This is an important lesson and a key part of building a profitable website. When building your website, the design can vary, but when it comes to your website structure, you should follow a specific type. This will ensure maximum results in terms of both ranking and conversion.
And this involves using a strategy for Pages vs Posts.
What are Pages and Posts
Your website is built on WordPress and, by default, it comes with two content types: Pages and Posts.
There are several differences between them that you should be aware of in order to use them well for your content.
Posts are servings of content that are listed in chronological order (newest to oldest) on your blog’s page. This can be your home page or another page you can set up in Customize Homepage Settings. Posts usually comprise the majority of a website.
Posts are meant to be timely. As they get older they are archived so your visitors will have to dig deeper to find them. You can organize them into categories and tags to help your visitors locate them and the search engines will better understand your website structure and content.
Think of categories like the contents of your website. Just like the chapters in a book, you can use categories to group posts. You can even have child categories under these category headings. Tags are more specific keywords that describe the contents of a post; similar to an index in a book.
Pages are static and are not listed by date. They are timeless content. You can have a page as your “home page”, instead of a roll of posts and pages that are displayed in places like the sidebar using widgets.
Common examples of Pages are the About page, Privacy Policy, Contact page, etc.
Creating the right structure for your site
I’m very strategic in the way I use both Pages and Posts in a moneymaking website.
The Pages of a website should be reserved for the evergreen content – the Money Content.
What is Money Content? Money content is content that will give you a direct financial return once you convert your visitor. For example, content that includes affiliate links.
This type of content doesn’t change frequently so it’s best suited for Pages.
Let’s call content that is not money content “Other Content.”
This Other Content should be created as Posts on your site.
Posts are usually fast-changing and are the content that keeps your website “fresh” to the eyes of search engines and visitors.
My favorite type of money content
You should always research what types of content are offered in your niche. Pay special attention to the pages that rank at the top for the keywords you’re targeting.
One of my favorite types of money content for my websites is:
Best page / buying guides
These buying guides should always be for a specific product; not a product category. So, your buying guide wouldnʼt be for vacuum cleaners, but for example, vacuum cleaners without a bag or vacuum cleaners with a HEPA filter.
The best length for these guides depends on the SERPs. Check what the top ranking guides look like and write for a similar length.
This type of content should also be structured in physical silos in your website like this: abc.com/best/something
Carrying on with the earlier example, it would look like this:
dustylife.com/best/vacuum-without-bag
In this example, the BEST page would host all the money content.
These pages are perfect to set up as a hub for every buying guide on your website. You can think of it as a parent page for your guides. Make sure you’re linking to them both from the menu and from the other content.
Don’t forget about images. Using featured images for each buying guide will help your visitors engage with them.
How to create money content around the keyword Best
Let’s run through the process of how I create a page with money content around the keyword “Best.”
You should start with a short introduction and include the main keyword youʼre targeting in the text.
After the introduction, add a product comparison table. I will explain later in this lesson exactly how to format tables and use plugins to create product comparison tables.
Next, add mini-reviews of the products to the page with about 300 to 500 words each.
Years ago, you could get by with doing a little research on each product.
These days, you really need to know what you’re talking about to differentiate yourself from all the similar content online. Itʼs best if you actually get your hands on the products. If thatʼs not possible, try talking to someone who uses them and get their feedback and comments. Then your review wonʼt end up looking like a list of features you took from the brand or sales page.
The last part of your page should be a general section about the particular product. I find a good way to do this is in the form of FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). Again, itʼs a lot easier to write this if you have direct experience with the product, or have been speaking to people who have it. Answer questions like: “how to choose the best vacuum without a bag”.
To finish your content, add a conclusion. You’ll want to add this because some people scroll to the end of the page as soon as they land on the page. After reading this, theyʼll decide whether they want to spend time reading the rest of the content – or not.
Product comparison tables
Using a product comparison table has several benefits:
Itʼs an easy way for your readers to compare multiple items within a single blog post It boosts conversions
You can still use individual product reviews in the same post because they are also important. Just put the table at the top of the page and follow with the individual product reviews. By including both, your content will work much better for both your readers and for SEO.
Best Practices for Product Comparison Tables
Use comparison tables for up to 5 items – This type of content helps your visitor with what is called “compensatory decision making.”
You might believe that the more information and options you give your visitor, the happier he or she will be. In fact, the opposite is the case. People are easily overwhelmed and when that happens they just give up and leave your page.
Simplicity – Evaluate how much text you need to include for the attributes of the products and consider the size of the visitor’s screen or device. Less is more.
Be consistent – The content for each product in your table should be complete and consistent across the range so that different products are easily compared.
Support Scannability – Your visitors want to focus on the essentials, so make the table easy to scan for differences, similarities, and keywords.
You can use a standard table layout which is created using options as columns, attributes as rows, with row labels on the left and column labels above. Use consistent text alignment in each column and short sentences. Color coding is also an option. You can color the text in the cells within the table, or color the background in a column.
Use attributes that your visitors will actually care about; don’t just add everything you think of.
The Golden Rule of Comparison Tables – Above all else, do the work for your visitor. Don’t slow them down with repetitive information, too much detail to retain, or unfamiliar terms that only Google recognizes.
How to create the tables
You can create a table in HTML and insert it into the page code, or use a plugin.
My team usually writes the code for tables, but, in the past, weʼve used a plugin called AAWP – https://getaawp.com
Other plugins in the marketplace are:
- Tablepress
- Table Maker
- Go Pricing
Make sure to optimize your tables for mobile. Most “out of the box” tables are not responsive, but Tablepress has an add on to deal with this:
Alternately, you can hire a developer to build a responsive table using HTML and CSS.
Youʼll find a developer on a freelance site like Fiverr https://www.fiverr.com/
A note about Featured Snippets
This is another type of content to use strategically in your content approach.
Use these guidelines to help you rank in Featured Snippets:
Add the target keyword within an H2 or H3 tag near the top of the page
Write a 54-58 word answer (to that long tail keyword) directly below the H2 or H3
If possible, add Step 1, Step 2, (or something similar), to the start of each of the H2/H3s on your page
Start your answer paragraph with “Start by…”, “The first step is”, etc.
For Featured Snippets ranking, itʼs more about the structure of your content than the number of links you have. The more you make it “ready to use” for Googleʼs eyes, the better chance you have to rank.