SEO Analysis for Chef'd

Taylor Johnson & Taya Downs
Introduction to Web Publishing
Professor Jacquie Lamer
10 April 2018
SEO Analysis & Recommendations for Chefd.com
I. The keyphrase I think will drive the most traffic: “Healthy meal prep”
Strongest content for keyphrase considerations:
When considering strong content to drive traffic to, we were looking for content that
would make Chef’d stand out from other meal kit delivery services. We concluded that
something that sets Chef’d apart is its no subscription policy, making it essentially hassle-free to
order and reorder meals for any meal of the day or day of the week. In addition to that, Chef’d
can go beyond saying they are a company focused on nutrition and dietary needs; their 700+
meals have the ability to satisfy anyone. Ultimately, we searched for content that was strong in
and of itself, that could only become stronger with a specific keyphrase.
When we recalled the site, we had a few ideas of content that we thought essential to
Chefd.com’s brand as well as unique content. A few ideas we came up with were Weight
Watchers or Atkins meal plans, the Quick and Easy collection and the Lighter Options cooking
style. As mentioned previously, Chef’d doesn’t require any subscriptions, so we wanted to
accentuate the content that was not associated with a meal plan.
Left with Quick and Easy and Lighter Options, we began brainstorming keyphrases that
would drive traffic to those pages and would be unique to Chefd.com’s content compared to
other meal delivery services. For Quick and Easy, our keyphrases primarily focused around the

word easy, (ie. easy meal plans, easy dinner ideas), which would not necessarily be the searches
that would bring attention to meal kits, but users ready to prepare a meal for that evening. In
addition to that, the keyphrases including easy were vague or lacked a target audience. When
considering the Lighter Options section, the keyphrase potential range extensively, namely
low-calorie, low-carb and healthy. We liked that this content showcased Chefd.com’s initiatives
towards creating healthy, gourmet meals. Taking in those considerations, we also liked that this
page was found in the hover section of “All Meals,” a page that was of interest of our testers
when conducting usability tests. After considering potential keyphrases to go along with each in
addition to site placement, we believed that the Lighter Options section was a great opportunity
to boost traffic to Chefd.com, resulting in more meal kits sold.
Although the setup of HelloFresh.com is based around meal plans, content that is similar
to Chefd.com’s Lighter Options page can be found when a user clicks on “Our Menus,” and then
“Menu Archive.” When considering the strongest content that Chefd.com had, we also viewed
HelloFresh to compare. Comparable product collections to Chefd.com’s Quick and Easy and
Lighter Options would be HelloFresh’s Quick Meals and Classic Plan menu.
As mentioned previously, the Lighter
Options meals are listed under cooking styles
under the “All Meals” navigation tab. Similar in
structure to most pages on Chefd.com’s website,
this page features meals that have fewer calories
than others, but also feature a small “Net Carbs”
feature (Figure 1) next to the title of the meal.

In general, the target audience for this page is health-conscious individuals; recognizing that it is
a large population and a competitive market to meet those needs. From these conclusions, we set
off to find searchable keyphrases that would improve Chefd.com’s traffic as a result of search
engines.
Keyphrases considered: “30 minute meals” “Low calorie meals” “Healthy meal prep”
The first keyphrase that we considered was the phrase “30 minute meals.” Our thoughts
behind choosing this phrase are based on the convenience that dominates the United States
today; Americans don’t want to waste their time preparing a meal when they could use that time
doing something more valuable. Along the same lines, we believe that thirty minutes was an
appropriate amount of time for someone to be cooking a meal—especially one that is gourmet
and healthy. One area that this keyphrase lacks, however, is that it does not include any reference
to a meal plan or meal kit, most likely resulting in a high bounce rate. Similarly, we took into
consideration was when a user would be searching this keyphrase, most likely around the time
they would be preparing the meal. If this were the case, even if Chefd.com appealed to the user,
it would be unrealistic for the time frame in which the search was conducted.
The next keyphrase we looked at was the phrase, “Low calorie meals.” Different from
“30 minute meals,” this keyphrase targets Chefd.com’s healthier options, driving potential traffic
to the Weight Watchers or Atkins meals plans or the 500 calories or less collection. We believe
that this keyphrase would highlight Chefd.com’s ability to offer a variety of healthy meals and
would be searched by health-conscious users. Traffic from this keyphrase would be beneficial to
Chefd.com if the user found the features included within individual meal kit pages, specifically
the meal’s detailed nutrition facts. However, similar to the first keyphrase, we decided that this

search would most likely be done by a user getting ready to prepare a meal for that night, taking
Chefd.com’s meal delivery kits out of the running. Although the target zone is clear with this
keyphrase, the phrase might result in a high bounce rate.
The last keyphrase we took into consideration to drive traffic to Chef’d was “healthy
meal prep.” Something we liked about this keyphrase was that it was forward-thinking; a user
searching this keyphrase would not have that night’s dinner in mind, but would be thinking in
advance for meals to come. Whereas the other two primarily focus on that night’s dinner, this
keyphrase captures a user who is both looking to cook themselves and is searching for healthy
options. Potential pages that this keyword could link to would be the Weight Watchers or Atkins
meal plans, 500 calories or less collection or featured Lighter Option meals.
Google Trends Analysis:
Above is a screenshot of Google Trends that compares the search interest over time for
our three keyphrases. When looking at the chart, it is important to know that Google Trends

scores are just relative and do not represent actual values. The highest/lowest points on the chart
represent the time when a keyword had the highest/lowest relative search volume. The rest of the
trends are then scaled accordingly. The first keyphrase, “30 minute meals,” had a low search
interest when compared with the other two keyphrases. However, we noticed that even though its
search interest was lower, its trends were more consistent than the other keyphrases.
The second keyphrase, “healthy meal prep,” had the highest overall relative search
interest out of all three keyphrases. Its highest point was 100, appearing to have this high interest
around the time of the new year. As mentioned earlier, these scores are relative, so the score of
100 just means that the keyphrase “healthy meal prep” had the highest search volume at this
point during the given time frame. Like mentioned earlier, the spike in interest happened around
the time of the new year, which is not surprising because many people tend to try and start a
healthy lifestyle at the beginning of the year. Even though the search interest dropped to around
62 shortly after that, it has stayed fairly consistent since that drop. When looking towards the far
right side of the chart, this keyphrase seems have gained interest in recent weeks.
The third keyphrase, “low calorie meals,” was in between “30 minute meals” and
“healthy meal prep” when it came to relative search interest. There were a couple places on the
chart where low calorie meals was at about the same level of interest as both of the other
keywords. It also gained relative interest around the time of the new year, just as “healthy meal
prep” did. However, the keyphrase seems to have lost interest over the past couple of weeks .
When looking at these trends, it was helpful to compare the relative search interest between
keyphrases to help guide our choice in which one would be most beneficial for Chef’d to use.
However, other tools were used before coming to a conclusion.

Keyword ranking analysis:
“30 minute meals” “Healthy Meal Prep” “Low Calorie Meals”
Google Bing Yahoo
!
Google Bing Yahoo! Google Bing Yahoo!
Chefd.com 73 “No” “No” “No” “No” “No” “No” “No” “No”
HelloFresh.com “No” “No” “No” “No” “No” “No” “No” “No” “No”
Table 1 compares the SERP performance for our top three keyphrases. When looking at
Chefd.com, “30 minute meals” was the only keyphrase that even returned a result besides “No”.
Since this result had a numerical value of 73 on Google, that means Chefd.com would appear on
approximately the 7th result page. As mentioned in class, many users only look through the first
and maybe the second results page to find what they are looking for. So, it is very unlikely that
the user would even see Chefd.com as a result. “30 minute meals” returned “No” on Bing and
Yahoo, meaning that Chefd.com is not in the top 10 results for this specific keyphrase.
“Healthy meal prep” and “Low Calorie Meals” returned “No” on all browsers for Chef’d.
HelloFresh also returned “No” for every keyphrase on every browser. We used
SearchEngineReports.net as another source besides Mike’s Marketing Tools to see if we could
get any additional data for the keyphrases besides “No”. However, this source returned the same
results. For comparison purposes, it would have been helpful to have more numerical values for
both Chef’d and HelloFresh. However, we reminded ourselves that “No” still told us that Chef’d
is not currently listed in the top 10 results, meaning that the company has lots of room for
improvement.

When looking at the table overall, it would be easy to say that Chefd.com has a horrible
SERP performance. However, these results give Chef’d an opportunity to improve its rankings.
Since these three keyphrases relate to specific content within Chefd.com and align with
Chefd.com’s offerings, it is important for Chef’d to try and improve its ranking within the search
engines.
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
“30 minute meals” 10K-100K 3,000-30,000
156,667
159,667-186,667 186,667
“Healthy Meal Prep” 10K-100K 3,000-30,000 159,667-186,667 186,667
“Low Calorie Meals” 10K-100K 3,000-30,000 159,667-186,667 186,667
The table above displays the current traffic of Chefd.com, as well as how much potential
traffic could be added to Chefd.com if the site became the first organic listing on a SERP. “30
minute meals,” “Healthy meal prep,” and “Low Calorie Meals” all had the same average
monthly searches, ranging from 10K-100K. Since these keywords had the same averages, it was
helpful to have Google Trends as a resource to compare the search habits of users and come to a
final conclusion on a keyphrase, which will be discussed later. However, these three keyphrases
were not the only ones we typed in the Google Keyword Planner tool, so we knew that some
keyphrases ranged from 1K-10K, and others from 100K-1M. It was our goal for our chosen
keyphrase to have at least 10K searches, so all of these phrases met that requirement.

Since the first organic listing on a SERP has a clickthrough rate of 30%, Chef’d would
gain anywhere from 3,000-30,000 additional monthly visits if it appeared as No. 1. Even on the
low end, 3,000 additional visits per month would benefit Chef’d because any extra visits would
hopefully lead to more sales. Since Chef’d is an online meal store, traffic is vital for Chefd.com’s
survival because purchases cannot be made without visiting the site. If Chef’d gained 30,000
additional visits, its overall traffic for that month would increase by about 19%. To some sites,
30,000 additional visits a month is a small amount when compared to their overall traffic. But
since Chef’d only has 156,667 average visits per month, those 30,000 extra visits could have a
huge impact on sales.
Ultimate keyphrase choice: “Healthy meal prep”
After looking at the tables above in combination with the Google Trends analysis, we
decided that the best keyphrase for Chefd.com would be “Healthy meal prep.” Numerous pages’
traffic could benefit from this keyphrase, but we decided that the strongest placement for this
keyphrase would be in combination with Chefd.com’s Lighter Options meals. We believe that
“Healthy meal prep” would be successful on Chefd.com because it promotes a healthy lifestyle
and is used for preparing meals in the future as a part of a meal delivery service.
Seeking to create meals for anyone with allergies, dietary restrictions or watching what
they eat, Chef’d prides itself in offering hundreds of meals that will fit the needs of anyone. In
combination with the content we chose, this keyphrase not only matches up with Chefd.com’s
products, but a trend in healthy eating and lifestyles that is popular today. One benefit we saw
with including the word ‘healthy’ in our keyphrase was an exponentially higher number of

searches in search engines, reflecting this trend. If Chef’d were able to grow with this population,
not only would they see traffic increased short-term, but for the long haul.
Something unique about the keyphrase “Healthy meal prep” is that it is most likely
searched by a user looking to prepare meals in advance, say Sunday for meals throughout the
week. An opportunity that we see through the ‘meal prep’ phrase is that it has the ability to
introduce the meal kit concept to a new audience. New traffic to the Lighter Options page would
showcase healthy, a-la-carte meals that they could prepare weekly as meal prep. If successful,
Chefd.com could expect to not only see new customers, but repeat customers that could drive
Chef’d to the top of the business.
II. Content Analysis & Authority
Chefd.com Score: 7
HelloFresh.com Score: 8
Explanation of Topic:
For this assignment, our goal is to use various tactics to bump Chef’d up in Search
Engine Results Pages, or SERPs. There are numerous measures that go into ranking pages on
search engines, but according to the Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors, quality content, Cq
(+3), is one of the most important. Content is important to search engines because a search
engine exists to connect users to web pages that they are looking for. To do this well, each
search engine uses an original algorithm for displaying results after a search is conducted. If a
search engine does matches results poorly, the amount of users will most likely decline because
they are getting in their results is not what they are looking for. This, in combination with
numerous other factors is why Google cares so much about the quality of a page’s content—the

success of their business depends on it. The quality of a web page’s content can be broken up
into several criteria: credibility, value of content, and trustworthiness/authority.
A simple factor that search engines take into consideration when judging a site’s content
is its credibility. This means that the sentences and paragraphs contain few or no typos, are
well-written and the content is unique. Content that is considered unique means that it cannot be
found beyond your site. The reason this is so important is because it prevents numerous pages
from having the same information—pointless to a user if that information is not what they were
looking for. Another advantage of having unique content for a brand like Chef’d would be
distinguishability from similar brands in the market. Each of these gives search engines the
ability to judge a site’s content so they can deliver the best results for SERPs.
The second factor that goes in to rating a site’s quality content is assessing the value a
page can offer. The success factor related to value is Vt (-2), or thin content. Contrasted to Cq
listed above, the presence of thin content will not meet user’s needs, so search engines will
decrease the site’s ranking in their SERP. Vt became success factor as a result of Google’s
Panda algorithm in 2011. One of Panda’s goals was to crack down on thin-content sites and
sites with high ad-to-content ratios. Vt looks at whether a site has features that add value, such
as reasons to spend time on site, images or demos, ratings and reviews and means of customer
service. If a site has many of these, a search engine might deem that the site does not have thin
content. Google believed that using value measures would better refine their algorithms and
prevent poor websites from listing high in SERPs.
The last major factor that goes into ranking a page’s content is its trustworthiness and
authority. One measure of trust the Google Bot takes into consideration is a site’s authority on a

topic—are these experts in the particular field? General trust factors also include the feel of the
site—would a user feel comfortable sharing private information, such as their credit card
number? The last major factor associated with trust is related to a URL’s age—how long has the
domain been secured? If a site seems shady, Google will most likely be able to spot it based on
these and other considerations. Judging a site’s authority primarily relies on links, measured for
this assignment using tools such as Moz and SEO Review Tools. These tools have created an
algorithm to rank the authority a page might have in its field or competition. These factors are
essential in deciding the quality of the content a website has, and each plays a role in Google’s
SERP algorithm.
Analysis of Quality Content / Thin Content:
As mentioned, we are focusing on Chefd.com’s Lighter Meal options, which can be
found under the “All Meals” section of the website. For this section, we will be evaluating the
credibility, value, and quality of two separate pages on Chefd.com’s website. First, we will start
by talking about the “All Meals” page with the filter of Lighter Options, and then we will move
into the individual product pages that can be clicked on from this page.
Starting with credibility, the page listing Lighter Meal options seems to be well written
and is free of typos. Since this page is just a photo gallery of various meals that are considered
to be “light,” there is not a ton of text that appears on this page. The names of the meals,
creators of the meals, and filters are the main descriptions present. After looking through the
page, we thought that search engines would find the text elements on this page to be well
written. Even though the descriptions are short, these words must be well written to properly
communicate to the search engine what the page is about. If any text is written in a way that

does not make sense, Chefd.com’s credibility could quickly be lost. We used a typo checker on
this page, and there were no misspelled words, so that helped increase this page’s credibility.
Another element of credibility is to see if the content is unique. Content of a page is unique if
there is no other content like it anywhere else. We used a couple of tools and compared
Chefd.com’s content to HelloFresh’s to try and determine if the content of this page was unique.
When www.Chefd.com was typed into both CopyScape and Siteliner, only one external link
had the same content as Chef’d; Orchard Fresh’s twitter site. When looking at the content, we
noticed that Orchard Fresh is a store in New York that has started selling Chefd.com’s meals, so
we knew the two companies were connected and would not affect unique content. After
discovering this, we went to HelloFresh to see if it had similar content to Chef’d. The layout of
Chef’d is very similar to HelloFresh, with its meals appearing in a block-like structure. The
meals on both sites also have a name description and an image to go along with it. When
browsing through the “healthy” options on HelloFresh, we did not find any of the same recipes
offered on Chef’d. Since the formatting was similar but the content was different, we thought
Chefd.com’s content could still be considered unique. Overall, the Lighter Options page on
Chefd.com seemed to be fairly credible because it was well written, free of typos, and unique.
Next, we tried to determine if the Lighter Options page had value. Like mentioned
earlier, there is not much text on this page, but Chef’d gives reason to spend more time on the
site through the various elements displayed by each product. Looking at the screenshot below,
Chef’d was able to add value to the page by using helpful symbols and text by its content.

The heart symbol is a quick way to communicate how many people have “loved” this meal.
Ratings sometimes aid in making a decision, so this simple addition adds value to this page. In
addition, Chef’d also lists the name of the meal, the creator of the meal, and how long it takes to
prepare the meal. Having the creator of the meal and the cooking time adds value because it
provides the search engine with more than just a simple description of the meal itself. Chef’d
also provides value by offering some forms of customer service on the site. At the very top of
the Lighter Options page, there is a banner that reads “Free delivery on orders of $40 or more”.
Having this displayed at the top of the page communicates to the search engine that customers
should know what to expect for shipping fees when checking out. Chef’d also provides a chat
on this page for those who have questions. However, we noticed that this chat is only available

on Monday - Friday from 9:00am-5:30pm. So, if customers are looking through meals outside
of those times and have questions, they must leave a message and wait for Chef’d to respond,
which would not happen until the following business day. Out of curiosity, we went to
HelloFresh and asked when its chat was active. The agent responded and said someone is
available 24/7 to be answering questions. So, Chef’d would be considered to have even more
value to search engines if its site if it had a 24/7 chat service like HelloFresh does.
Lastly, we looked at if the Lighter Options page had any thin content. As learned in class,
thin content should be avoided because it has low value, low engagement, duplicate
information, etc. One thing that we noticed was that Chef’d never defined what a “lighter
option” was on this page. The search engine would know that the meals displayed are supposed
to be “light,” but the fact that Chef’d does not have a description about these meals means that
the term “Lighter Option” is lacking substance. Does a lighter meal option has less calories?
Less carbs? Less fat? All of the above? Not defining what a lighter option is at the top of the
page was something we considered to be thin content because the content cannot be valuable if
it is not fully explained. This thin content has low value that could result in low engagement
from a search engine. If Chef’d listed the criteria for a lighter option, this would add value and
substance to the page. Other than this small detail, Chef’d had lots of valuable content on this
page that would result in high engagement.
Although the Lighter Options meal page was the content we were focusing on, we
decided to assess the content quality of the individual meal pages also. While on the Lighter
Options page, a visitor interested in a particular meal can click on the image which takes them

to a specific content page for that meal. For this assessment, we decided to just select one page
as a representation of the whole and examine its credibility, value and areas of thin content.
When we looked at the credibility for one of their individual content pages, we were
shown a large photo of the meal, the creator of the meal in a small box, a paragraph describing
the chef or dish and various other nutrition, rating and allergen snippets. If a search engine was
“reading” over this content, they would pay attention to the grammar and spelling closely and
check that the content is unique. From the pages we looked over, we did not find any
misspelled words or glaring grammatical errors that would hurt Chefd.com’s content credibility
conducted by a search engine. As mentioned on the home page analysis, most recipes from
HelloFresh differ from those on Chef’d, so the content within each recipe’s pages will be
implicitly unique. Overall, the credibility from the individual pages are driven primarily by the
uniqueness than comes with each recipe in addition to the affiliation with trusted partners such
as Quaker.
Next, we examined the amount of value that Chef’d has added to their individual product
pages. At the very top of the page, there is a slideshow of large images that display the finished
product and a few steps in the preparation process. By showing a few images of the process, the
slideshow adds value through levels of interactivity and short demos. Although this is of great
value on Chef’d, when compared to HelloFresh, this slideshow lacked all the bells and whistles.
On each of HelloFresh’s recipe pages there are step-by-step instructions on how to prepare the
meal kit in addition to photos for each step. Chefd.com has the right idea to add various photos,
but lacks an opportunity to add as much value comparatively to HelloFresh. Other ways that
these pages add value are to include descriptive content, such as allergens, nutrition facts and

reviews. Google can distinguish between general content and a review, so the text is not as
important as the presence in this case. Similarly, under the review section, there is a large bar
that says “Ask a question.” In addition to the help chats available Monday - Friday, this allows
questions to be asked about a particular meal.
From there, we assessed the page in search of areas of thin content. The main content on
this page is the title of the meal, followed by the paragraph describing it, a list of ingredients,
allergens, utensils from your kitchen and an image of the nutrition facts. In general, most of
these sections stood out to us as amazing content nor thin content. However, we liked the
paragraph describing the meal, often using vivid descriptions and the ingredients to paint a
clearer picture of what the user would be preparing if they purchased the kit. There were a few
areas of content that we would have liked to see expanded, but we decided that it would most
likely not affect the amount of thin content present. Areas that we would like to see improved
content mostly fall under delivery: What comes in a box? What is the portion size? What are the
quantities of the ingredients? Again, we believe that these would not have necessarily decreased
thin content, but useful information that would be helpful to the site as a whole. Overall, there
was not a ton of content to assess between these two pages but both had numerous features that
added value to their content, but could always be improved.
Analysis of Trust / Authority:
Overall, we discovered Chef’d to be not only an authority for the topic of meal planning,
but also for the topic we are focusing on, healthy meal options. As mentioned earlier, when
looking at the meals Chef’d offers, the site lists the creator/chef who came up with that meal.
Many of these creators are partners of Chef’d and well-known food brands, such as Atkins and

Campbell’s Kitchen. When a user sees who made a meal, he/she has the option of learning more
information about that person/organization. Chef’d has a tab called “Partners” and a tab called
“Chefs” that provides more information on who the partner/chef is and how they became
involved with Chef’d as a company. Having these well-known partners and chefs helps
establish Chefd.com’s authority because these brands have already established themselves as
experts in the field and now trust Chef’d to represent their brand.
In addition, Chef’d also has a separate blog site that has tips & tricks, how tos, and posts
about their products. These are all written by a team at Chef’d. By having this separate blog site,
it shows that Chef’d is more than just an online store trying to sell meals. The company wants to
help those who purchase from them by providing this extra information on how to use its
products. We think that this blog would help consumers trust the brand because Chef’d proves
its knowledge and expertise when it comes to preparing meals. This site has received positive
press coverage from multiple magazines, which also helps establish trust and authority. When
entering the checkout process, Chef’d also does a couple of things that help in trusting the
brand. There is an option to pay with PayPal or Amazon pay, so these are recognizable forms of
payment that might make one feel more comfortable about providing credit card information.
Another aspect of trust is to look at the length of the domain registration. We typed
www.chefd.com into GoDaddy’s WHOIS database and found that Chefd.com’s domain name
was created in 1999 and it is registered until March 2 of next year. This was surprising to learn
because Chef’d was founded in 2014, but this source says the domain name was created in
1999. So, we are not sure if the site was being used for those years, or if there was a purpose to
registering the URL that early. This seemed a bit suspicious and made us wonder why there was

so much time in between the registering of the domain and the launch of the company. Besides
this one suspicious piece of data, Chef’d seems to have trust and authority when it comes to
meal planning.
Above are the screenshots for Moz’s Authority rating for both Chefd.com’s homepage
(Figure 4) and the Lighter Options page (Figure 5). Chefd.com’s homepage has a domain
authority of 46 and a page authority of 55. The page authority of the Lighter Options page is 26,
so this page has about two times less authority when compared with the home page. It is hard to
know what these numbers mean without comparing them to a competitor. Looking to the

screenshot below, HelloFresh’s home page has a domain authority of 68 and a page authority of
74 (Figure 6).
However, it only has a page authority of 32 for the page that aligns most with Chefd.com’s
Lighter Options page (Figure 7). When comparing these numbers, it is obvious that HelloFresh,
according to Moz, has much more authority when it comes to the home page. The scores for both
companies homepages were much higher than the other content pages that we tested. Since
Chefd.com’s and HelloFresh’s page authority scores for the lighter options were only 6 points
apart, the sites are about equal for these specific pages. It is interesting to note that the home
pages of both sites have significantly more authority when compared to other pages on the site.
However, this is not surprising because since the home page is usually the first place visited on a

website, the company would probably want that page to have the highest authority out of the
whole site. But, it is important to establish authority on all pages, not just the home page.
Recommendation for improvements:
When we looked at the trust and authority on Chefd.com, we saw some areas of potential
improvement, but didn’t see areas that were too blaring. However, as stated in the quality
content section, there were several areas that Chefd.com displayed thin content; lacking
important text that would ultimately drive Google to rank Chef’d lower in SERPs.
Even though we have spent hours on Chefd.com’s website, there were a few uncertainties
we faced within our chosen content. To get the Lighter Options collection to display, a user
must go to all meals and then under the “Category” filter menu select Lighter Options. One we
were on the page, we became unsure of the criteria that went into what displayed in the results
for Lighter Options (ie. Less than 500 calories? Less than 15 net carbs?). We liked the feature
that showed the net carbs, but were unsure if that was the
only factor that Chef’d took into consideration for
placing it in the section. We decided that this was a huge
area of miscommunication; not only between the site and
its users, but also a display of thin content that would
decrease Chefd.com’s level of quality content according
to search engines. The screenshot (Figure 8) to the right
is an image of the current filter option sidebar that
appears on the page with Lighter Options selected.

Recommended changes to the filter menu are shown in Figure 9 below.
To fix the lack of content within the filter menu, our goal was the infuse it with helpful content
that would not only add to the content, but be useful as keywords within search engines. When
thinking about ways to describe the Lighter Options criteria, we wanted it plain and
simple—what measures does Chef’d use to classify a meal as a Lighter Option? Once we came
up with an example, we looked into where it could be placed that would be recognizable and
informational, so we decided on an information icon. Although this may seem like a measure
taken for user experience, this improvement was actually designed to decrease the amount of
thin content currently on Chefd.com. Overall, we wanted to aid the general lack of content on

the Lighter Options page, and did so using a small amount of words that the Googlebot would
recognize as decreasing the amount of Vt, improving the quality of the content on the page.
III. Architecture (As, Au, Am)
1. Speed (As)
Page Load Speed Home Page Category Page
Chefd.com 10.4 seconds 17.2 seconds
HelloFresh.com 11.3 seconds 4.7 seconds
Analysis: Table 3 above shows the load times associated with both category and home
pages of HelloFresh and Chef’d. The reason that speed is included as a measurement of SEO is
because long page loading times will lead to a high bounce rate, deterring the site’s ranking in
search engines. Our goal for this assignment is to drive traffic, intending to not only increase the
amount of traffic through search engines, but to also look at additional measures Chef’d can take
to get the users to their site. A number from a class lecture showed that a website can hold a
user’s attention for approximately 10 seconds; after so users will most likely leave the site
immediately. However, we also learned that every second a user waits for the site to load, they
are more likely to navigate away from the page. This general information is key to
understanding the importance of speed in SEO; not losing the traffic we worked hard to get
because a page is slow to load.
Data from the table shows that both Chef’d and HelloFresh’s home pages both take
slightly longer than 10 seconds to load completely. This means that both load slowly; an amount

of time that would leave the user greatly dissatisfied, and a measure that Google would take into
consideration when ranking their sites. One thing that is surprising in the table above is the load
speed for the category pages; 17.2 seconds for Chef’d and 4.7 seconds for HelloFresh. In a
straight numbers game, both sites’ home pages are have a fairly weak load speed, but as far as
the category page HelloFresh is significantly faster than Chef’d.
To better understand why the data ranged so much, we analyzed the waterfall chart from
WebPagetest.org fo find out what was
slowing Chef’d down. At the bottom of
each of the three test results, there is a pie
chart depicting the data required to process
requests in each format, shown in the
Figure 10 to the right. As noted by the
chart, almost 75% of the requested data to
load the page is images, meaning there are
either several images or the current images have not been compressed efficiently.
Understandably Chef’d wants to display each meal kit they sell, but to do this well they must
greatly consider how this will affect users and search engines ranking them in SERPs.
According to the test, there were nine images that took between 6.5 and 8.9 seconds to
load—a significant amount of time when considering that 40% of users abandon sites that take
longer than three seconds. To find out where these photos were placed, we used the page source
feature in Google Chrome. The results were troubling; these photos were small thumbnails of
meals on the page, but numbered 40-49 on the results page out of 125 listed. An example of one

of these photos is displayed in the
Figure 11. The speed tested was
describing a user first loading the site,
so there is no reason why all the
meals’ pages should load when the
request is made for the page. A
recommendation to avoid this is to
have the page start by loading a few
meals when the page is requested, and
add more meals to create an infinite
scroll.
2. URLs (Au)
Current URLs:
Chefd.com URL for Category Page: https://www.chefd.com/collections/all?sort_by=best-
selling#recipe_category=Lighter%20Options
HelloFresh.com URL for Category Page: https://www.hellofresh.com/recipe-archive
/browse?redirectedFromAccountArea=true
Recommended new URL: https://www.chefd.com/meals/healthy
Explanation: The structure of URLs is very important to SEO because it not only helps
Google understand what the page is about, but it also is displayed on both a SERP below the title
and on social share tools. Since every page has its own URL, this provides a way for companies

to keep their sites organized based on the content of each page. Companies should organize each
URL by using words instead of random numbers or symbols. Using relevant words to the site’s
content in URLs is a best practice in Google’s SEO Starter Guide because they are friendlier for
those visiting the site. In addition, according to Search Engine Land, including the words that a
company wants to be known for in the URLs can help its rankings for SEO as well.
Overall, the URL structure for Chefd.com seemed to be well organized, but there is
always room for improvement. When browsing through Chefd.com, most of the URLs seemed to
be simple, straightforward, and organized based off the content on each page. Every page starts
with the domain name (https://www.chefd.com) and then is separated into directories based off
of the navigation tab selected. When looking at HelloFresh’s URL structure, it seemed to have a
similar structure to Chef’d; HelloFresh started with its domain name
(https://www.hellofresh.com) and then would branch off into directories just like Chef’d. One
difference between the two sites was that HelloFresh tends to have
“?redirectedFromAccountArea=true” after its directory listings. As users, we are not sure what
this means, or if this text has to be there. Since Chef’d does not have this at the end of its URLs,
we came to the conclusion that it is probably not necessary for this text to be there, but we are
unsure.
According to the Google SEO Starter Guide, the best practices for URLs are to use
words, create a simple directory structure, and provide one version of a URL. For the most part,
both Chef’d and HelloFresh are following these practices. Chef’d uses a directory structure and
words for almost all of its pages. However, the URL for its “All Meals” page contains some
random symbols, such as question marks and underscores, that are not relevant to the content, as

seen in the Current URL section above. We noticed that whenever a filter is selected on the “All
Meals” page, the URL would change to a similar URL with the same symbols. In addition, when
we ran this URL through the SEO Toolbox, we found that the URL for the “All Meals” page is
not SEO friendly because of these underscores and symbols. HelloFresh’s URL for its “Delicious
and Quick Recipes” page was also not SEO friendly for the same reasons. Using these symbols
was the main flaw in each of these sites URLs and is something that should be improved upon.
Our recommended URL aligns with SEO best practices because it is simple, uses a
directory system, and uses words instead of the symbols talked about previously. The URL we
recommend would work best if Chef’d made a dedicated page for its healthy meal options, but it
would work for the “lighter options” filter as well. Our URL may seem simple, but it represents
the content on our category page. Since a user would click on the “All Meals” tab and then select
the “Lighter Options” filter, we chose to use these words to help form the directory for our URL.
However, we chose to use the word “meals” in our URL instead of “collections” because we
believe users will not be typing the word “collection” into a search engine. Meals is also a word
that would not have to be explained because it is so common. We also chose to use the word
“healthy” instead of “lighter options” for the same reason. If Chef’d changed its current URL to
our recommended URL, it would then be following all of the “best practices” in order to improve
its SEO.
3. Mobile (Am)
Chefd.com Score: 6.5
HelloFresh.com Score: 8
Explanation: Mobile is important to Search Engine Optimization because approximately

50% of web traffic comes from mobile devices. When a user uses a search engine on their phone,
they want to find what they’re looking for quickly. Similarly, successful search engines do well
at connecting users for content they’re searching for, making the two practically inseparable.
Not only is mobile important to search engines, but also to every other website—they want
users’ traffic, whether that comes from desktop or mobile, to increase their revenue.
There are various ways for a website to employ a flexible format for mobile devices, but
the most common is called responsive design, implemented by both Chef’d and HelloFresh. This
means that a programmer creates media queries; code that determines the layout of the page
depending on the width of a path. Responsive design’s definition is in the phrase; the page
responds when a page width is adjusted smaller or larger. Common media queries that are coded
for include mobile, tablet and desktop. To test to see what queries each site employs, we
inspected the pages on Google Chrome and changed the device displayed to both iPad and
iPhone X, and both sites’ layouts varied with each format tested.
In addition to our observations, we also ran Chefd.com’s Lighter Options page through
Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Overall, this test said that this page was mobile-friendly,
however it also said that the page was only partially loaded. Looking further into this showed
that there were 20 areas that did not load properly, including five JavaScript errors and two photo
errors. This test was brief, but gave us a good start on information about Chefd.com’s mobile
site for Lighter Options.
After seeing Chefd.com’s results in Google’s tools, we decided to go on their mobile site
ourselves. Once on the site, we scrolled the Lighter Options page, noticing no changes in content
from the desktop site, however it was all in a single column. The Figure 12 below is a screenshot

that displays the frustration we faced—the navigation remained the same on mobile as it was on
the desktop. This meant that we could not see all of the navigation panes at once, but had to
scroll horizontally to view them. Similarly, no content was hidden from the navigation menu,
also seen in the screenshot. Chefd.com heavily relies on hover commands in their navigation, but
hover is not possible in mobile. This meant that when “All Meals” was selected that the options
that came up were the options shown in hover, including the large photo that took up half of the
screen.

Different from Chef’d, HelloFresh’s mobile site is very user-friendly and easy to
navigate. The problem discussed previously with Chefd.com’s navigation was fixed with a
stackable navigation button through some simple JavaScript programming. This is now pretty
standard for mobile sites, so the implementation of this navigation would be second-nature to
avid mobile internet users. One difference on HelloFresh’s mobile site is that omitted a page
associated with its hover. For comparison throughout this assignment we have referred to
HelloFresh’s Menu Archive, however this page was not directly available through their mobile
site, but it can be accessed through the page that its hover is usually under. Overall, HelloFresh’s
content is set up in a similar one-column layout as Chef’d, but omits unnecessary content.
After looking at the results from Google’s mobile test and our own, we believe that
Chef’d has a pretty good start on creating a mobile site, but definitely has room for improvement.
Most of the errors we saw were in relation to the amount of content that Chefd.com was placing
on each page. To better their site’s mobile-friendliness, we suggest that Chef’d implement a
hamburger navigation button like HelloFresh and strongly consider removing unnecessary
content from their mobile page.
IV. HTML: Current Keyword Location Analysis (Ht, Hd)
1. Title Tags
Current Tags:
Chefd.com Title Tag for Category Page: <title>Shop Meals</title>
HelloFresh.com Title Tag for Category Page: <title>Delicious and Quick Recipes |
HelloFresh</title>

Explanation: A title tag is an HTML element that exists on every page of a website, and
it is very important when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. These tags provide a way for
search engines to understand what a specific page is about, so they must be descriptive and vary
between pages. These titles also appear in many places, such as the browser tab, bookmark titles,
SERPs, and social share tools. Since competitors’ titles are also seen in these places, it is
important to come up with titles that are more “clickable” when compared to the competition. In
Chefd.com’s instance, its titles should stand out when compared with HelloFresh in order to
drive traffic to its site. Below is a screenshot that depicts how the “All Meals” category page
appears in a SERP. Because the Lighter Options is only a filter listed on the “All Meals” page, a
single title tag encompasses all the meals that Chef’d offers.
Since Chef’d does not have a separate page dedicated to its Lighter Options, our findings for this
section were not ideal. Up until this point, we thought that selecting a filter created a “new page”
that was separate from the “All Meals” page. However, we discovered that Chef’d only has one
HTML file for the “All Meals” page, no matter what filter is selected. Therefore, there is only
one title tag available for the entire page. In the screenshot above, “Shop Meals” is the title tag
that Chef’d decided to use for its “All Meals” page. This is a very short title that is not very
descriptive to the various meals that Chef’d offers. HelloFresh, on the other hand, has “Delicious
and Quick Recipes | HelloFresh” as its title tag for the category page that aligns the most with

Chefd.com’s offerings. When comparing this to Chef’d, HelloFresh’s title is much more
descriptive because it lists two of the characteristics of its recipes/meals. Since Chef’d just used
“Shop Meals,” the search engine would not gather much information just based off of this tag.
As mentioned earlier, we thought that selecting the Lighter Options filter resulted in a
new page dedicated to these types of meals. If Chef’d separated these pages, we would
recommend using the title tag listed below.
Recommended New Title Tag for Chefd.com:
<title>Healthy Prepped Meals</title>
The title tag above will benefit Chef’d because it would accurately describe the content of
a Healthy Meals page. According to the Google SEO Starter Guide, this is a best practice
because it is important to communicate what is on the page. In addition, the guide says that the
title must be brief, but descriptive, and different from any other page of the site. Our
recommended title is brief because it is only a couple words, but it describes two important
characteristics of the meals that would appear on the page- that they are prepped and healthy. We
considered just using “Healthy Meals” as our title tag, but thought that “Prepped” was a keyword
that would provide useful information to the search engine, since Chef’d preps the meals. In
addition, since our chosen keyphrase is “healthy meal prep,” we wanted to create a title that
would align with that phrase as well.
The current title tag for the category page, “Shop Meals,” does not have any words to
describe the types of meals to expect on this page, which goes against the best practices listed in
the Google SEO Starter Guide. If Chef’d was unable to create a page dedicated to “Healthy
Meals,” we would recommend for Chef’d to settle on one keyword that describes every meal

they offer. After deciding on this word, Chef’d would add it to the title tag for the “All Meals”
page. For example, if Chef’d decided that every meal offered is fresh, then it should use “Fresh
Prepped Meals” as its title tag for this page.
Description Meta Tags
Current Meta Tags:
Chefd.com Meta Tag for Category Page:
<meta name=”description” content=”Choose from Over 300 Pre-Portioned Meals
Curated by Your Favorite Brands & Celebrity Chefs. Shop Our A La Carte
Meals Without a Subscription Today!”>
HelloFresh.com Meta Tag for Category Page:
<meta name=”description” content=”Browse over 2500 delicious and quick
recipes developed by our expert chefs and guaranteed to please every meat-lover,
veg-head, cool kid, and busy parent.”>
Explanation: A description tag, like a title tag, has significant importance when it comes
to Search Engine Optimization. The description is a type of meta tag that appears in social share
tools, as well as right below the title tag in a SERP. This text is visible to users and is scanned by
search engines to get more detail on each page. Like title tags, the description should summarize
content on the page. However, unlike a title tag, a description is usually a sentence or two as
opposed to a couple words. The description should contain valuable information that further
explains what the page is about. Below is a screenshot showing Chefd.com’s description for its
“All Meals” page the way it appears in a SERP. As mentioned in the title tags section,

Chefd.com’s description was for the “All Meals” page and not a separate page dedicated to
Healthy Meals.
Above is a screenshot depicting how Chefd.com’s description appears for the “All
Meals” page in SERPs. The description has some good content, but some parts of it can be
improved. According to the Google SEO Starter Guide, the best practices for description tags are
to accurately summarize the content of the page and have a different description for every page.
The beginning of Chefd.com’s and HelloFresh’s descriptions are very similar; they list the
amount of meals choices that they offer. One part of Chefd.com’s description that needs
improvement is the use of “curated”. This is a fancy term that may sound knowledgeable to
Chef’d, but may be confusing to the search engine “reading” it. In addition, when comparing
Chefd.com’s description to HelloFresh’s, Chef’d did not use as much description about its meals
specifically. Chef’d mentioned that the meals are pre-portioned and can be purchased a-la-carte,
but there was little description about the meals themselves. HelloFresh used words like
“meat-lover” and “veg-head,” which are more descriptive towards the meals it offers. As
mentioned in class, it is important to write descriptions like you write an ad to try and get more
traffic. Since HelloFresh used these interesting terms, its description stood out to us when
compared with Chef’d.

Recommended New Meta Tags for Chefd.com:
<meta name=”description” content=”Kickstart a healthy lifestyle by choosing from 125
prepped meals created by your favorite brands and famous chefs. We combine fresh
ingredients to create delicious meals that exceed your expectations.”>
The recommended meta tag above will benefit Chefd.com because it follows the best
practices listed in Google’s Starter Guide. Chefd.com’s current meta tag summarizes some
content, but it does not describe the types of meals that would be presented on the page. This is
why we added “fresh” and “delicious” to the new meta tag to give an even clearer sense of what
specific content is on the page. We added these specific words because they appear on the
“About” page on Chefd.com. “Fresh” and “delicious” are two characteristics that represent
Chefd.com’s meals, so we thought these keywords would fit into the description for this page. In
addition, these words are not in other description tags throughout Chefd.com’s site, so this
description is still different from the others. This is a best practice from Google’s Starter Guide,
so we took that into consideration when forming our description. We made sure to go to multiple
pages within the site and look at the various meta tags across these pages. Our tag will also
benefit Chefd.com because it uses words that are easy to understand. In the current tag, Chef’d
uses words like “curated”, “celebrity” and “pre-portioned”. In our tag, we changed these words
to “created”, “famous” and “prepped” because we thought these are keywords that users are
more likely to type in a search engine.
Below is how our recommended URL, title tag, and meta description tag would appear in
Google if Chef’d implemented them.

2. IMG names and ALT text
Lighter Options is a category filter associated with the All Meals page of Chefd.com, so
unfortunately that means that the main image recognizable on this page is a generic banner
image not specific to our content. The image’s placement depicts its importance on the page—it
displays a prepared meal offered on their site and the first image users see, but is key to
increasing Chefd.com’s ranking on search engines to drive more traffic.
The primary image for HelloFresh.com is the main image associated with their Classic
Meal Plan, located under the “Our Plans” navigation tab. This image is key for driving traffic to
the plan, the closest content we could find for healthy options offered at HelloFresh.com. The
importance of this image is that it is the face of the plan, with potential alternative text to
increase purchased meal plans for HelloFresh.

Chefd.com Image Tag Details:
Alt text = None
HelloFresh.com Image Tag Details:
Alt text = None

Recommendation to Improve Chefd.com ALT Text:
Alt text = “Prepared healthy meal kit”
Explanation: Alternative text appears if the image cannot be found on the server, is seen
by Google in association with Google Images and is text read aloud in coordination with a
screen-reader. Alt tags are important to SEO because they have the ability to drive traffic to the
page the photo is placed on, and can be recognized as quality content on a page. Although
Google’s bot cannot ‘see’ images on its website, it primarily deciphers what the image is based
on this text.
As is right now, neither image has any text assigned with their alt tags. This means that
its Google cannot ‘read’ an image nor are the sites compatible with baseline standards of the
Americans with Disabilities Acts. These findings are puzzling because alt text has great value on
a website, meaning both sites are not implementing all the features they can to optimize for
search engines. Improving the alternative text in this case is simple; implement it.
As mentioned previously, valuable content for Chefd.com is their Lighter Options
category, and a keyphrase along with that is “Healthy meal prep.” Alternative text that could be

set on this large, banner image at the top of the Lighter Options page is “Prepared healthy meal
kit.” Similar to our keyphrase, this text would describe the image and create consistency in the
keyphrases for Google’s search engine. In the case of search engines, using alternative text
would boost Chefd.com’s ability to be ranked higher on SERPs conducted that could drive traffic
to their site.
V. Priority Recommendation
After researching various strategies to drive traffic to Chefd.com’s Lighter Options page,
we believe the most important element for Chef’d to focus on through SEO is keyword research.
Despite the fact that Chef’d has features that set it apart from other meal delivery services, they
must pay attention to the high level of competition they face. One way this can be done is to
focus on their brand recognition in the market; clearly defining the keywords they use to match
their content for better rankings in SERPs. For this reason, we believe that Chef’d should
conduct thorough research on the keywords (Cr) they use to accurately depict the meals they
offer and create keywords that users will search for in search engines.Through this research, we
believe that Chefd.com will be able to analyze and evaluate phrases it uses to improve this area.
The recommendation above was made because it is an easier task that will help define
what keywords Chef’d wants to use to represent its brand. Once these are established,
Chefd.com’s end goal should be to create a separate page for its healthy meals. This process
would take time, but because“healthy meal prep” has the potential to increase Chefd.com’s
traffic by 19%, it would benefit Chef’d to make this change so that users are directed to a page
only containing “healthy” meals. However, Chef’d must also clearly define what “healthy” (or
whatever keyword the company may choose) means in relation to the meals it offers. After

defining the keyword, Chef’d can then group its meals and begin creating this separate page. The
first goal is to get traffic to Chefd.com, which is why keyword research is where Chef’d should
begin in the SEO process. However, the ultimate goal is to not only get more traffic, but keep
this traffic on the page in hopes that a purchase will be made. If users search “healthy meal prep”
in a search engine, we believe it is more likely for them to stay on the site if they are presented
with a page dedicated to what they are looking for. Like mentioned earlier, creating a “Healthy
Meals” page will take time, but it will have long term benefits for Chef’d as a company.

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