Yeah, 75% is probably about what it comes out to.
I also like to think about my final display on Pages vs Posts. I like to have a very clear visual distinction between them, additionally using Categories to tweak display (i.e. “Events” simply look different than “News”.) But I’m also in the 75-80% Pages camp.
But I like the thinking here that overrides most of the “rules”, like something simple as “your audience expects posts”.
I also like to use just the post name in the permalinks to further blur the distinction between pages and posts. I’ve even seen folks suggesting to disable the meta info completely to the same end (I think it was Brian Dean).
Interesting approach. I’d be interested to know more about the benefit(s). Is the main benefit simply that the post shows up on the blog, too?
That’s the jist of it. If you’re torn between a blog post and page, this approach might allow you to have it both ways.
It showing up on the blog may have a handful of other benefits depending on your setup (ex. it shows up in “latest/popular post” widgets, RSS feeds or other subscriptions, allows for categorization, maybe your blog auto-posts to social media, or maybe your posts automatically become your newsletter… stuff like that).
This is awesome Phil! I am re-thinking some things related to my blog and this is timely. Hadn’t really considered taking my best content and making it a page to share.
Would it be counterproductive to take past blog posts that were the more popular ones, leave them on the blog, but also turn them into pages?
That might be a good move, but I’d suggest beefing up the content in some way along the way. Partly so you’re not republishing exactly what’s in the posts.
A thought on “having it both ways”… If the subject is important enough, you can create page with good content, then do a shorter blog post, linking to the page.
I’d also like to endorse the point that automatic sharing of posts with social media is a powerful reason for employing posts.
Phil, this could not be any clearer. It will help me make the best choices in arguments of pages vs blog posts. Very useful. Thanks.
Thanks, Marc. I’m glad to hear that.
Insightful post, thanks Phil. If you’re on wordpress you can edit categories and permalinks to get whatever /sub-directory/slug structure you want so it could easily resemble a typical page structure. Interesting comment from Nick about the pros of using posts though, I hadn’t really considered that but for any evergreen type content I still go with pages all the way.
True enough, but most people will use whatever URL structure comes out of the box. As you say, it’s easy enough to configure the subdirectories and slugs any which way, but then the question is: what is it about blog posts, specifically, that would make you want to do that? There’s no particular answer I’m driving at, of course. Total case-by-case question. You bring up a great point.
Thanks Phil for sharing this. It gives clarity about the approach to adopt depending on objectives and intent of your content. I also think blog posts can be great to test potential static page content. If a post does fantastically well at helping your site visitors solve a specific issue associated with your industry/ product/ services and drives good traffic to the website, it is worth thinking about creating a permanent page around that topic.