When you should create a page vs a blog on Squarespace
Landing pages and blog pages can both be used for content. Here's how and when I use them on my travel site.
As a rule of thumb, I would say use a page for any landing page you would like to appear in your main navigation or footer. Use a blog page for any standalone piece of content that addresses a specific user question or problem.
Pages are typically more for your brand and the overall website experience. A blog page is designed to capture search traffic.
A page can be used as a landing page/pillar page for your blog. It’s generally a higher level overview of a lot of content you have on your blog.
A blog page is best for any piece of content that addresses one specific question or problem.
A quick note on terminology
Different people use different names for pillar pages. Some people call them silo pages, but I don’t love that term — I don’t think any of your site content should really be siloed, it should all be somewhat interlinked, so I prefer to talk about content pillars.
There can be overlap between your pillars, but in general, those pages are going to be key supporting pages for the content on your site. For example, if your travel blog is about travelling in Australia, accommodation in Australia might be a key pillar page for you to publish. The best places to stay in Sydney would be a blog post you would link to from that pillar page.
Depending on the level of detail within each pillar, you can also create pillar posts, which are indeed blog posts, but which hold a lot more information than your pillar page. The intent of a pillar post (as with blog posts in general) is to be more informational — the intent of a pillar page is to be more navigational.
Squarespace blog pages
Squarespace has a dedicated blog section, with blog pages contained within it.
Blog pages have more limited functionality than pages elsewhere on your site. That’s because they are generally designed to be informational pages that address a specific query.
They only really need to have a lot of text and images, with a few extras such as email sign up forms or potentially sales widgets.
Squarespace pages (landing pages or pillar pages)
When to use a regular page:
Static content: For content that remains consistent over time, such as About pages, Services pages, Contact forms, or Portfolios.
Custom layouts: Regular pages allow for more customized, static designs, using different sections and blocks, and they are not tied to the blog format.
Service descriptions, product pages, or other pages where sales are the objective.
Pillar pages can also be effective for SEO
I use one page as a pillar page, but I set it up to target a specific keyword — in this case, “New Zealand travel guide.” So, people find the page organically through search, and arrive at a page which then links them to all of my relevant content on this topic.
It is also accessible through the main navigation of my website, so visitors can browse to that page and then navigate to almost any relevant page on my site.
So, there is no reason that a pillar page can’t do double duty in search.
The easiest way to set up a pillar page is to have a category page that just filters out all relevant blog posts. But, in Squarespace you can’t edit a category page — it would literally just land users on your blog landing page, but with a category filter applied.
I find this to be a fairly annoying user experience (what good is a page just full of links to posts?) plus I’m a bit of a control freak with my site, so I set up a custom page. This means I can edit the design and UX.
I prefer to have a more granular approach than dumping, say, every post on Auckland in front of someone.
I personally like having a bit of an intro to each aspect of the city, then relevant posts grouped under that.
This means a lot more manual work, so you really don’t need to do this. I think it makes the most sense when you’re also targeting a keyword, as with my travel guide example. In that case you’re going to need a lot more content on the page, so you’re going to need to edit in text boxes (not possible on a category page).
It might not be a high traffic page, but there can be a lot of brand value in showing up for some of those specific keywords.
If you found this helpful, you might also like to take a peek at my other tips on blogging on Squarespace:
READ MORE:
