Essential SEO Tips for WordPress Websites 

Hi Zack - probably want to stick to regular pages. Category pages need to include a list of posts that pertain to each category. I'm not sure that you'll be writing a lot of content for each city? Say that you're running a website for Gucci and you'd like to have a Gucci dedicated page for each Gucci store in the U.S. You can still have a nav item called "Stores" and have an individual page for each city "NY, Orlando, Miami, Los Angeles..." But since you'll probably simply list pictures and provide a description of where the store is located etc, you don't need these pages to be archive pages. Your archive pages for this website will probably still focus around content categories for which you'll be writing a lot of posts about. For example, you may have an archive page about "Outfit inspirations", you may have another archive page for "How to dress with handbags" and so forth and so on. And inside each category page, you'll have a list of blog posts and just an overall well optimized page with sections that tackle frequently asked questions and so forth and so on 😊 I'd need more details around your business and what you do but with the little that I know I'd say you're better off doing what you're doing by having them be regular individual pages. 😊 Hopefully this helps! - Tony

If you are in a very competitive niche you'll need to create pages for your local businesses. I did and now I made my customer rank #2 on Google without even doing heavy SEO.

Potentially speaking, yes. Especially if you have them use the same alt-text. They can lead to search engines not indexing one of them, keyword cannibalization... - Tony

Hi there! Thanks for stopping by! So, a few things here to consider... You can indeed not index your archive pages, although by default these will always be indexed unless you specifically tell WordPress (by means of an SEO plugin) not to do so. I, however, do not recommend you do this. What you want to be doing is what I say in the video, which is create dedicated archive pages that are well crafted and optimized with relevant keywords. Listing your archive pages on your header menu is a perfectly valid idea too. Though it's not necessarily a requirement. The goal here is to try to get those archive pages to rank as high up on google as possible, and having them on our main menu just makes them more accessible to our website visitors. But it won't necessarily make them rank higher. As for the structure of a silo architecture, you have the right idea indeed. But be careful with this "...would show all the blog posts with that category". You don't want to just show the blog posts for that category. That wouldn't be a very optimized page. You want to really craft up a page that addresses commonly asked question, provides a good overview of the subject matter AND ALSO lists all of your content pieces pertaining to that category. Let me know if this helps! Tony

@@Thrivethemes Not really. Let me just focus on one basic question then. Are archive pages just another name for previously created blog posts or are they something additional that you create independently and if so how (using Thrive Architect).

@@agingslowdown2819 Nope, archive pages are different from blog posts. Your blog posts are your traditional content pieces that you create as articles. Archive pages are the pages that WordPress creates for you where all of your blog posts about the same category get listed. You can edit these using Thrive Theme Builder. See if this article helps you: thrivethemes.com/wordpress-category-page/

Its not just you. "Archive" is a poor word choice for main content, or better, foundational content. English as Second Language may be to blame. This is the seed of a good video and I appreciate the content and comments of OP.

Hi there! This is definitely not the kind of experience we expect our customers to receive. Do you think you can send me an email to tonythrivethemes.com with your name and details? I'll make sure I get you sorted out asap! - Tony

thanks Tony, today the support finally fixed my site and it's up again.

Hi there! You can do this indeed. Having those archive pages in your menu will make them more accessible to website visitors and if you craft them up well enough I'm sure they'll appreciate being able to find these content pages in an easy way. But don't forget that what we're really trying to do by following a silo architecture is trying to make it easier for google to rank our archive pages. Check out this archive page for example. thrivethemes.com/build-website/ This is a really good example of an archive page that follows a silo architecture. Rather than having a simple page listing out all of our posts about how to build a website, we provide a good overview of why would someone want to build a website to begin with. Best practices, tips and tricks AND we also have a list of content pieces that go deep into website building. Let me know if this helps! - Tony

@@Thrivethemes So, where would you put that cool example archive page on your website? How would people find it? It's not in your menu. How would Google find it?

@@Thrivethemes I see how that works. Great idea. Thanks for the help.

@@andrewmullen2622 Hi Andrew, thanks for stopping by! You can indeed put your archive pages in your nav menu. A lot of niche websites do this. Though it's not necessary. You can certainly just have your archive pages listed in your sitemap and google will crawl them just fine. Also, more often than not, most websites still use breadcrumbs for easy navigation and your archive pages appear in those as well 😊 - Tony

@@Thrivethemes Pardon my ignorance, but what is a sitemap?