notes/tips are optional. Nutrition facts require accurate calorie and macro data — do not add placeholder numbers. Dietary tags are worth adding whenever accurate because they appear in filtered recipe searches. Notes are a good place for substitutions and common mistakes.
How to add the Recipe block
- Open the page editor: Log in to your UniLink dashboard, select the page you want to edit, and click Edit.
- Add the Recipe block: Click + Add Block, scroll to or search for "Recipe," and click it. The block will appear at the bottom of your page — drag it to the position you want.
- Enter the recipe name and description: The recipe name becomes the schema's name property and appears as the block's heading on your page. The description is a 1–3 sentence summary of the dish — this text appears in search snippets when your recipe ranks.
- Upload your photo: Click the image field and upload your hero photo. You can add multiple photos as a carousel using the image gallery option — the first image is used for schema and rich results, subsequent images display in the on-page gallery.
- Fill in time and serving fields: Enter prep time, cook time, total time, and serving size. Use the provided format (e.g., 15 minutes, 1 hour 30 minutes). These map directly to schema properties and are required for rich results. Total time should equal prep plus cook time.
- Add ingredients: Enter each ingredient on its own line with quantity first — "2 cups all-purpose flour," "3 large eggs," "1 tsp kosher salt." Quantities must be numeric for the servings calculator to scale them. Vague amounts like "salt to taste" are fine as a note but do not scale.
- Add instructions: Click Add Step for each instruction. Keep each step to one action. Use the optional video embed per step for any technique that is hard to describe in text — a YouTube or Vimeo URL attached to a step will render an embedded video inline for that step only.
- Add optional sections: Toggle on nutrition facts if you have accurate data, add dietary tags that apply, select cuisine type and course type from the dropdowns, and add any notes or substitution tips in the notes field.
- Enable the servings calculator and print button: Both are toggle switches in the block settings. Enable them for any recipe you expect visitors to cook from. Save the block and view your live page to confirm everything renders correctly.
Key settings explained
| Setting | What it controls | Best practice |
|---|---|---|
| Recipe name | The block heading on your page and the schema name property — appears in rich results and search snippets | Use the recipe's common name, not an SEO-stuffed string — Google favors natural titles |
| Description | A short summary shown on the page and used as the schema description; often surfaces in search snippets | Write 2–3 sentences covering what the dish is, why it is good, and who it suits — be specific |
| Prep / cook / total time | Mapped to schema prepTime, cookTime, totalTime (ISO 8601 duration format generated automatically) | Always fill in all three — Google requires at least one time field for rich results, and all three produce the most complete card |
| Serving size | Base quantity used by the servings calculator and the schema recipeYield property | Match your ingredient quantities — if ingredients are for 4 portions, set serving size to 4 |
| Image gallery | Photos displayed on the page; first image used as schema image and OG image | Upload at least one image at 1200×628px or larger — required for recipe rich results |
| Ingredients list | Each entry maps to a schema recipeIngredient item; the servings calculator scales numeric quantities | Lead with quantity and unit — "2 cups," "1 tbsp," "3 large" — so the scaler works correctly |
| Difficulty | Displayed as a label on the page; not a schema property but useful for visitor scanning | Be accurate — a recipe marked Easy that requires special equipment loses visitor trust |
| Dietary tags | Shown as badges on the page and added to schema keywords; appear in filtered recipe searches | Only tag what is accurate — a recipe that uses regular soy sauce should not be tagged gluten-free |
| Video per step | Embeds a video player inline for a specific instruction step | Reserve for technique-heavy steps where visual guidance matters — folding, shaping, consistency checks |
| Nutrition facts | Displayed in a nutrition label and mapped to schema nutrition properties | Use only if you have calculated values — incorrect nutrition data creates liability and search trust issues |
Getting the most from your Recipe block
The servings calculator is more useful than it first appears. Visitors who cook at scale — meal preppers, people cooking for a party, parents halving recipes for small children — will use it, and pages with interactive elements like calculators see longer average visit duration. Longer dwell time is a behavioral signal that Google's systems associate with content quality. The mechanic is simple: you do not do anything extra to earn the benefit. Just enable the calculator and ensure your ingredient quantities are numeric.
Pairing the Recipe block with a video block on the same page is a strong format for YouTube cooking creators. Embed the full cooking video above or below the Recipe block. Visitors who want to watch can watch; visitors who want to jump to a specific step or print the recipe use the block. This combination keeps visitors on your UniLink page longer than a plain video link and gives Google two forms of structured content — video schema and recipe schema — on the same URL.
The notes and tips field is underused. Most creators leave it empty, but it is the highest-value text on the page for a visitor who has read the recipe and is deciding whether to try it. Common substitutions, make-ahead instructions, storage notes, and frequently asked questions about the recipe all belong here. Write it as prose, not a bullet list, and treat it as the expert context that distinguishes a recipe from a casual post — the kind of text that makes a visitor save the page to come back to.
Troubleshooting
| Problem | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Recipe not eligible for rich results in Google Search Console | Missing required schema fields — most often prep time, cook time, or image | Open the block, confirm all time fields and at least one photo are filled in, save, and resubmit the URL in Search Console's Rich Results Test |
| Servings calculator not scaling an ingredient | The ingredient quantity is written as a word or range rather than a number ("a handful," "2–3 cloves") | Edit the ingredient to use a single numeric quantity — "2 cloves" or "30 grams" — and the calculator will scale it |
| Recipe photo not appearing in Google's rich result card | Image is below minimum size (1200px wide recommended) or no image was added to the block | Replace the image with one that meets the size requirement; Google's Rich Results Test will flag image issues explicitly |
| Print button generates a page with your site navigation and ads included | A custom CSS override or theme setting is affecting the print stylesheet | Use the built-in print preview in the block settings to check — if it looks correct there, the issue is browser-level; contact support if the block's own print view is broken |
| Step video not loading on the live page | The video URL was entered in the wrong format, or the video is set to private on the source platform | Confirm the video is public on YouTube or Vimeo, re-enter the URL directly from the video's share button (not the browser address bar on YouTube), and save |
| Nutrition facts show incorrect values | The values were entered manually and have not been updated since the recipe changed | Recalculate using a nutrition calculator tool, update each field in the block, and save — incorrect macro data can trigger trust flags in some health-related search contexts |
| Dietary tag showing on the page but not appearing in filtered search results | Schema tags take time to be re-crawled after being added | Check the page's schema using Google's Rich Results Test to confirm the tags are present in the output — if they are, allow two to four weeks for the index to reflect the update |
Best fit for
- Food bloggers and recipe creators who publish regularly and want their recipes eligible for Google's visual recipe carousels
- Cooking channels on YouTube or TikTok who want a structured recipe reference on their bio page alongside their video content
- Nutritionists and dietitians sharing client-ready recipes with accurate nutrition facts and dietary tags
- Restaurants and catering businesses sharing signature or seasonal recipes as part of their brand content strategy
Not the right tool if
- You share recipes casually and do not have accurate time, serving, and ingredient data — partial schema is worse than no schema for rich result eligibility
- Your recipes are proprietary and you do not want the full ingredient list publicly visible on your page
- You want to gate the recipe behind an email signup — the Recipe block is open content; use a digital download block for gated recipes
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to add schema markup manually to my UniLink page?
No. The Recipe block generates Recipe JSON-LD schema automatically from the fields you fill in. When you save the block, UniLink writes the structured data into the page head. You can verify it is present by running your page URL through Google's Rich Results Test or a schema validator tool — the output will show the full Recipe schema object with all the properties you entered.
What time fields does Google require for recipe rich results?
Google's documentation states that at least one of prepTime, cookTime, or totalTime is required for a recipe rich result to be eligible. In practice, filling in all three produces the most complete card and reduces the risk of eligibility gaps. Always enter total time as the sum of prep and cook time — a totalTime shorter than the sum of its parts will be flagged as inconsistent data in the Rich Results Test.
Can I add multiple recipes to one UniLink page?
Yes. You can add multiple Recipe blocks to the same page. Each block generates its own schema object. However, having many Recipe blocks on one page works better as a recipe collection or sampler page rather than a main recipe page — for SEO purposes, a single focused recipe on a page performs better for recipe-specific queries because the page's topic is unambiguous. If you publish multiple recipes, consider dedicating one page per recipe and using your main page to link to each.
The servings calculator changed ingredient quantities but some ingredients show the original amount. Why?
The servings calculator only scales ingredients where the quantity is a number. If you wrote "a handful of spinach," "salt to taste," or "2–3 garlic cloves," those entries will not update when the serving count changes because the calculator cannot determine a numeric base value to scale from. Go back to the block editor and rewrite those ingredients with a specific numeric quantity. For estimates like "to taste," you can add a note after the quantity — "1/2 tsp salt, adjust to taste" — and the calculator will scale the numeric part.
Can I embed a video for every step, or just selected ones?
The video embed is per-step and optional — you can add a video to any number of steps independently. You do not need to add video to every step. In practice, video embeds work best for three to five technique-critical steps: shaping dough, folding batter, testing oil temperature. Adding video to straightforward steps like "preheat the oven to 180°C" creates visual clutter without adding real value. Select steps where a ten-second clip replaces a paragraph of difficult-to-describe description.
- Fill in prep time, cook time, total time, and at least one photo — these are required for Google's recipe rich results eligibility.
- UniLink writes Recipe JSON-LD schema automatically from your block fields — no manual markup needed.
- Write ingredient quantities as numbers so the servings calculator can scale them correctly.
- Use the video-per-step feature for technique-heavy steps where visual guidance replaces a paragraph of text.
- The notes field is the highest-value optional section — use it for substitutions, storage tips, and common questions.
Ready to share your recipes and get into Google's rich results? Create your free UniLink page and add the Recipe block today.