Sometimes in hindsight certain things look like no-brainers. I was doing a little digging around to see how well recipe and cooking related sites do in November during the lead-up to Thanksgiving, the biggest cooking day of the year. The results were interesting, but utterly expected.
What I was targeting were websites that the majority of America could just nonsensically type in to try to find recipes, without doing a search or any jazz like that.
Recipes.com spikes nicely
We can see that 
Definitely not a coincidence that Recipe.com starts spiking mid-November.
Cooking.com spikes even more nicely…
Because of an overall better quality site, Cooking.com spikes even more heavily in November. My guess is that recipes.com is a fairly deserted site most of the year, and they get people in November sitting down in a last-minute attempt to find some good recipes, whereas Cooking.com has a loyal following all year round, who come back en masse in November for recipes, along with general people “direct-navigating” to cooking.com because they know its a good shot that they’ll find recipes there.

The power of SEO
Now, direct navigation takes place in another form too. Every day, millions of people do a google search and hit the first result. If you do a google search for “Recipes”, the first result is allrecipes.com. They are the true winner this holiday season, and the truth is in the spike:

Sure, I could go on forever with sites that reap in the traffic in November. Foodnetwork.com, which also ranks extremely well on Google gets a pat on the back this thanksgiving, and so does Epicurious.com:


Folks these sites rake in serious traffic in November because they’re well positioned on the internet for recipe ideas and cooking. They take full advantage of the fact that every household in America cooks their hearts out this one day of the year, and spends a whole month preparing for it.
Take home message:
Did you blog about a recipe this November? Did you do your best to make it viral? If not, keep this in mind for next year. Maybe you want to start a recipe blog in September in preparation, then get your recipes all over digg and stumble. Do some SEO leg work. Add a viral component, maybe some funny pictures or video. Do what it takes to share in a piece of the pie next thanksgiving.