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Adding pages to a blog rather than blog posts - SEO friendly?

by AtomicJones
12 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi everyone, long time lurker, first time poster, hopefully I'm doing this right.

I have a blog that focuses mostly on pop culture, but it's pretty well optimized for search, so much so that most of my traffic is from long-tail search. I'd like to add more long-tail friendly content to my blog, but I don't want to add off-topic posts to the blog. I'm wondering if I can just add the off topic posts at pages that will not be linked to from the home page. Does anyone know if this is advisable? Thanks.
#adding #blog #friendly #pages #posts #seo #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author hatewriting
    The only way I use wordpress is this:

    Content as posts
    Static info (About Us, Privacy Policy, Legal etc) as pages.

    I would just create a category for off topic posts and use them - you don't have to link to that category from the main page if you don't want to (just exclude them).

    Hope this helps!
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    • Profile picture of the author CollegeCEO
      Originally Posted by richjackweb View Post

      The only way I use wordpress is this:

      Content as posts
      Static info (About Us, Privacy Policy, Legal etc) as pages.

      I would just create a category for off topic posts and use them - you don't have to link to that category from the main page if you don't want to (just exclude them).

      Hope this helps!
      Yea this is typically the same route I take.
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    • Profile picture of the author AtomicJones
      Thanks for your reply. I think I've researched how to prevent a post category from showing up in the main blog feed, but I came up empty. Maybe it's been solved now, I'll look into it.
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    • Profile picture of the author JSProjects
      Originally Posted by richjackweb View Post

      The only way I use wordpress is this:

      Content as posts
      Static info (About Us, Privacy Policy, Legal etc) as pages.

      I would just create a category for off topic posts and use them - you don't have to link to that category from the main page if you don't want to (just exclude them).

      Hope this helps!
      Pretty spot-on and exactly how I do it.
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  • Profile picture of the author TheContentAuthority
    AtomicJones,

    I have seen websites that aren’t necessarily blogs built from Wordpress with many pages and vis versa. If this is your goal then it will not hurt your site in terms of SEO. Is there a reason you don’t want to link it to the rest of the site? When making additional pages, you should always make a consistent and easy to follow internal link structure. This is an SEO best practice.

    You could also just use tags to let your users know what the content is about. If you are trying to avoid alienating your current traffic base then this should suffice. As far as SEO, the search engines don’t care whether you add content as posts or pages however if you don’t link that page to the rest of your site and it becomes popular, you may lose opportunities for the rest of your site.

    Here is a good video blog post on the topic,

    http://blog.2createawebsite.com/2012...pages-and-seo/

    Hope that helps,

    Shawn
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    • Profile picture of the author AtomicJones
      Great reply, thank you Shawn.

      Ideally I'd have one of the following scenarios happen:

      1. A second blog installed in the same blog that has a feed for only reviews/affiliate sales

      or

      2. All of the article pages I'm writing are listed on a parent "articles" page (looks like I have to do this manually?)

      Ideally my regular readers would continue reading the pop culture posts on the blog, but say I start an article series that is posted on pages, I'd like for people to get a heads up about updates there as well.

      I just need to find a way to organize this. I could just start a second blog, but the SEO is so good on my current blog that it seems like a good opportunity to leverage that.
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  • Profile picture of the author Warock
    Banned
    More pages = more authority = more keywords
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    • Profile picture of the author AtomicJones
      Originally Posted by Warock View Post

      More pages = more authority = more keywords
      Right, but these articles are little islands now, there's no main link on the main page leading readers there, which should hurt SEO (but for some reason, isn't.)
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  • Profile picture of the author atomAnt
    A couple of thoughts come to mind. I think that since you already have a well-functioning site, any pages you add could be presented with a dynamic menu, not a global category menu. This works well for sites with a silo structure.

    Some experts state that adding pages is preferred for this because you can disable the page category menu giving you better control over this content and how it is positioned within your site's structure.

    I have heard of some plugins that help your layout design in silo structure. I haven't tried any though and I don't know if it's really necessary.

    But conceptualizing how siloed categories are vertically integrated separate from other thematic content may be useful for extending a site with loosely or unrelated topics. Shawn's reference above to the vid on the "pages vs. posts" dilemma is worth checking out.
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    • Profile picture of the author AtomicJones
      Sorry for the late reply but I wanted to say thanks for your answer. I do need to find a way to add my off-topic articles to some sort of feed on the home page. I will look into plugins.
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  • Profile picture of the author eternalsongbird
    Yes I guess. There's no problem in that.
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  • Profile picture of the author imarkedy
    There is a more simple solution than all offered:

    - Install a 'no-index no-follow' plugin

    - Create a 'custom menu' and only put the above pages you'd like to appear in the navigation bar.

    I love most of your SEO strategy however, I would caution against not, in some form anyway (unless a members only site) blocking your posts from receiving some of that 'link juice' your homepage enjoys.

    Perhaps the posts are put into the footer as a clickable link or somewhere else hardly noticeable at first glance.
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