Whether you are running a blog or a website there are several pages I highly recommend creating that help your visitors in different ways to blog articles.
Many new bloggers and those new to running a WordPress website are unsure of the difference between “pages” and “posts”.
There are many similarities between posts and pages and when you go to add a new post or page you will see that they both feature the following options:
- Title (name)
- Content
- Similar Options such as the publish box
Despite these similarities, the two post types are meant for different purposes and have a few unique features.
Pages – Pages are for creating static pages you can add to your blog’s menu, link to using hyperlinks / internal linking or by sharing directly, like in an email for example.
Posts – Posts are for creating a reverse chronological list of individual articles to create your blog page.
Posts may also include comments but they don’t have to, many bloggers turn comments off these days.
So with pages, you can create as many as you want and keep them behind the scenes without clogging up your blog.
The ideal purpose is to use them for evergreen pages that help you organize the most important content on your website and as bedrock pages like your about and contact pages.
Here are the pages I recommend all bloggers and website owners consider creating.
About Page
When getting started it’s useful to create an about page and use it to its full potential by sharing your personal story.
If you are a blogger then having an about page is a great way to connect with your audience and let them know a little bit more about your backstory.
What brought you here?
What makes you tick?
Consider this your chance to tell your origin story, like the superhero movies!
It’s advisable to add a good photo of yourself so people know there is a real human behind the website and not just a faceless corporation.
You might even want to add several photos throughout to help give people an insight into who you are, where you live and what you do.
If you are running a company blog or setting up a website then you can use the about page to talk about the company, why you started it, the history and inspiration behind it and how far you have come.
Avoid writing your about page in the third person, it’s far better to write directly to your reader as though you were having a conversation with them.
If you want to see an example check out my about page.
I use my about page to tell my story so far on how I came to make a full time living online working from wherever I open my laptop and the trials and tribulations along the way.
This lets my readers know that I am a human being just like them.
If the phrase “about” or “about me” sounds too drab why not call the page “My Story” or “Bio” instead.
Start Here Page
Another great page that all blogs should add is the “Start Here” page.
This page is your opportunity to make it easy for your first-time visitors by saying “hey, not sure where to go? Start here”.
You can use this page to briefly introduce what your blog or website is about and then add your most popular or important posts as a series of hyperlinks in a list style.
This clean linear format makes it extremely easy for people to decide what to dive into.
One very smart way to use your start here page is to usher your new reader through your content in a cohesive order.
Maybe you didn’t post your articles about a specific topic all in the correct order or back to back, use your start here page to create a short list of articles for a particular topic in an order that makes sense to your reader.
After wowing your reader with what you do and some of your best content use this opportunity to ask them to take action.
You could ask them to sign up for your email newsletter or lead magnet.
You could ask them to share the page on social media, pin an image on Pinterest or join your Facebook Group.
Or a mixture of the above, but try not to overwhelm your new reader with too many options or by cluttering lots of buttons together.
This isn’t an ideal time to try and close your customers with a sale, use it to nurture relationships instead.
Resources / Recommended Page
If you have been looking at blogs for some time you will be hard pushed to have not seen examples with Resources pages or a Recommended page.
There are a few ways you can use this page and not all bloggers subscribe to the same approach.
Some use it to just list out their affiliate products and products they have created themselves.
Others use it to list out a series of the best resources relating to the topic of the blog.
I personally like to fuse the two and make it an extremely high-quality resource page that features a mixture of
- Recommended Products & Services (Including affiliate links)
- The best resources available on this website. My best blog articles.
- The best resources relating to the niche of the blog, including non-affiliated external links
If your blog is about art, you could link to your favourite art websites, communities and forums.
The idea is you are putting all of the best resources you often share in one page that’s easy to navigate.
It’s also very easy to remember the URL for our resources page since it will usually be yourwebsite.com/resources
When it comes to verbal marketing, offline marketing and sharing links in an email, this is a handy way to share one link that lets people navigate to your most commonly shared links and resources.
Privacy Policy
In May 2018 the EU brought in the GDPR regulations that affect how website owners have to treat visitors personal data.
As such it’s now essential for any website or blog to include a privacy policy to disclose what data is being collected by the website, how it is being used, how long for, your visitors’ rights and how they can remove or amend such data.
The GDPR regulations also require you to be 100% transparent about your cookies and ensure that if they collect personal data, you gain your users’ consent first.
This is all a lot less complicated than it sounds but is beyond the scope of this article however in terms of pages you need to make sure your website is compliant, you will need to add a privacy policy page and make sure it’s easily accessible from any page on your site.
The best way is to place it in the footer so it doesn’t take up precious real estate in your header and menu but is still easy to find.
WordPress provides an easy way to create an automated privacy policy that you can then customize to fill in the blanks.
This tool does a great job of listing the essentials but as every website is different and WordPress has no way of telling what data you are collecting and how you use it, you will need to modify and add additional details to ensure it’s legally compliant.
Work With Me
If you are a blogger or website owner offering services, then having a “work with me” page is an essential way to let readers know you are open for business.
Your work with me page is essentially an online C.V. where you can talk about your experience, expertise and how you can help your reader.
While you can provide examples of your work it’s better to keep the page simple and tidy and not confuse it with a portfolio.
If your work justifies creating a portfolio page then you can create that separately but your work with me page should be more focused on what you can do, how you can help and be persuasive as this is your chance to generate new customers.
Provide instructions on how to get in touch, your typical lead time and what to expect. If you have any other specific instructions on how you like to work then be sure to include them too.
You can even go as far as to mention the type of client you don’t want to work with too.
Contact Page
Everybody knows what a contact page is, but not everyone knows what goes into making a good contact page.
If you run a blog it makes sense to make it as easy as possible for your readers, potential customers, collaborators, partners or sponsors to get in touch with you.
Start your contact page with a short introduction giving some of the reasons why people may want to get in touch and set out any rules of emails you don’t want to receive.
Examples might be refusing certain types of sponsorship requests or other emails you frequently get but can’t help with.
Then add a contact form. The most widely used plugin for this is Contact Form 7 but these days I think WPForms is a much better option.
It’s very easy to install and all you have to do is copy the shortcode they provide and paste it into the page where you want it to appear.
It’s also worth providing a direct link to your email for those that don’t wish to use the contact form or want to get in touch with you later and of course share your social media links especially if you are happy for people to get in touch with you this way.
Homepage
One page we haven’t listed here is the homepage. That is because I have written an in-depth post about blog homepage design you should go and read when you have a moment.
By default, your blog’s homepage will be an index of your most recent posts in reverse chronological order, but this is a little lackluster as your latest content might not be your greatest or the ideal place for new readers of your blog to start.
This guide goes into detail about how to improve your homepage and the different types of homepage you can choose from.
Bonus Ideas
If you want to expand on the above and add some additional pages, here are some other useful ways you can put them to use.
FAQ
If you have built up your blog or website and you are getting a lot of repeat questions via email, comments or on social media, one great time-saving productivity tip is to create a one-stop shop to answer all of the frequently asked questions you get asked.
Create a page with a short intro that briefly explains that you have created this page to help more people while saving time and your breath!
Then list out your questions and answers in a simple format starting each question with Q: and each answer with A: to make it easy to navigate.
The added bonus of an FAQ page is that over time when you get to learn about your audience and the common things they are asking you can create a page that is extremely search engine friendly and keyword rich.
The questions you are being asked are likely to also be frequently searched on Google, by listing the questions out and then answering each of them you are increasing your chances of getting some of that traffic to your blog, albeit to your FAQ page.
If you find that some of the questions can only be answered by going into more detail break them out into blog posts, answer them in summary on your FAQ page and then link to your full blog post going into more detail answering the question in full.
I also recommend you go through my guide on the 21 things I recommend you do with every blog post you publish.
Glossary
The glossary page is more useful for certain niches and topics than others but if you are talking about a subject with lots of technical terms and jargon they are a fantastic resource for your readers and another way to rank on Google.
Glossary pages are especially useful if you want to avoid having to keep explaining what certain terms mean everytime you mention them in a blog post, instead you can reference your glossary instead and have a full A-Z of terms and acronyms followed by their definitions.
When properly filled out a glossary page can be a very keyword rich page containing lots of keywords your visitors will be using and trying to find out explanations for.
The best way to gain someone’s trust via your blog is to teach them something, even if it’s as simple as explaining what CTR means.(It stands for Click-Through-Rate by the way). See how annoying it is to put those bracketed explanations in posts.
The best way to set this up is to create a page with a short introduction explaining the purpose of the glossary page for your readers and then list out the full alphabet A-Z including 0-9 if some terms begin with a number.
Make each of them h2 titles so they stand out.
Then underneath list out the different terms and phrases under each letter and make them bold or h3 titles.
Then write a brief explanation of what each term means underneath.
It’s really quite straightforward once you have it setup and whenever you have a new term pop in your head you can head back to your glossary page and update it so it’s constantly evolving and growing.
Thank You Pages
You might be tired of hearing this by now but email marketing is a vital component of any blog or website strategy and it all starts with building an email list.
Whether you are using MailChimp, AWeber or Converkit as your autoresponder service, you will want to create some thank you pages to redirect visitors back to after they sign up.
Most autoresponders provide you an ugly default thank you page hosted on their servers but this doesn’t offer the most professional or consistent user experience.
Instead, you want to create a thank you page in WordPress, and use it to thank your new subscriber after they join your mailing list.
I made my thank you page pretty funky and tongue in cheek, with an animated gif and some special FX. I’m not lying, sign up to my email list below and see for yourself.
You see, I sweat the details, and take great pleasure in adding a splash of humour into my web design and marketing ideas.
Just a simple thank you page with some instruction on what you want your reader to do next and perhaps links to your social media accounts if they want to follow you there or even better to your community Facebook group.
Portfolio Page
If you are a creative or have visual work to showcase, it will make sense to have a dedicated portfolio page, especially if you want to sell your work or generate new paying clients from your blog.
To create an attractive and engaging portfolio page you are likely going to need to use a gallery or portfolio plugin to create a grid or slider to better present your work.
If you are using a page builder like Beaver Builder or Elementor then you can use a portfolio or gallery module to create an engaging portfolio page.
If you provide different services, consider creating several galleries and then grouping them by service.
I could write an entire article on building a portfolio page and maybe someday I will.
Landing Pages
Landing pages are an essential component in any digital marketers toolkit but most bloggers aren’t digital marketers.
So what are landing pages and why might you want them?
Landing pages can mean a lot of things but in the context of a WordPress website or blog, they refer to custom pages that follow a different and often more simple format than the rest of the pages on your site.
Landing pages often lack the global header, menu and footer sections to avoid distraction and funnel the user towards taking action.
This could be for a product but it could also just be for getting someone to sign up for your free eBook giveaway.
It’s a simple page you can share where the visitor won’t navigate away to a different page and instead will check out your value proposition.
These pages may also be called squeeze pages and sales pages, however, there can be some differences depending on who you listen to but that is arbitrary at this point, the primary purpose is to promote an offer and get visitors to navigate to your call to action.
All that matters is you should consider creating a landing page if and when you have an offer to promote on the back of your blog.
Here’s an example of a landing page I created to promote my free marketing worksheets.
Many marketers use tools like LeadPages and ClickFunnels to create landing pages but if you have the right WordPress Theme and a page builder you can do these yourself inside your WordPress Dashboard instead which saves money.
Final Note
You may not have the headroom to create all of these pages but by adding a few of them you can better organize your best content and direct your readers in the direction you want them to head.
Once you have added a few pages, header over to:
Appearance > Menus
Here you can finish up by adding the most important pages to the main menu of your WordPress blog to make sure they get amble exposure no matter which page your readers are on.
If you have any page ideas that you think are useful then feel free to drop us a message.
