Should Review Post Roundups Have a Buyer's Guide at the Bottom?

[gadsie]

When you write a top 5 review post about a certain product, should you make a separate post explaining all the general ins and outs of that product and how it works etc, or should you do that within your review post (this would give it more words, but it might be also be a bit off-topic for someone who's just looking for reviews)?

So for example, if you have a health blog, and you write a review post on different supplement X brands, should you also include the benefits of supplement X in general, or do that in a separate post?

 

[Apex]

@gadsie Which option do you think would be the most beneficial to your readers? What information do you think they are looking for? Answer those two questions and you will have your answer.

In the end, I think that what's really important is knowing who your audience is and what they want.

 

[Curiouscat]

@gadsie I agree with Apex.If your site is targeted at newbies, they would probably profit from an explanation of all the possible features and other general information so they can understand the reviews. Niche specific jargon can be quite confusing.
And it can be great link bait. I would not want this going to a page where I don't sell anything.

Experts who just look for a replacement or the newest stuff don't need that.

 

[Steve]

When you write a top 5 review post about a certain product, should you make a separate post explaining all the general ins and outs of that product and how it works etc, or should you do that within your review post (this would give it more words, but it might be also be a bit off-topic for someone who's just looking for reviews)?

So for example, if you have a health blog, and you write a review post on different supplement X brands, should you also include the benefits of supplement X in general, or do that in a separate post?

I know nothing about supplements, but i would presume someone looking for top 5 ... already has a good idea what ... does.

Things i have personally searched for using a best / top type phrase (random examples):

Best ultrabook 2016 //i know what a laptop is, so nope, i would not have benefited from the info
best budget SDS drill //again, i know what i want, i just want a specific model

So based on that limited example, i would say no.
However, using the laptop search as an example, the sites i hit nearly always linked out to a specific review for each model in their top x list, and would have snippets from related articles as well, such as 'ultrabook or macbook' etc, which will all target their own keywords, have their own opengraph tags and target users in different stages of the purchase funnel.

 

[Tao]

I have started adding a "buyers guide" or the ins and outs part towards the bottom of my post, under the review section. I am just hoping that people will click through when reading the good stuff, but google will love the additional keywords I sprinkle into the lower down content.

However, saying that, I have also done it the other way round too.

 

[gadsie]

I have started adding a "buyers guide" or the ins and outs part towards the bottom of my post, under the review section. I am just hoping that people will click through when reading the good stuff, but google will love the additional keywords I sprinkle into the lower down content.

However, saying that, I have also done it the other way round too.

Do you mean that you write a general explanation with a buyers guide at the bottom? What kind of keywords do you use there?

Thanks again for the answers. I wrote a 2000+ word "sneeze post" (as defined by problogger). Meaning that I wrote a big detailed guide on a certain topic, talking about different topics, and for each topic linking to a different review page for products.
However I did not finish all the review pages yet. Should I wait with uploading this big post until I finished writing all the review pages, or should I publish it already to 'age the page' considering I'm not getting any traffic yet anyway?

 

[Tao]

Do you mean that you write a general explanation with a buyers guide at the bottom? What kind of keywords do you use there?

I did not target specific keywords in that section. Its more of a generic "Red Widgets Buyers Guide" section answering questions that buyers might have and pointing out what they need to look for when buying their Red Widgets.

 

[Ryuzaki]

However I did not finish all the review pages yet. Should I wait with uploading this big post until I finished writing all the review pages, or should I publish it already to 'age the page' considering I'm not getting any traffic yet anyway?

I'd publish it if it is completed, without the links to the unfinished review posts. You can add them in later, but you don't want the links in there aiming at pages that don't exist. They'll throw up a 404 error and hurt your crawl rate and budget. But yes, you can always edit the internal interlinking in later.

 

[Sutra]

I'd publish it if it is completed, without the links to the unfinished review posts. You can add them in later, but you don't want the links in there aiming at pages that don't exist. They'll throw up a 404 error and hurt your crawl rate and budget. But yes, you can always edit the internal interlinking in later.

It never occurred to me that 404s would hurt crawl budget. I have a bunch of 404s due to moving categories, deleting images, and making changes on the site. A lot of those don't have any specific pages to redirect to. If I redirect all those 404's to the homepage will it help crawl budget?

 

[Ryuzaki]

It never occurred to me that 404s would hurt crawl budget. I have a bunch of 404s due to moving categories, deleting images, and making changes on the site. A lot of those don't have any specific pages to redirect to. If I redirect all those 404's to the homepage will it help crawl budget?

I wouldn't do that. I'd find the links to the 404's and remove them. If it's just posts and pages, you can run a search for the URL's to the 404'd pages, find the posts and pages that link to them, and remove the links. Or you can do it with some spidering software like Xenu Link Sleuth, Integrity, Screaming Frog, etc.