marketing-pages

Marketing Pages

A rulebook, not a workflow: every rule below is simultaneously a constraint to build against and a check to audit against. Classify the page first — every public page belongs to exactly one page class, and the class decides its indexing, linking, chrome, and wiring.

Page classes

Class	Indexing	Reachability	Chrome
Campaign lander	noindex, follow; never in a sitemap	never linked from nav/footer	minimal: logo + ONE CTA, legal-only footer, no site nav
Product page	indexed	nav Product section and/or footer	full chrome
SEO tree page (programmatic: per-persona, per-industry, per-competitor)	indexed	footer link grid + hub pages	full chrome
Editorial (blog/guides)	indexed	header + footer	full chrome
Legal/utility	indexed	footer	full chrome

• A page that is noindexed AND unlinked is a zombie — promote it to a linked, indexed class or make it a campaign lander. Never leave the halfway state.
• Campaign landers live in a dedicated URL prefix (e.g. /l/<slug>): one startsWith covers blanket noindex and "never nav-linked" checks, and slug collisions with real pages become impossible.

Campaign lander rules

Campaign landers are alternate main landers — one audience, one promise, paid traffic. They trade SEO for message-match freedom; indexed near-duplicates split authority and freeze copy that should be A/B-able daily.

• Message match end-to-end: ad copy → H1 → post-signup first screen, one unbroken promise. Where the product supports it, the campaign identifier flows through signup into onboarding and analytics, so the first-run experience continues the promise and conversions attribute per lander.
• One CTA, repeated down the page; social proof beside it; friction-reducing microcopy ("no credit card"); capture only what qualifies later (usually just email).
• Static text/image hero — no full-viewport video or heavy JS above the fold. LCP is a conversion input on paid traffic.
• A lander you cannot measure cannot be iterated: conversion-per-lander (lead → signup → purchase) must be readable somewhere before ads spend.
• Killed campaign pages get no redirects: deleted routes 404, and the 404s in Search Console afterward are the intended signal, not a defect.

Indexed page rules

Each of these has one owner in the codebase — find the current owner rather than trusting remembered paths:

• The route appears in whatever closed-world route registry the site's gates check against.
• Indexed ⇔ sitemapped, always both or neither: a noindexed URL in the sitemap is a contradictory signal, as is an indexed page missing from it. lastmod is honest (content date, not build time).
• Agent-readable surfaces, if the site ships them (llms.txt, markdown twins), render from the same copy source the page renders from — never from built HTML, never hand-drifted duplicates.
• Robots allows reviewed indexed trees for AI crawlers; disallows only campaign landers and internal surfaces. robots, meta robots, and the sitemap must agree on every URL.
• Every indexed page is reachable from header or footer — the footer link grid is the crawl rail. Pages discoverable only via the sitemap sit in "Discovered — not indexed" for weeks and receive no internal authority.
• Product facts (pricing, limits, tier names) derive from the single source the product code owns — restated numbers drift silently and nothing turns red.
• Internal links name paths, never origins, so a closed-world check can verify every authored target resolves.
• Locale-prefixed links to pages that exist in only one locale must resolve (redirect to the canonical locale, not 404) — sitewide chrome prefetches every link from every page.
• Deleting or renaming a page deletes every reference in the same pass: route registry, sitemap, agent-readable twin, links from kept pages, visual baselines, and e2e/journey anchors (grep the test suites — a rename that keeps local gates green can break a live journey hours later).

SEO rules

• Contextual in-body links from editorial to money pages move more authority than footer anchors — add them where content genuinely relates.
• Comparison/competitor pages carry an honest visible updated-date and get refreshed on a real cadence — a stale dated page is worse than an undated one.
• Programmatic tree pages stay substantive (concrete jobs, specific copy) — thin templated pages are doorway-page bait.
• Hub pages exist so leaves inherit authority: every tree leaf is linked from its hub, and the hub from the site chrome.

Visual coverage rules

• Reusable sections and components have an isolated, deterministic fixture (playground/storybook entry) that owns their visual coverage; the fixture menu doubles as the component catalog new pages are composed from.
• Representative full-page screenshots stay at ONE key route per template. Routes churn; fixtures are the stable oracle. New template → one new representative route; new section → a fixture, not more route shots.
• Visual baselines are accepted only after an unprimed second opinion — eyes primed by the change pass defects fresh eyes catch.

Audit sweeps

Auditing a site = evaluating every rule above, plus these cross-cutting sweeps; each must come back empty or explained:

1. Zombie pages (noindexed AND unlinked).
2. Sitemap/robots/meta disagreements.
3. Campaign lander linked from any indexed page, or present in a sitemap.
4. Indexed page unreachable from header/footer.
5. Component with no owner in the visual coverage system.
6. Marketing copy restating a product fact that has a canonical owner.
7. Broken locale-crossed links from sitewide chrome.