WordPress redesign: using posts as pages?

[c2g]

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.

[TommyTan]

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!

[farlandlee]

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!

[c2g]

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.