Photography: Grandad’s Encyclopedias by Ley_photography

For many of us, Wikipedia is our first port of call when searching for general knowledge on a topic. It does have its draw-backs though: the information there is often incomplete, and most importantly, it can be edited and vandalized by anyone. You don’t have a relationship of trust with the creator of the content.

Your regular readers, however, will have built up a level of trust in your expertise. Why not provide them with something Wikipedia cannot: comprehensive knowledge from a trusted source.

Why build a knowledge database within your site?

1. Credibility - being able to communicate your knowledge on a topic demonstrates your expertise and ability to write about that topic well.

2. A destination for search engine visitors - most search engine queries are questions or requests for information on a topic. Knowledge pages are most likely to contain the information search engine visitors are looking for, meaning they’re more likely to stick around rather than hitting the back button.

3. Expose your readers to new knowledge - if you’re an expert in your topic then you have the capacity to write more than just introductory level knowledge pages. Explore an aspect of your topic the average reader probably won’t be familiar with. Share new, advanced knowledge and demonstrate your expertise at the same time.

4. It’s vital content - knowledge pages are the kind of content that has what I call enduring use. They’re keepable rather than consumable, the kind of thing you want to bookmark and return to in future when you need information.

How could I start?

You could build your knowledge pages from a series of special posts or make new pages for them and link via your site’s sidebar.

A good place to look for inspiration is, unsurprisingly, Wikipedia. Visit the page for the topic you want to write knowledge pages for and consider how you could cover the sections there using your own knowledge. If you see something missing, consider writing about that.

I’ll use an imaginary blog about Karate as an example. You could write knowledge pages about its history, various forms, great practitioners of the art, famous real-life battles, training exercises, and so on. I’m no expert on the topic so there are probably plenty of things I’m leaving out, but you get the idea.

Hopefully you can see how knowledge pages could be introduced into any blog, not necessarily as a main feature of your content, but as a supplement to the blog-style content you already have.

The main idea I want to communicate is that we shouldn’t be hemmed in by traditional definitions of what a blog is. Static, website-style information pages are completely doable on any blog. You could create a sidebar link to the “Knowledge Database” or whatever you’d like to call it and link to all your knowledge items off that page.

In essence, you’re bringing the best aspects of a website format to your blog and will hopefully start to capture static information seeking visitors as well as those interested in your blog posts.