Are hidden web pages a good strategy for SEO?

You are going to find differing opinions on this topic of hidden pages. Some say it's no good for search engine optimization, while others say it's a great technique. How confusing! I want to throw my hat in the ring and share why we are fans of hidden pages for SEO.

You may think of trying to trick Google or a black hat technique called "cloaking" when you read the phrase "hidden pages." We are not talking about either. We are talking about hidden pages that you may use for internal linking or to answer a specific search query. The goal is to help searchers find the answers that they are looking for. Take, for example, a roofing company.

Roofing Example

This roofing company services both residential and commercial properties. They also cover four cities. For their website, they could create a main residential page and the same for commercial. This is content that pertains to all potential clients. This is where they can supercharge their website. This is where hidden pages come in.

They now have two pages that offer content that pertains to all, but now they could create residential and commercial pages for each city. These pages have content geared towards the specific city. I would optimize it for keywords like "<city> roofing" or "roofing contractors near <city>." This is where you can dial it in for a specific keyword, then track the queries made for those specific pages and their impressions/clicks.

Used in Internal Links

These pages make great for internal linking. Internal links are important to create a web that the search bots can crawl through your website. Another good example of this would be businesses that are cross-industry. If you have created a hidden page for each industry that you serve, you can use that for internal linking. The idea that comes to mind is in blog posts.

In your blog posts, you might mention a specific industry. When you state the specific industry in the post you can add a link to the hidden page, adding one more strand to the web you are building on your website.

Do hidden pages benefit SEO? In my opinion, yes. That is as long as they answer a specific question and if you are trying to help users find the answers they are looking for.

I would love to have a conversation about your search engine optimization strategy and how hidden pages could help you boost your search engine ranking.