Pages Versus Posts for WordPress Review Sites
After knocking out several RankSpanker reports over the past week, one of the most common questions that comes back is whether I prefer to use Pages or categorized Posts in WordPress, to setup the flow of your site. There really is no carved in stone documentation as to which method works best, but for myself… I prefer to use a Paged format for the products on review sites, and posts to drive demand and funnel traffic to those Pages, here’s why!
Hint… think of eCommerce!
Pages Versus Posts on WP Review Sites
- Transactional Landing Pages are for Products and Sales, where a transaction occurs (or you send a buyer to a vendor partner)
- Reference Landing Pages (or WP Posts) are for News or Reviews, Funneling the Traffic to the transactional pages!
Pages Tend to Resolve to One Location Versus Many!
Just think of your “About” page, and imagine if it were a post! Pages tend to resolve to one single location, maybe two… if you use a tagging system to help catalog them. Posts on the other hand are in several places like daily, weekly, monthly and yearly archives. Categorized archives, etc etc.
Pages (to me) Are MUCH Easier to Catalog with Products
If you spend more than 1 hour in the WordPress page system you will immediately notice how simple it is to create a solid, logically structured hierarchal system, that remains static across your site, and funnels your readers to the exact spot they need, and would expect to be! (WordPress pages are the closest thing to BANS store-type pages that you will find also)
For example, look at this brand funnel:
Product Brands Page (WordPress page, made up of snippets from the different brands of a specific product line)
- Brand 1 Overview / Guide / Review (Overview of the actual brand, followed by product snippets)
- Product 1 Guide / Review (Actual product review)
- Product 2 Guide / Review
- Product 3 Guide / Review
- Brand 2 Overview / Guide / Review
- Product 1 Guide / Review
- Product 2 Guide / Review
- Product 3 Guide / Review
- Brand 3 Overview / Guide / Review
- Product 1 Guide / Review
- Product 2 Guide / Review
- Product 3 Guide / Review
Now imagine the perfect url structure for brand 1, on a golf putter site:
- home. com/putters/nike/nike-oz-putter
- home. com/putters/nike/nike-arrow-putter
- home. com/putters/nike/nike-method-putter
- etc…
Pages Are Easily Customized at the Per Page or Category Level!
Every tried using a custom template on a single post? With pages, you can create as many single page templates as you want, and use them for different sections of the site as needed!
Want single sidebars in one section and three in another, create a page template!
Pages Make GREAT Transactional Landing Pages!
Blog post pages are so full of distractions like tags, dates, names, sidebars, and every other thing that makes a blog, well… a blog.
With pages, you really have a more finite control over the distractions, by removing all the fluff within your theme files, and ONLY the transactional pages are affected!
Pages are Easier to Use Customized Menus With!
This title is a bit misleading, but pages menus are much easier to work with than category menus in WordPress!
The Perfectly Simple WordPress Product Landing Page
The perfect WordPress “Transactional” Landing page contains:
- LARGE FONT H1 of the Product Name
- Small (200×200) Product Image, left aligned so the first text block of 75-150 words wraps around it, and ends with the first…
- Call to Action! Whether its a BUY NOW button, link or display of 4-8 products, plant the seed NOW!
- The Rest of Your Unique text (No more pictures, it distracts from the call to action!)
- Second Call to Action! The visitor has read the entire page and it’s make it or break it time! If they don’t click on the buy now button here, your page either sucks, or its not the right product for them!
- Related Products, with an image and product title! (If they didn’t like this product, maybe they want a related product)
Ex:
The ONLY exit on this type of product page, is: a:
- a Money Click, or…
- b: Another page on your site, related to the prospect!
Are you a PAGES or POSTS person when it comes to WordPress Product Review sites? Why?
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- How to Add a Facebook Like Button to WordPress Posts
- Using Popshops to add Full Product Pages to your WordPress Website
- Adding the First Pages to your WordPress Website
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
Mark: This is a phenomenal writeup!
This is a question I’ve juggled around as well, and it’s really great to hear your thoughts. I am going to re-read this in a few hours to let it fully digest and then try to once and for all determine how I plan to handle this issue personally.
Thanks!
I usually go with the pages setup for most of my sites, but I get so bored with the overview or brand pages. I hate writing those. I know I have to do it to make the page heirarchy work, but I just don’t like them. Didn’t like them in Bans either. So if it’s a niche that I can’t bring myself to write overviews, I’ll just set it up as posts.
It does make sense to use pages rather than posts, but I seem to get more traffic for sites where I have used posts rather than pages to be honest.
Not sure if it has something to do with pages not being in the RSS feed or what…
I expect there is a plugin that handles that though anyway!
Hi Mark,
Do you have an illustration you could post of how the product brands pages look?
Also, do each of the brand overview pages link to actual product reviews/guides pages to maintain the hierarchy?
Jeff
I posed this question to Mark a week ago and revisited the idea after his response.
I just developed a site that does just that – I think. For example: I created my main category products (phpbay – so long bans) with Pages and a brief 200 or so paragraph description on each page. Then used the posts as reviews (herein lays reviewazon). Used custom templates for the post reviews with price comparisons. Included a Blog category for my own unique content or if you have other specifics you can write them as pages to link to your other pages, such as a How To or Guide.
Very good tips.
@Tyler – Glad to hear it helped out Tyler, hope you enjoyed your Vacation also!
@Brian – If I am writing reviews of products, or creating any kind of money landing page, I usually just use snippets to create the WP summery-type pages.
It can ALL be automated as well, with just a little bit of coding.
@Tao – Agree completely Tao. Posts drive the traffic to the site in every form, or really ANY page that does not have outbound affiliate links. (Just look at stats and notice how much better guides and summary pages do in serps)
Drive traffic with posts > funnel to money! :-)
@Jeff – I added an image to the post, but won’t link to any live examples.
@Sean – Exactly Sean!
Blog and Posts = Traffic and Newsworthy Driving Content, that people LIKE to link to! (Informational Funnels)
Pages = Next Click is a Transaction, or at worst, another product click!
Mark
Thanks for the illustration and I totally understand completely not using real examples.
This is exactly what I was looking for.
Jeff
The increased traffic from posts is prob because they are what the rss feed is made from. Pages aren’t included (as far as I know) in the feed.
@Daniel – For sure Dan.
You can use a plugin to get them in the RSS if you desire (WP search for “RSS Includes Pages” plugin) but none-the-less, pages ARE indexed and included in the sitemap.xml
Okay so let me make sure I got this correct because it seems to deviate from the n1way guide and anything else I’ve read on the subject…
You use pages for:
- Brand landing pages (i.e Nike)
- Product landing pages (i.e. Nike OZ Putter)
You use posts for:
- Reviews
- Guides
- Other newsworthy content
Is that correct?
@Dannie – Thats the way I do it Dannie, but it really depends on what you find works best for you.
I find with the way I BUILD SITES, that its easiest to build the core site up with pages, then use the blog portion of WordPress for driving traffic and providing linkworthy type stuff, that funnels readers to those core pages.
For the most part this makes perfect sense.
The only part I’m confused about now is with the reviews.
So as dannie said:
You build out pages
Brand Landing Pages
-Product Landing Pages
With product landing pages. What do you put on as information? I though this was a review landing page for the product?
Guides, News Content etc.. I get that!
If you do post for the reviews. Do you then just build out the product pages and have like 200 word articles about the product and have the reviews funnel in?
If that’s the case should you gather multiple reviews from other people on blogs/forums and break them up into 5-6 post over time for each product?
Like:
The beneifts of owning “product name”
etc…
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