Using posts to make static pages - A best practice or a bad idea?
-
I have started working with a few law firms this year. They already have websites and I am doing various marketing tasks such as copywriting, redesigns, and, of course, SEO.
In a couple of cases I was surprised to find that they had made the pages describing their various practice areas post content. I'm not sure why. But I suspect that the idea might have been to have the phrase: /practice-areas/ as a part of their URL.
I didn't really like the idea of treating pages like posts. It seems a bit like working the system. But apart from that, wouldn't pages have a higher value as "permanent" content? As posts - their publish date has more weight, right? And they'd get old? But maybe the previous developers were on to something and the category/post approach to listing practice areas is the way to go?
I am starting a new site for a new firm and I'd like to feel more confident about the right structure to choose for this kind of website before I start.
Does anybody know the right answer?
Thanks!
-
Yes - that is the gist of my concerns. But I don't know...I think "cornerstone content" is an SEO strategy term, not something that Google defines and associates with only pages. Because there are lots of bloggers who have hundreds of posts and only a few pages and who plan for certain pages or categories to be their cornerstone content.
-
I do,
Pages are static and have detailed information posts are dynamic, time based and run chronologically within a blog.
If you make your main information a post it looses some value as these pages are cornerstone content that the rest of the site builds off of. It more of a user experience situation.Thanks,
-
Thanks Miriam!
No - the post pages are pretty seamless as far as the user is concerned. I didn't realize they were posts myself until I had admin access and started looking for the pages to edit. I have a little duplicate content to deal with re the top level page (category page) but it's not a big issue.
I think then, unless someone new posts with compelling reasons to change them, that I will leave them as they are in my existing site, and make them pages in my new sites.
-
Hey Dandelion,
I honestly don't think Google is going to care whether a strong piece of content is labeled a page or a post, if you're taking care to permanently link to these core assets from the top level navigation menu of the site, and are internally linking to them wherever relevant.
What could matter is user experience. Does the formatting/design of these articles change in some way, making them look like they aren't consistent with the core pages of the website? Is the experience startling for the human user? If so, you might want to look into Donald's idea, but otherwise, it's not likely something I'd worry about too much.
-
Thanks for your input Don!
Do you have an SEO reason to recommend the change? Or are you like me, and just like pages to be pages and posts to be posts? I mean, I could just leave it like it is. I am mostly trying to figure out if there are any good reasons to leave it like it is.
-
Dandelion,
This would be my suggestion, Turn those posts into pages. 301 Redirect the posts into the new pages you have created. This way the link juice loss will be at a minimum.
Then put together a content marketing strategy to compliment the pages you have created.
Thanks,
Don Silvernail
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Using the Onpage Grader for Local Business websites
Hey Guys, Curious how people use the onpage grader for optimizing pages for local businesses specifically, I'm interested if people use keywords with or without a geo modifier since adding a geo modifier will prevent more natural writing to increase the score. If you don't use a geo modifier do you have some general rules of the city that needs to be in the H1 and first paragraph etc. Any tips for using the page grader for local businesses would be great Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | solidlocal0 -
Service Area Location Pages vs. User Experience
I'm familiar with the SAB best practices outlined here. Here's my issue: Doing local landing pages as described here might not be ideal from a user experience point of view. Having a "Cities We Serve" or "Service Areas" link in the main navigation isn't necessarily valuable to the user when the city-specific landing pages are all places within a 15-mile radius of the SAB's headquarters. It would just look like the company did it for SEO. It wouldn't look natural. Seriously, it feels like best practices are totally at odds with user experience here. If I absolutely must create location pages for 10 or so municipalities within my client's service area, I'd rather NOT put the service areas as a primary navigation item. It is not useful to the user. Anyone who sees that the company provides services in the [name of city] metropolitan area will already understand that the company can service their town that is 5 miles away. It is self-evident. For example**, who would wonder whether a plumbing company with a Los Angeles address also services Beverly Hills?** It's just... silly. But the Moz guide says I've got to do those location pages! And that I've got to put them high up in the navigation! This is a problem because we've got to do local SEO, but we also have to provide an ideal experience. Thoughts?
Local Website Optimization | | Greenery1 -
Using IP Detection to Filter Directory Listings without Killing Your SEO?
I have a client who maintains a directory of surgeons across the United States (approx. 2,000 members at present), and wishes to use IP detection to dynamically filter their surgeon directory to a sub-set that is relevant to the geography of the visitor. At the same time, however, we want the pages in the surgeon directory to rank nationally for terms like "[insert specialty] surgeons". Any tips/best practices for implementing an IP detection solution without shooting yourself in the foot from an SEO perspective? Is it even possible? Thanks! Jeremy
Local Website Optimization | | Jeremy_Lopatin0 -
Improve my on-page SEO
Hello, I am a photographer based in the UK, I have recently increased my prices, so SEO has become more important then ever as I need to target additional cities and wedding venues. I am looking for suggestions on ways I can ethically improve my websites on-page SEO and regional landing pages. I am running out of ideas, so any suggestions would be welcome. Do you think search engines will see these regional pages as low quality spammy pages are they not advised! If so how can I target other cities with out paying for PPC. Home page Additional Issues Is the 404 server script any good? I also have an issue, with old deleted wordpress pages, redirecting them even though there are no redirects set up in SEO yoast. I am not sure the server script on the shared hosting for 404 errors is any good, does anyone have any experience with this. For example this page returns the 404 page, however the header status is 200. http://www.robertsail.co.uk/derby-wedding-photographers-2/ If I moved to a dedicated server would this help me out.
Local Website Optimization | | Roboto19701 -
404 error from linking page that does not exist
We migrated our site from php to wordpress about a month ago. All of the old website files have been removed. I ran Moz analytics and get 17 critical 404 errors from linking pages that do not exist. 404 : Received 404 (Not Found) error response for page. http://www.preventivesupport.com/freeestimates.php404010http://preventivesupport.com/freeestimates.phpN/AThe www thing is interesting but freeestimates.php does not exist?
Local Website Optimization | | KrisIrr0 -
Can you, somehow, use dynamic number insertion on a click to call button (image)
Hello Moz! I have been beating my head against the wall for a few hours, and I am starting to get a headache. My question is simple: I am doing some work for a local salon, and we started a PPC campaign recently. It's very important that I get accurate ROI metrics from both our PPC efforts and Yelp advertising program, and the best way to do this is by using custom phone numbers and dynamic number insertion w/ CallRail to track phone calls being made to the salon. I can then cross reference the numbers used to call with the salon POS software to see what they spent, how many appts. they booked, etc. A VERY large portion, the majority in fact, of traffic comes from mobile, and in the past I had a big, fat, beautiful CTA click-to-call button that showed the salon phone number. However, I have found that with dynamic number insertion, and my near non-existent programming skills, it is impossible to have the number dynamically insert into an href image. Sooooo...any ideas on how to do this, or is it just not possible????
Local Website Optimization | | Sean_Gutermuth0 -
Home page links -- Ajax When Too Many?
My home page has links to major cities. If someone chooses a specific city I want to give them the choice to choose a suburb within the city, With say 50 cities and 50 suburbs for each city that's 2500 links on the home page. In order to avoid that many links on the home page (or any page) I would like to have just the 50 cities and pull up the suburbs as an ajax call that search engines would not read/crawl. This would be better than clicking on a main city and then getting the city page which they then can choose a suburb. Better to do it all at once. Is it a bad idea to ajax the subregions on the home page and to code it so Google, Bing, other search engines don't crawl or even see anything on the home page related to the suburbs? The search engines will still find the suburb links because they will be listed on each main city page.
Local Website Optimization | | friendoffood0 -
Want to move contents to domain2 and use domain1 for other content
Hello, We would like to merge two existing, fairly well positioned web forums. Contents (threads and posts) from www.forocreativo.net would be moved to www.comunidadhosting.com. We are testing some scripts which will handle redirect 301 for every single thread from forocreativo.net to comunidadhosting.com. But here is the thing: once all current contents are moved out of www.forocreativo.net, we would like to use this domain to point it to a specific geographic region and to target other niche/topics. Would you say we can do this and Google will not penalize neither of those 2 domains? Any input is more than welcome. Thank you! 🙂
Local Website Optimization | | interalta0