Use Blog Pages to Build Mini Site for SEO

Blogging is normally used as a way of posting short articles, photos and other content on a regular basis.

Blogging platforms are used mostly for that purpose. View any number of blogs and see that nearly all of them display a series of posts on the home page in chronological order.

Each post usually shows the first few paragraphs and then a link into the full article on a separate page. The home pages also usually show about five to 10 posts.

But it is not widely known that the best and most popular blogging platforms all offer the ability to create pages, meaning static pages that typically aren’t dated and don’t show up in the post list on the home page.

Quite often blog visitors will reach these pages by clicking on a static link somewhere in the site template.

What is even less known is that a blog page can be set as the home page instead of the most recent blog posts.

The Home Page As a True Page

Why would a blogger do such a thing? Because they aren’t as interested in the blogging platform for blogging as they are for using it as a mini site that they can update periodically or even not at all.

A mini site is a small and highly targeted site consisting of a handful of pages. It may be focused on a single product or topic.

In the world of search engine optimization, it may focus on just one or two keywords and their related cousins.

It may be used to establish a presence in an active online blogging community such as WordPress.

In reality, a mini site on a blogging platform may consist of any combination of pages and posts.

Maybe the site manager can only post once a month because of limited time or help. In that case, it would look a bit strange to have a home page with dated posts that update so rarely. It’s not really much of a blog.

Which Cornerstone Page Matters the Most?

Maybe one article in particular is especially well done and represents the core theme. In that case, the article is published on a page, and that page becomes the home page.

The page literally may be the only page on this mini site. The article could be 1,000 words or 5,000 words. The more targeted the content, the better the potential for getting attention from search engines.

A variation on the idea is having the home page link to a small group of subpages. These subpages can be expanded at a casual pace when time permits.

This mini site with a single page or small group of pages should emphasize length and quality rather than simply provide a large quantity of shorter posts and pages.

For the purpose of SEO, each page should have content built around a well-researched series of keywords and synonyms.

Navigation Tips

The static home page article can contain links to other articles. The navigation bar could contain a link to the actual blog posts.

As a result, they are relegated to a secondary status and help make it clear that the site is more about a highly specific and static topic and less about frequent blogging.

Such an approach also has an advantage with search engine optimization for the benefit of another site.

The article may contain a link to an external site. If that home page article is static, and the blog gains any traction with search engines, the value of that static link goes up and the value for that landing page link goes up as well.

Contrast that approach with blog posts. A post with a link ends up on secondary pages that inevitably have lower value than the home page itself.

It’s important to point out that this link building strategy is not something that can be done on 10 or 20 different sites. It is known that search engines may discover the attempt to create a network of mini sites to affect search rankings and deliver a penalty.

However, it is worth considering on a few of the largest blogging platforms for the combination of benefits, especially SEO, time management, site quality, topic specialization and the ability to reach inside large communities for the purpose of attracting clicks and promoting brand.