I want to start this off by talking about something that I know all of you probably agree with. A daily frustration that bothers me and everyone I know.

Yes. I’m talking about recipes.

Why is it that when you need to find the recipe quickly, all of them (literally all the recipes) make you wade through endless explanations about the history of the dish, the variations, or the personal stories before getting to what you actually came for: the ingredients list and the steps to make it? [1]

It would seem that this goes against SEO best practice – getting the important content to appear upfront in the article. After all, the intent of the user (at least the majority of people I would guess) is get to the practical part fast: “How do I make this goddamn thing?” Not that the dish was created in the 16^th century or what someone’s personal feelings are about it.

So why does that happen? That Google ranks recipes in such a way that the key piece is buried at the bottom? It got us thinking about little SEO quirks and so here’s five that seem to run counter to best practice but end up working.

No. 1: The Recipe SEO Conundrum: Content Depth Tops Intent in Some Cases

So, what’s happening here? Google tends to rank long, story-heavy recipe pages because its systems reward depth, originality, engagement signals, and ad-driven publisher incentives, while still trying (imperfectly) to balance different user preferences for “just the recipe” vs more context.

Why does all that filler show up high and get ranked?

If you think about it, a bare list of ingredients and steps is short, often looks like “shallow” or near-duplicate content compared with hundreds of other almost-identical recipes for the same dish. Longer intros, personal stories, and background make the page more unique semantically, which can help it stand out and rank.

Google’s Search Liaison has explicitly said that different users want different things: some only want ingredients, some want a recognizable author, some want background and story, and systems try to show what seems “generally helpful,” not only the shortest version.

Indeed, intros also let bloggers naturally work in variations, techniques, common questions, and related keywords that a stripped-down recipe card cannot, which makes the page a better match for a wider set of queries (“how to make moist banana bread,” “how long to bake,” “why mine is dense,” etc.). This is also one of the core elements of AIO/GEO (optimizing for AI engine platform searches). 

Finally, part of the appeal of structuring recipes in this way: studies show most users do scroll, and many reach well below the fold; in some cases, people spend more time just below the fold than at the very top. That means Google can still see strong engagement signals (time on page, scroll depth, interactions) – one important ranking consideration – even if the actual recipe is lower down.

All that said, more and more, Google is encouraging websites to also allow site visitors to get to the recipe quickly if they’d like to, with clear “jump to recipe” anchor links, recipe summaries, and visible structured data so key details can appear in SERP features.

No. 2: Infinite Scroll on Category/List Pages

UX guidance would certainly favor clear pagination for control, bookmarking, accessibility, and performance, while characterizing pages that have an infinite scroll as being a bit more disorienting, with hard‑to-reach footers and load issues.

Yet, one area that Google does seem to favor – long scrolling feeds can significantly increase session duration and content consumption, which correlates with stronger engagement signals. This can actually indirectly support SEO when implemented with crawlable URL updates or parallel paginated versions.

No. 3: Exact Match Domains Still Get Traction

Officially, Google downplays exact-match domains (EMDs) as a ranking factor and emphasizes brand and content quality over keyword-heavy domains.

Yet, in practice, EMDs remain overrepresented near the top of SERPs in many niches, likely because they drive higher click-through rates and perceived topical relevance (“phillyinjurylawyers.com” feels instantly relevant), which can indirectly boost rankings despite conflicting with modern branding and UX-first naming advice.

Also, if you think about it, such domains that are also the business name tend to repeat the keywords anytime the name is mentioned.

No. 4: Heavy Use of Jump Links / Table of Contents on Long Pages

Big, above-the-fold tables of contents with lots of anchor links can look cluttered, push real content down, and feel over‑engineered from a pure UX or minimalist-design standpoint.

Indeed, we generally recommend against them because it can create visual chaos at the top of what is often a long article.

Yet, they often reduce bounce, increase time on page, and can earn SERP “jump to” sitelinks, which boosts CTR and overall SEO performance, even though they make the page look more like an SEO artifact than a clean editorial layout.

No. 5: Repeating the Main Keyword in the Title and the Headings

A lot of best-practice advice says “don’t stuff” keywords into a page. Keep titles concise, and avoid repeating the same keyword in the headlines, because it looks spammy and may hurt CTR.

In the real-world of search engine results pages, slightly redundant titles like “Best Coffee Beans: How to Choose the Best Coffee for You” or matching the keyword in H1 (Coffee Beans) and an H2 still perform fine (and sometimes better) as long as they read naturally, clarify the topic, and support scanning.

Conclusion

As you can see, with SEO is often not a hard-and-fast rule as much as it is understanding the various factors at play and weighing them all. Perhaps what you need most of all is good judgment and experience at getting pages to rank, either from doing this on your own or from hiring professionals like us at Marketing Nice Guys. With SEO/GEO, don’t hesitate to contact us anytime for a free consultation. 

[1] This came up because the other day we were having a conversation with our colleague Kenan, who brought up this topic and similarly expressed frustration.