WordPress redesign: using posts as pages?
-
Starting a redesign for an attorney who is currently using WordPress with an old framework that is no longer being supported, so I'm going to install a new WP and start from scratch.
The site consists of about 30 static pages (practice areas, attorney profiles, etc.) and they write about 5 blog posts per month.
I've always differentiated between posts and pages for WP sites I've done in the past, but this time around I thought it might be more clean (less files, and easier for their webmaster to make routine edits) if I just brought over the static pages as posts. However, the recent webinar on the Yoast SEO plugin mentioned using the month/day in the permalink structure for posts to avoid duplicate content issues. That would go against how I was thinking of setting it up, because I would have just generated the URL off the page title and make a separate category for "pages".
Just wondering if anyone's used posts as pages before. While this seems like it would make things easier for the webmaster, I'm not sure it maximizes potential for SEO.
Thanks.
-
Thanks for sharing. I've always built using pages as well, and the pages as posts idea was presented to me as, I guess, just a way to keep the webmaster in one place when in the dashboard. By webmaster, I mean basically a word processor. It actually sounds more confusing now, especially the idea of them forgetting to tag something as a page and having to search through hundreds of posts a few years from now.
Good reasoning, and I think I'll stick to the traditional architecture.
-
I have never built a site that way myself, but I have rebuilt a couple that were. I was specifically asked to rebuild a site that had been built in this manner because the client found it cumbersome to use. Because everything was a post just divided up by categories they had to click posts and then select the appropriate category to see the posts they were interested in.
When creating posts if they forgot to set the category, the post didn't show up anywhere on the site because all archives were generated by category. Easy enough fix once they caught it, but why bother? I don't think this is easier for a webmaster really more of a pain.
With a little training on wordpress, my clients have always appreciated the fact that when they want to post to their blog, they click "posts" and when they want to add a page to the website they click "pages." In fact, I use custom post types to handle different types of entries for my clients because that breaks it down even further for my clients and they prefer that. An example would be creating a custom post type for "properties" for a property management company. But what exactly do you mean by "routine edits"? I think of routine edits as updating telephone numbers, addresses, etc which I would think you would handle with widgets in any event.
I am not sure what you mean by "less files." As all entries whether posts, pages, custom post type, etc are stored to the posts table in wordpress there are no more or less files or tables based upon how you enter the information into wordpress. So, unless I am missing something or misunderstood your comment, there is no benefit there.
From an SEO perspective, using the structure that is built into wordpress should again be a benefit. For example the Yoast SEO plugin allows for you to template your meta titles based upon post type (page or post), although manually setting them is always best. The permalink structure allows you to have dates shown for posts, but leave them out for pages and other post types. So the added flexibility of uses posts, pages & other post types is a benefit for SEO as well.
Finally, since Google is believed to use categories and tags to determine what the content is about, you are probably losing out on a opportunity for SEO benefit by using them for site architecture.
Honestly, I think using categories to set the architecture of the site is a throwback to when wordpress was much less robust than it is now. It was a workaround to be able to divide information up in a logically fashion on a site when you had no other options. Now we do.
Good luck!
-
Hi,
I am not sure how to use the month/day in the link to avoid duplicate content issue. I should check it out. As long as you don't have any same contents within your website, then it should be easy to avoid duplicate content.
If I am redesigning the website, I would probably use pages for practice areas, attorney profiles and etc and use posts for the blog. Since the practice areas and attorney profiles are all static and wouldn't change often, I find pages to be better.
my 2 cents.
Hope it helps!
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
-
Wordpress pages posts
Say you have a WordPress website with reviews and lists. Would you use "post" or "page" type for them? Is there any SEO advantage in using pages/subpages instead of posts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fabx1 -
Duplicate Page Content
We have different plans that you can signup for - how can we rectify the duplicate page content and title issue here? Thanks. | http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=100 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | directiq
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=104 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=116 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=117 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=102 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=119 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=101 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=103 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=5 |0 -
Product with two common names: A separate page for each name, or both on one page?
This is a real-life problem on my ecommerce store for the drying rack we manufacture: Some people call it a Clothes Drying Rack, while others call it a Laundry Drying Rack, but it's really the same thing. Search volume is higher for the clothes version, so give it the most attention. I currently have 2 separate pages with the On-Page optimization focused on each name (URL, Title, h1, img alts, etc) Here the two drying rack pages: clothes focused page and laundry focused page But the ranking of both pages is terrible. The fairly generic homepage shows up instead of the individual pages in Google searches for the clothes drying rack and for laundry drying rack. But I can get the individual page to appear in a long-tail search like this: round wooden clothes drying rack So my thought is maybe I should just combine both of these pages into one page that will hopefully be more powerful. We would have to set up the On-Page optimization to cover both "clothes & laundry drying rack" but that seems possible. Please share your thoughts. Is this a good idea or a bad idea? Is there another solution? Thanks for your help! Greg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GregB1230 -
Canonicals: use when page has same listings, but displayed very differently?
Say you have a listing of movies. In that listing, there are 5 different view types. One has the scenes broken out. Another has only the box covers. Two of the views have movie descriptions, but others don't. Still, the listings themselves are the same, and you only want the default view to be indexed. Is it appropriate to use canonicals in this case? The alternative is to noindex the other views, but the site already has rankings and deep links. If Google does see the pages as unique and we apply a canonical, could we be penalized or would they merely ignore it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LahomaManagement0 -
Link masking in WordPress
in Wordpress, I want to block Google from crawling my site using the primary navigation. I want to use anchor text links in the body and custom menus in the sidebar to make maximum benefit of the "first link counts" rule. In short, I want to obfuscate all of the links in my primary navigation without using the dreaded nofollow. I do not want to block other links to the pages - body text, custom menus, etc. . This would be site wide. I'd rather not use Ajax or any type of programming unless it's part of a plugin. Can anyone make a simple, Google-friendly suggestion?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Google Filter? Drop from top first page to bottom second page?
My site has dropped from the first page top spots to the bottom second page, about 2 month ago. From time to time it reappears in the first page, is this some kind of google filter? How do I solve this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ofer230 -
301 - should I redirect entire domain or page for page?
Hi, We recently enabled a 301 on our domain from our old website to our new website. On the advice of fellow mozzer's we copied the old site exactly to the new domain, then did the 301 so that the sites are identical. Question is, should we be doing the 301 as a whole domain redirect, i.e. www.oldsite.com is now > www.newsite.com, or individually setting each page, i.e. www.oldsite.com/page1 is now www.newsite.com/page1 etc for each page in our site? Remembering that both old and new sites (for now) are identical copies. Also we set the 301 about 5 days ago and have verified its working but haven't seen a single change in rank either from the old site or new - is this because Google hasn't likely re-indexed yet? Thanks, Anthony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grenadi0 -
One page wordpress site - what are the steps for SEO
Hello, I am launching 5 sites with keyword exact domains. I am developing the sites on wordpress as one page sales funnel sites. What do I need to do to optimize my sites? Really appreciate any bullet points or directions. Tks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brianmaher0