I need advice on improving my site's blog architecture to ensure long-term success and better visibility of evergreen content. Currently, the blog uses infinite scroll, but I am considering switching to pagination and creating a dedicated/featured articles section for major categories. With approximately 1200 blog posts, I have some concerns and would appreciate input on the following:1.) Will implementing pagination affect the URLs of existing blog posts (currently using /post-name slugs with /blog redirected by default)?
2.) What are the best practices for setting up a dedicated/featured articles page to highlight high-importance blog posts effectively?
3.) We regularly update/refresh content, but what should be done with old/outdated content from 2014-2021 that isn’t worth updating? Should it be left as is or created as some type of post archive?
I would like to know if there are any potential SEO benefits or drawbacks to making these changes, as well as any insights, recommendations, or experiences you can share.
Implementing pagination will likely require changes to your existing blog post URLs, especially if you intend to use page numbers in the URLs (e.g., /blog/page/2). However, you can mitigate this by using a 301 redirect to ensure search engines and users are directed to the correct pages. This minimizes the impact on SEO.
For your featured articles section, consider a dedicated page for each major category with curated content from each. Use clear headings, concise descriptions, and engaging visuals to highlight these posts. This can improve user engagement and SEO by grouping related content and promoting high-value posts.
Regarding outdated content, archiving it is a good option. This can be done by creating a dedicated “Archive” page or by tagging the older posts with a clear label such as “Archived” or “Outdated.” This helps maintain site organization and prevents users from encountering outdated information. For SEO purposes, consider using a noindex tag on archived content to prevent them from being crawled by search engines.
While pagination can be beneficial for site structure and user experience, ensure that the implementation is seamless and doesn’t negatively impact SEO. Remember to redirect old URLs correctly, update sitemaps, and monitor your search engine rankings for any significant changes. Ultimately, the best strategy depends on your specific website and content.