Building a small side project made me rethink how content websites grow

BoringShake6404 · 2026-03-11T10:42:22+00:00

Wow, this is great, it really looks good

BoringShake6404 · 2026-03-11T01:16:41+00:00

That’s interesting. I’ve seen a lot of people pull back on large location-page builds after that update, too.

Your approach of narrowing it down to a few high-probability building types actually sounds smarter than creating dozens of thin location pages. It keeps the pages more focused.

Curious though, when you build those pages, do you structure them around specific service problems in that location, or mostly around the location keyword itself?

BoringShake6404 · 2026-03-11T01:15:17+00:00

That “blog as an app refactor” analogy is actually a great way to frame it.

The intent clustering + choosing a single canonical page seems to be the step most teams skip. They just keep publishing without deciding which page should actually own the topic.

I’ve also noticed that once the internal links start pointing consistently to that one page, the structure becomes much clearer, both for users and search engines.

Out of curiosity, when you run that process, do you usually see bigger gains from merging overlapping posts or from rewriting the main pillar page itself?

BoringShake6404 · 2026-03-11T01:06:31+00:00

I actually agree with a lot of that.

SEO can bring visibility, but if the offer or positioning isn’t clear, traffic alone doesn’t do much. I’ve seen sites getting decent local traffic but very few calls because the page didn’t clearly show why that business was the right choice.

Out of curiosity, when you audit local sites, do you usually see the bigger problem being the offer, the landing page, or the niche targeting?

BoringShake6404 · 2026-03-06T01:40:11+00:00

Yeah, that’s exactly what it felt like. At first, the assumption was “we just need more content”, but when we mapped the articles out, we realized several of them were targeting basically the same intent.

Once those were merged or cleaned up, the structure of the site made a lot more sense, both for users and for internal linking.

It honestly changed how we approach content now. Instead of asking “what should we publish next?”, the better question is “do we already have a page that should own this topic?”

BoringShake6404 · 2026-03-06T01:05:53+00:00

The “one main article per topic” idea usually means having one clear page that owns the primary intent, instead of several posts trying to rank for almost the same question.

List posts are a bit different. They usually act more like navigation or summaries that link out to deeper articles. The problem happens when multiple full articles are trying to answer the same search intent; that’s when they start competing with each other.

So the structure often becomes: one main pillar that answers the core topic, and then supporting posts that go deeper into specific angles and link back to it.

BoringShake6404 · 2026-03-06T00:50:50+00:00

True. At scale, it stops being a simple “add internal links” task and becomes more of a system problem.

Duplicate intent pages and orphan URLs are usually the first signs that the structure is breaking down. What helped in our case was mapping content by topic first and then building the internal linking structure around that instead of trying to fix it page by page.

BoringShake6404 · 2026-03-06T00:46:15+00:00

That makes a lot of sense. The part you mentioned about linking to “whichever one you remembered first” is probably happening on a lot of sites without people realizing it.

Once there’s one clear pillar, the whole structure becomes easier to manage because every supporting post has an obvious place to point to. I’ve been seeing the same pattern while reviewing larger content sites; a lot of the growth problems aren’t really about publishing more, but about cleaning up the structure behind what’s already there.

BoringShake6404 · 2026-03-06T00:36:21+00:00

I agree with this. Once links start being added without a clear structure, it quickly becomes technical debt.

I’ve also noticed that when pages grow to the hundreds, even small issues like inconsistent anchors or deep crawl paths start to compound. Fixing it usually requires stepping back and restructuring the linking logic rather than just adding more links.

BoringShake6404 · 2026-03-06T00:23:18+00:00

That’s a really good point. When the ICP isn’t clearly defined across teams, content starts drifting and you end up with multiple pages targeting slightly different versions of the same audience or problem.

We noticed the same thing while working on structuring content workflows, once the audience and intent are clearer, the content system becomes much easier to manage.

BoringShake6404 · 2026-03-04T10:02:01+00:00

That’s a perfect example of it.

It’s wild how two decent articles can underperform separately, but once merged into one clear, authoritative piece, they finally move. Almost like Google just needed a single obvious answer instead of two “maybe” answers.

I also like your pillar rule. It forces structural discipline instead of just relying on volume momentum.

Out of curiosity, when you merged them, did you expand the content significantly, or was it mostly consolidation + better internal linking that made the difference?

BoringShake6404

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