Evergreen content: Dedicated section or blog posts?
-
As part of our content strategy we are creating an ongoing series of articles to help both our potential buyers and our users learn about our product and improve their knowledge of industry best practices in general.
Internally, we've had some debate as to where we should host this content within our site. We've identified two approaches:
- Series of blog posts
- Dedicated knowledge section of the website
If we go with the first approach, we would created a dedicated section that indexed all the blog posts. If we went with the second, we'd create blog posts for each of the articles announcing their addition.
Is there any difference, SEO wise with the two approaches? What would you recommend?
Thanks,
Darren.
-
Both are great options if done right. My suggestion would be:
Use your blog, create a parent category attach a description etc... if need be use child categories & attach descriptions. Use tags wherever possible, do not go over board and remain relevant. Post your articles within the appropriate child categories. You could maximize this effort by having people subscribe to your "post series" they opt-in via email and every time there is a new post a message would be sent to the subscribers. This allows you to stay connected and relevant while building leads. IMO the SEO benefits are greater using a blog as blog posts offer 2way communication, & have a greater tendency to drive traffic & can be optimized easier in and tend to (IMO) be indexed quicker.
This is a very condensed version of strategy for what you described but as a general rule of thumb anything dynamic that will require 2-way communication or constant updating / new material is best suited for a blog & anything static that is updated rarely etc... is best reserved for pages.
A Knowledge Base for your site is a good idea still and can be optimized. But for the sounds of what you are describing a blog post series would make more sense. IMO.
-
If we went with the second, we'd create blog posts for each of the articles announcing their addition.
This is what we do. We have a blog that gets six to ten shout-outs of news every day - mostly pointing to other websites in our industry or on news sites that have a relevant article (this content is not evergreen). Our own content (which is evergreen) is place on an article page and a blog annoucement is used to get the word out - because we have a nice list of people who subscribe to the blog feed using Feedburner RSS or email.
We also have a retail site with a blog. It gets lots of "how to" articles that might have 1000 works and a few images. Although these are published through a wordpress blog the posts are organized by interest level on category pages on our website - not in blog category format (which is by date).
-
Blog pages have more value than the knowledge section static pages. Also blog posts and knowledge section contents should have different tones. From user perspective, normal users will like to read blogs instead of knowledge section which used to attract serious users.
So blending both will be the right approach.
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
-
Blog.xyz.com
I have a site that is running its blog on www.blog.xyz.com and I am looking for ways to increase Google traffic. Would it be better to running the blog on something like: www.xyz.com/blog instead?
Content Development | | kevgrand0 -
How to promote your blog content
Hi there, we've been blogging for a while now. Some of our content ranks quit well, other posts don't seem to be ranking at all. The weird thing (I think it's weird...) is that we recently published a post and focussed on a phrase that competes with over 400 million indexed pages, and after 3 weeks we're on page 3, and for other posts with only 2.5 million indexed pages we rank past page 5 (ok, this post is already 1,5 year old, does this matter?). To give you some background info, we moved our blog in January in a new subdomain, and redirected the old url's, but didn't actively promote the old posts. Would promoting the old articles through social media help us boost the rankings for these articles (the articles are "best practices", "how-to's", ...). Where / how do you promote your content after you published it on your blog? I find it hard posting in LinkedIn groups related to finance while I have the "online marketing manager" title on my profile. Why would a finance professional read an article shared by a marketing dude? As LinkedIn's API doensn't allow to post into groups anymore, do you actually go through all your relevant groups every time you publish a new blog to share the article?
Content Development | | jorisbrabants1 -
Safest Way to remove a blog?
I have a Magento site that is around 4 years old. It has 2 different wordpress blogs on the same domain. domain/blog domain/nicheblog I would like to completely remove the 2 blogs as the information on them is of low quality and its outdated information. What is the safest way for me to remove this content with out having negative effects on my rankings? thanks
Content Development | | Shop-Sq0 -
Can I post my MailChimp articles on my blog without getting hit for duplicate content?
I would like to post my newsletters on my blog, but am afraid of duplicate content since you can click a link on the MailChimp email blast to view the Newsletter online. Is this considered dup content?
Content Development | | RoxBrock0 -
What is the easiest way for me to pitch a blog post for inclusion on SEOmoz?
I want to write a post about why PR people have been doing content marketing for decades. It is just that most don't realise it. I then want to cover 5 content marketing tips from the PR industry, looking 'beyond the infographic'.
Content Development | | PRAgencyOne0 -
Same keywords different posts
Ive read through past articles and this has come to mind, when wiritng instructions in parts, so for example Scuba Diving part 1 - Equipment Checks Scuba Diving Part 2 - Choosing a buddy Scuba Diving part 3 - Check and double check With the keyword through the article being scuba diving. Looking at previous posts if they are on multiple pages with teh keyword Scuba diving then link juice would be shared but as an article then pages make more sense for reading. Is it best for SEO to have it all on one page or is it best to have for part one as scuba diving , part 2 as diving, part 3 as diving equipment, Although other pages are taken up with those keywords. So i suppose what im asking is will the same keyword over multiple pages devalue the work on the first post.
Content Development | | robnewman0 -
RSS feeds with dup content and titles
Hi, For my Buddypress site I use a tool to create sites with RSS feeds. Each site is for a different feed, but the number of dup tiles and content is running in the thousands. I've been trying to reduce the dups, but have begun to think there is more trouble from such content than benefit. Should I dump the content or ignore the errors flagged by SEOMOZ? Any ideas if thes RSS feed dups are hurting my BuddyPress site? Any suggestions in general about how to eliminate such dupe for a Buddypress Site, eg. the activity log. Larry
Content Development | | tishimself0 -
Forum Site: Content Value Post Panda
I run a forum website built on Wordpress. We're about two years old. The theme of the site is a directory of attorneys, with each directory listing having its own blog account on our site. Through this platform, we receive 75-80 blog posts now every month of varying quality from our users. QUESTION: A good number of the blogs published on our site are also published on the attorney's law firm site as well (they're syndicating on our site). Will this hurt our site in light of Panda? A lot of the syndicated content is very well written and insightful. By contrast, Will non-syndicated but average to below average posts hurt our site? The authors almost always link back to their firm site. Would love some feedback on whether we should be happy about the syndicated content or whether we should potentially ban it?
Content Development | | JSOC0