Chef'd SEO

Brade & Brotherton 1
Erica Brade and Paige Brotherton
303- Introduction to Web Publishing
Search Engine Optimization Assignment
April 1, 2018
SEO Analysis and Recommendations for Chefd.com
I. Keyword Research – Recommended Keywords (Cr)
The keyword/phrase we think will drive the most traffic: “Vegan Meal Plan”
Strongest content for key phrase considerations:
We chose Chef’d’s Vegan Collection to drive traffic to because this is a short-tail
key phrase. Short-tail key phrases are more competitive and will drive in more traffic.
Purple Carrot is a plant-based meal delivery service and is ranked very high on
searchenginereports.net and mikes-marketing-tools.com. We thought Purple Carrot
would be a good competitor for Chef’d’s Vegan Collection page.
Some of the key phrases we also considered were “Vegan Meal Kits”, “Vegan
Prepared Meals”, and “Vegan Meal Plan Delivery”. We chose not to use any of these
because they were not trending high enough or at all on Google Trends to give us
enough visitors. They also were not ranked high enough on adwords.com.
Key phrases considered: “Vegan Meal Plan” “Vegan Meal Delivery” “Best Vegan Meal
Delivery”
We chose “Vegan Meal Plan” because it was ranked very high on adwords.com.
The average monthly searches for “Vegan Meal Plan” was 10K-100K. This also ranked
the highest out of the three on Google Trends. This key phrase also has plenty of room
for improvement with chefd.com. When using mikes-marketing-tools.com the search
engine results came back as “no” for Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. This gives us room to
improve the SERPs. Google Trends also showed us that this key phrase is still rising
and has not reached its peak yet. This makes it a great key phrase to use since it is still
trending.
Next, we chose “Vegan Meal Delivery”. This was our second-best result of
Google Trends. This key phrase is gradually rising and was the second-best result for
the average monthly searches. “Vegan Meal Delivery” has 1K-10K monthly searches.
Bringing in an additional 300-3000 visits. There is also plenty of room for improvement

with this key phrase because the search engine results for chefd.com was “no” for
Google, Bing, and Yahoo!.
Finally, we chose “Best Vegan Meal Delivery”. We were trying to find a long-
tailed key phrase for comparison. This key phrase was recommended on adwords.com.
This also received “no” for Google, Bing, and Yahoo! on mikes-marketing-tools.com for
the search engine results. There is definitely room for improvement with this one also.
We decided not to use this as our main key phrase because it does not rank very high
on Google Trends. Adwords also shows that “Best Vegan Meal Delivery” only has an
average of 100-1K searches per month. This only bringing in an extra 30-300 visits.
Google Trends Analysis:
According to Google Trends, “Vegan Meal Plan” is the most searched option out
of our top three key phrases. It shows that the search for “Vegan Meal Plan” is still
rising. “Vegan Meal Delivery” is the second trending option and is still rising although it
is a significant difference from the first key phrase.
The last key phrase we searched was “Best Vegan Meal Delivery” and that one
is not doing well since it is staying in the same place for the most part with an
occasional rise in numbers. We kind of expected this since it is a long-tailed key phrase.
Long-tailed phrases are not as competitive and tend not to drive as much traffic in. So,
the results for this one was not surprising.

Keyword Ranking Analysis:
Vegan Meal Plan Vegan Meal Delivery
Best Vegan Meal
Delivery
Google Bing Yahoo! Google Bing Yahoo! Google Bing Yahoo!
Chefd.com “No” “No” “No” “No” “No” “No” “No” “No” “No”
PurpleCarrot.com “No” “No” “No” 2 9 “No” 6 “No” “No”
This keyword ranking report shows where each key phrase we chose ranks. We
used both searchenginereports.net and mikes-marketing-tool.com for each of the
websites and only seemed to get a “no” when checking the key phrases against
Chef’d’s Vegan Collection website. “No” represents that the key phrase is not showing
Chef’d’s Vegan Collection page in the top ten of the SERPs. Even though all of the key
phrases are trending on Google Trends. Using the same sites for Purple Carrot we
noticed that their site ranked much higher than Chef’d’s and came to the conclusion that
it is because the Purple Carrots site is all plant-based meaning all of their meals are
vegan, which would rank them higher on SERPs.
Potential traffic:
Average
Monthly
Searches
Number of
Additional Monthly
Visits if Ranked
No. 1
Current
Average
Monthly
Traffic
Potential Monthly Traffic
Range
Maximum
Potential
Monthly
Traffic
Vegan Meal Plan 10K-100K 3,000-30,000
156,666.67
159,666.67-186,666.67 186,666.67
Vegan Meal Delivery 1K-10K 300-3,000 156,966.67-159,666.67 158,666.67
Best Vegan Meal Delivery 100-1K 30-300 156,696.67-156,966.67 156,966.67
Based on our chart, “Vegan Meal Plan” is the most promising. It’s average
monthly searches are 10K-100K which is a lot higher than the other two key phrases.
Chef’d could gain between 3,000-30,000 more monthly visits making their potential
monthly traffic 186,666.67 when the site’s current monthly average now is 156,666.67.
Ultimate Key Phrase Choice: “Vegan Meal Plan”
Our ultimate key phrase choice was “Vegan Meal Plan” mainly because it is
ranking so high on Google Trends and Adwords right now. Google Trends also shows
that it is gradually increasing each month. Right now, we could already receive up to

30,000 more visitors a month using this key phrase and if that keeps increasing in
searches we can receive even more. The only issue with this key phrase is that it is not
ranking at all in the search engine results page for Chef’d or Purple Carrot. This is not
all bad, because this gives us much room for improvement.
II. Content Analysis & Authority (Cq, Vt, Ta)
Chefd.com Score: 10
PurpleCarrot.com Score: 10
Explanation of Topic:
Quality content is broken down into three different areas credibility, value and
thin content. Credibility is making sure the site is well written, free of typos and unique.
Unique meaning there is no other content on the web just like it. Value is giving the
visitors reason to spend time on the site, giving them more than just a simple
description and good customer service. Thin content is low engagement, low value,
duplicate content and not a lot of words on a page. Junk is what thin content is. Quality
content is important to SEO because “it is the cornerstone on which nearly all other
factors depend.”
Analysis of Quality Content / Thin Content:
● Credibility
Chef’d’s Vegan page has well written content and only had one possible
typo according to Online spell checker, which was “veganized.” After doing some
research, we found that the word “veganized” is spelled correctly. We think that
maybe the spell checker wasn’t familiar with the word and wasn’t sure if it was
correct or not. CopyScape.com was only able to find one other website that
looked to have a similar recipe for “Garlic Powder Cloves” but other than that
there wasn’t any
According to Readability-Score.com, our page received an “A” in
readability. The Flesch Reading Ease score is a score of 70-80 is equivalent to
grade level 6 and our page scored a 76.6. This means that the page is easy to
read for kids that are 12-14 years old.

● Value
The site goes beyond being a simple brochure with the same information
that can be found on other sites. This adds value because Chef’d is not a
subscription-based meal company unlike most others. Chef’d also has an à la
carte option, meaning the meals can be switched out and selected by the
consumer for each meal kit. The meals are not preselected by the company.
The site also offers reasons for the visitors of the site to spend more than
a few seconds on each page. For the Vegan page, there is the option to click on
each meal item and learn more about them. When visiting the meals specific
page there are several different tabs explaining the ingredients, nutrition facts,
and what tools the customer will need at home to complete that meal.
Our site has ratings and reviews for each individual meal. Below we have
attached an image showing what this section looks like. It is available directly
under the ingredients and nutrition facts section. This ratings and reviews section
adds value to the Vegan page because this allows the customer to see reviews
from previous buyers. This allows the customer to be more confident in their
purchase.
We believe the reviews section could be improved by creating a way to
validate the reviews. There is nothing on the reviews that can prove that they are
legit. There are very few of them and depending on the meal, they are not all five
stars. This helps with validation a little because if they were fake reviews, they
would not be writing bad ones. Otherwise, there is not really a specific way to
completely validate our reviews. Each meal has enough reviews that the

customer has a few to read through and receive a general idea of what the meals
will be like. This allows the customer to see there are multiple different star
rankings which can allow some validation.
Our site also includes a section at the top of the page that lists the
difficulty level, the spiciness level of the meal, and the total amount of time it
takes to prepare and make the meal. Below there is a screenshot showing what
this section looks like. This adds value to our site because the customer can
automatically get a feel for how long each meal will take to make, how difficult it
will be, and what the meal itself will taste like.
Chef’d offers good customer service by offering things such as free
shipping with a $40 or more purchase. This is shown on the top of each page so
that the customer does not miss it. Below we have attached a screenshot of what
this promotion looks like on each page.
Another reason Chef’d has good customer service is because they are
willing to help and will ask anyone to reach out if there are problems. Below there
is a screenshot of one of the most commonly asked questions, “What happens if
there is a problem with my order?” The screenshot shows that Chef’d responded
with, “We sincerely apologize for any issue you experience with your Chef’d
order. Please feel free to reach out to our Customer Care Team within 2 weeks
of receiving your order so they can provide you with a resolution.” They continue,
“We want every Chef’d experience to be a positive one, so we will be sure to
work hard to solve any issue you may encounter.” This is then followed with the
Chef’d Care Team phone number, email, and their office hours.

At the bottom of each page, Chef’d also offers a “Help” selection. This
offers the customer to type in any question they have, and a Chef’d employee will
respond with an answer. This improves Chef’d’s good customer service because
there is immediate help whenever the customer needs it. There is also a
“Questions and Answer” section along the bottom of each individual meal. Below
there is a screenshot of what this section looks like. This allows the customer to
ask questions publically and wait for a response from either Chef’d or other
customers.
● Thin Content
Thin content basically means that the site is very poorly created and has
low value and low engagement. Above we talk more in depth about each of those
topics and decided that our site does not have thin content. There are definitely
things that Chef’d can improve on but overall, they are doing well right now. The
sites value is extremely well because of how precautious they are with typos and
was created basic enough that 12-14 year olds could read it. The credibility is
also high quality because all of the recipes and information on the site is unique.

When checking on CopyScape, “Garlic Powder Cloves” seemed to be a similar
recipe on another website, but that was the only thing.
Chef’d also has the option to engage more in each recipe and that helps
with the sites content. This keeps visitors on the site longer and shows that the
site does not have thin content. Though there are little improvements the site
could include to improve their engagement. The overall content right now is not
bad.
Analysis of Trust / Authority:
● General Trust Topics
Chef’d is an authority on vegan meal kits because they have chefs that
are experts in the vegan food field, creating the meals for the customers. We
thought that visitors should expect to see any of the vegan meals in related
magazines. We wouldn’t even think twice about providing our credit card
information to the site because Chef’d is a trustworthy site. According to
GoDaddy.com, Chef’d’s domain has been registered for 19 years, starting in
1999. The expiration year for the site is 2019 meaning that the domain is only
registered for another year. The longer the domain has been registered the more
trustworthy it seems to visitors just because it’s older.
● Domain Authority and Page Authority
The domain authority and page authority for Chef’d was 46 out of 100 and
55 out of 100, which in the vegan meal kit industry that is not great, but it is not
bad. This industry is highly competitive because there are so many vegan meal
kit companies out there. Google is looking at the type of links to the website and
the social references to check the authority of the page, but no one knows for
sure how Google calculates it.

Purple Carrot’s domain authority and page authority was 48 out of 100
and 56 out of 100. Their numbers weren’t that far off from Chef’d’s, showing that
both pages have authority. We checked what Green Chef’s (another vegan meal
kit company) authority is and it was lower than both Chef’d and Purple Carrot.
Coming in at 54 out of 100 for the page authority and 47 out of 100 for the
domain authority.
Recommendation for Improvements:
We believe the Vegan page could be improved by adding more interactive
elements to the page. There could be options to interact with the ingredients. Maybe
show all of them laid out on the counter and have images of them. This would show how
much is going to be shipped to the customers house, so they know what to expect.
We think there should also be an option to scroll over each ingredient and tell
how much is being sent, what the packaging is like, maybe if it is organic. Any additional
details about the individual ingredients the customer might need or want to know. This
would also be a good section to potentially break down the different spice blends that
are being sent to the customers house. Including a section that allows then to scroll
over the blends and see what spices all are mixed together. This is convenient for
anyone that has to be precautious of allergies or being aware of what spices are
causing certain spiciness levels to be high in a meal.
There could also be a section to interact with the box that it going to be shipped
to the customers house. This could show the customer what to expect to arrive at their
doorstep. This box could potentially be interactive and be able to be opened which
could then hold the ingredients and different food items that will be sent to the
customers door for that specific meal.

III. Architecture (As, Au, Am)
1. Speed (As)
Page Load Speed Home Page “Category” Page
Chef’d 10.047s 9.138s
Purple Carrot 4.232s 4.232s
Analysis:
Speed is important to SEO because Google and other search engines consider
speed in their rankings. Speed is ranked on “The Periodic Table of SEO Success
Factors” as a +2. This means it is only semi important to the search engines when
considering ranking. Users appreciate speed because after 10 seconds users lose
engagement in the site and that will increase the sites bounce rate.
The speed is determined by what is put in the site and how long each item takes
to load. JavaScript and images are typically what cause the speed to become slower.
Below we show screen shots of the top three items slowing down the speed. The first
one is the “veganbanner.jpg”. This image is the largest image at the top of the page.
This photo takes the full 9.138s to load, this being the reason the page speed is so
slow. This is also at the head of the page, above the fold. Since it does not finish
loading until a little after 9 seconds, it should really be moved higher in the CSS, so the
photo is done loading more quickly. Right now, it is number 81 on the list, meaning it is
the 81st item to begin loading.
This is a screenshot of the waterfall chart. This shows that the “veganbanner.jpg” does
not appear until almost 3 seconds into the page loading and does not finish until a little after 9
second.

The images above are screenshots of the filmstrip that webpagetest.org offers of
the site. These screenshots show that the site does not show anything loaded above the
fold until 3 seconds in which in when the vegan banner begins loading. At 3 seconds the
site is only 42% loaded. The second image shows that the page is not fully loaded until
9.5 seconds when the vegan banner is completely loaded and finally shown.
This is the vegan banner image that takes the most amount of time to load.
The second thing on the waterfall chart that takes the most amount of time to
load is the image of the “Mushroom Lettuce Cups with Asian Dressing.” In the CSS the
image is labeled as “OHero_grande.jpg.” This image takes right at 9 second to load.
Below we have a screenshot showing that the image is ranked 80 on the CSS meaning
it is the 80th thing being loaded. This image is also above the fold and should be moved
higher on the list to hopefully improve loading time. The image does not even begin
loading until a little over 2.5 seconds in.
This is an image of the waterfall chart showing the image does not even begin loading
until a little over 2.5 seconds in and does not finish loading until 9 seconds.

This is a screenshot of the image on the Chef’d’s Vegan page. It is the
first meal to appear above the fold.
This is the image before being placed on the page.
The third image that is slowing down the page loading speed is an image
labeled as “appstore_btn.png.” The image begins loading at almost 3 seconds
and finishes loading at 9 seconds. This is image is almost tied with the second
image in loading speed. Below I show the image that is the third slowest loading
image.
This loading speed was extremely surprising to us because the image is
really small compared to the rest of the images on the page and is located at the
very bottom of the page. It is also the 82nd image to be loaded which is directly
below the “Vegan Banner” on the top of the page, above the fold. Directly below
we show the waterfall chart screenshot of this images loading speed.

This screenshot shows that the app store image begins loading at 3 seconds and
finishes loading around 9 seconds.
This image shows the app store button located at the bottom of the page along the
bottom border. It is a relatively small image and seems to be very simple.
We have also screenshotted the pie chart results from webpagetest.org and
posted below. This chart shows which sections of the page have the longest loading
speeds. 40.1% of the loading is coming from images. This being the largest section of
the pie chart. The second largest section is the JavaScript and that is taking up 29.1%
of the loading speed. Coming in third is the “other” section of the pie chart. This can
consist of many things just depending on the site.

This chart breaks down the number of request in the HTML and CSS that change
the page loading speed. These numbers are the ones used to create the percentages in
the pie chart directly above.
2. URLs (Au)
Current URLs:
Chef’d.com URL for Category Page: www.chefd.com/collections/vegan
PurpleCarrot.com URL for Category Page: www.purplecarrot.com
Recommended new URL: www.chefd.com/mealplans/vegan
Explanation:
URL structure is important to SEO because it helps keep the site better
organized and it helps Google understand what the page is about. The current
URL for Chef’d’s Vegan page is www.chefd.com/collections/vegan, while that
isn’t a terrible URL it also isn’t a good one because most people don’t search for
collections when looking for meal plans so that would be misleading for
customers to see. Purple Carrot’s URL is just www.purplecarrot.com, we chose
to just do their home page because the whole company is all vegan or “plant-
based.”
Comparing how each site on their URL naming structures, Purple Carrot’s
URLs are more friendly or easy to understand than Chef’d’s page. Chef’d’s URLs
probably make sense to people at Chef’d but if a new user is looking at it they
might be confusing. We chose to change part of the URL from “collections” to
“meal plans.” Changing the URL to “meal plans” not only incorporates our key
phrase but also does a better job of explaining what the page is about and makes
it “friendlier.”

Our recommended URL structure follows Google’s Starter Guide because
it uses words instead of numbers so users aren’t confused, the URL uses the
simple directory structure showing the steps of how the user got to that specific
page and that is the only page on the website that has that URL, making sure
there aren’t any other versions of the website.
3. Mobile (Am)
Chefd.com Score: 10
PurpleCarrot.com Score: 10
Explanation:
According to searchengineland.com, more Google searches happen on
mobile devices than on desktop, which is one HUGE reason why mobile is
important to SEO. Google rewards sites that are mobile-friendly, giving that site a
better chance of making better rankings on mobile searches than those that
aren’t mobile-friendly. We came to the conclusion that Chef’d is using the
responsive method because the site supported a variety of screen sizes.
Everything on the page condensed down to one single column when we tried
making our browser window smaller than the normal desktop browser window.
Based on Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Chef’d’s Vegan page is mobile-
friendly although there were 17-page resources that couldn’t load. 11 of the page
resources that couldn’t load were blocked by robots.txt meaning that Google’s
Googlebot was blocked from what was trying to load. The other six issues were
either redirection errors or “other errors.”
After looking at Chef’d’s Vegan page on a mobile device, we noticed that it
looks similar to the smaller desktop browser window. All of the content was put
into a single column. Everything that a user would see on the desktop version of
Chef’d’s Vegan page is still able to be seen on the mobile version. There were
only a few differences in the we noticed. There weren’t any ads on the mobile
version of the site, but they did keep the option to ask questions and leave
reviews. All of the navigation stayed at the top of the page and the user is able to
just slide the options side to side. One was that when using the full screen
version of the site the difficulty, spiciness, time and suggested pairings are
moved over into a second column. Another difference was that the ingredients,

allergens, from your kitchen and nutrition facts are now placed next to each other
and you just click on each title for the list.
This is the mobile version of the difficulty, spiciness, time and suggested pairing.
This is the desktop version of the difficulty, spiciness, time and suggested pairing
showing the two different columns.

This is the mobile version of the ingredients, allergens, from your kitchen and
nutrition facts showing the collapsible menu.
This is the normal desktop version of the ingredients, allergens, from your kitchen
and nutrition facts showing the different menus next to each other.

IV. HTML: Current Keyword Location
1. Title Tags
Current Tags:
Chefd.com Title Tag for Category Page: <title>Vegan</title>
PurpleCarrot.com Title Tag for Category Page: <title>Purple Carrot | Plant-Based
Meal Delivery</title>
Explanation:
A title tag is important because that is what a consumer first sees when
the get the results from the search engine. If the title tag doesn’t have any of the
key words in it then our website might not show up in the SERP and that means
no traffic to our site. From what we found after viewing the page source for both
pages Purple Carrot had not only mentioned their name but also that it’s a “Plant-
Based Meal Delivery” website. Chef’d only put “Vegan” in their title tag which
doesn’t explain what their site is really about.
According to Google’s SEO Starter Guide, a title tag should accurately
describe the page’s content, shouldn’t have a title tag the same as any other
pages and be brief but descriptive. We think that “Chef’d Meal Plans | Vegan”
covers all of those things.
Recommended New Title Tag for Chef’d.com:
<title>Chef’d Meal Plans | Vegan</title>
1. Description Meta Tag
Current Meta Tags:
Chefd.com Meta Tag for Category Page:

that what you prefer will appear.” It is easy to include and can potentially help so
we added it.
Recommended New Meta Tags for Chef’d.com:
<meta name="description" content="Begin crafting vegan cookery in your kitchen
like a pro, with our vegan meal plan, offering pre-portioned ingredients. No
subscriptions. No meat. No dairy. No animal-based products, whatsoever. All
delivered to your front door. Order now.">
2. IMG names and ALT text
Chef’d Image Tag Details:
ALT text = N/A
Purple Carrot Image Tag Details:
ALT text = “Plant Based Diet”

Recommendation to Improve Chef’d.com ALT Text:
ALT text = “Vegan Meal Collection”
Explanation:
ALT tags are super important to SEO because without them consumers
that have disabilities would not be able to find what they were looking for very
easily. Chef’d did not have an alt tag for the main picture on the Vegan Collection
page. Purple Carrot however had their ALT tag as “Plant Based Diet” which
doesn’t fully explain what the site is. Consumers with disabilities don’t necessarily
know that this website is for vegan food and no other products that are vegan.
We recommended that Chef’d add the ALT tag “Vegan Meal Collection” so that
consumers will be able to see what the page is about.
V. Priority Recommendation
The single element that we believe should be the main focus to change is the title
(Ht). Right now, the title tag of the page is just “Vegan”. We already showed that we
would change it to “Chef’d Meal Plans | Vegan”. This includes not only our key phrase
but also the companies name itself. The title (Ht) ranks as a +3 which means it is
extremely important in “The Periodic Table’s SEO Success Factors.” This alone would
increase our SERP.
Also, going along with the title, the heading of the page right now includes the
word “collection” which is very misleading. Collection comes across as being a
subscription-based meal plan. It also sounds as if you were “collecting” the items. A
better phrase would be “Meal Plans” or “Menu.” This is an easy change that can
drastically change our SERPs almost immediately. No one searches for “Vegan
Collections,” so by changing the heading to “Meal Plans” it will not only include our key
phrase but will also improve our SERP.
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