Your Website Has Side Doors. Are They Doing Their Job?

We tend to think about website content strategy as though everyone arrives at the front door.

They land on the homepage. Read our beautifully crafted introduction. Explore the navigation. Visit the About page. Read about our services. Eventually, they discover our content.

It's a lovely, orderly journey.

It's also not how many people discover us.

Someone searches a very specific question and lands on an article you wrote three years ago.

Someone sends a friend a link to one of your resources.

A podcast host links directly to something you mentioned during an interview.

A reader finds an article through search.

An AI system surfaces one of your ideas in response to a question.

They've entered your website through a side door.

And that changes what every page on your website needs to do.

Every Discoverable Page Is a Potential Entrance

Your homepage is important.

But it is no longer safe to assume that it will provide everyone's introduction to you.

I explore this idea more deeply in You Don't Get Discovered In A Straight Line, because modern discovery is much less orderly than the traditional marketing funnel suggests. People encounter our expertise through different questions, recommendations, platforms, searches, and moments of need.

That means an old article buried deep in your archives may be someone's very first experience of your thinking.

The question is:

What happens when they arrive?

A Good Side Door Provides Orientation

Imagine walking into a large building through an unfamiliar entrance.

You don't necessarily need someone to give you a complete tour.

You do need enough information to get oriented.

Where am I?

What's here?

Where might I want to go next?

Your content should do something similar.

Someone who lands directly on an article should be able to understand whose work they're reading, what larger subject they're exploring, and where they might go if they want more.

This doesn't require turning every page into an elaborate sales funnel.

In fact, I wouldn't.

It requires orientation.

That's different from conversion.

Conversion asks:

How do I get this visitor to take the action I want?

Orientation asks:

How do I help this visitor understand where they are and find what they need next?

For an expertise-based business, I think orientation is the more useful starting point.

Create Paths Up, Across, and Forward

One way to evaluate an individual article is to look for three kinds of pathways.

Up: Where Does This Idea Belong?

Can someone move from the specific article into the larger territory it belongs to?

Perhaps you have a guide page that brings together your thinking about discoverability, recognition, pricing, leadership, or another central area of expertise.

The article answers one question.

The guide helps someone understand the landscape around it.

Across: What Else Might Help?

What related question is the reader likely to have next?

Useful internal links shouldn't exist merely because an SEO plugin told you that you need three of them.

They should extend understanding.

If someone finishes an article about social proof, perhaps there's a natural path into your thinking about authority or recognition.

If they're reading about content repurposing, perhaps the next useful idea concerns building a connected content ecosystem.

The link has a job.

It helps the reader continue thinking.

Forward: What If They Want More From You?

Eventually, some visitors will want a relationship rather than another article.

Can they subscribe?

Explore a relevant offer?

Learn about your work?

Find a book or resource?

Contact you?

The next step doesn't need to scream at them from six different pop-ups.

It simply needs to exist.

Don't Make Every Side Door a Sales Door

This is an important distinction.

Once we realize people can enter through any page, it's tempting to make every article work harder.

Add more calls to action.

More opt-ins.

Or more banners.

More ways to convert.

But the purpose of every entrance isn't immediate conversion.

Sometimes the most valuable thing a page can do is help someone think:

This was useful. I want to understand more of what this person thinks.

That's the beginning of recognition.

If every pathway immediately becomes a sales pitch, we can interrupt the very curiosity we're trying to cultivate.

Your Archive May Contain Some of Your Best Entrances

This is where things get interesting.

We tend to give most of our attention to whatever we've published recently.

But an older article may answer precisely the question someone is asking today.

That means your archive isn't simply a record of what you used to publish.

It's part of your discovery infrastructure.

Periodically look at the older pages people are finding.

Do they still represent your thinking?

Are outdated references distracting from the useful idea?

Do they connect to your current work?

Is there somewhere meaningful for the reader to go next?

Sometimes refreshing one old article and connecting it properly to the rest of your work may create more long-term value than publishing something new.

A Website Should Behave More Like a Web

There's a reason I like thinking in terms of side doors.

It changes the mental model.

A traditional website hierarchy looks something like this:

Homepage → Category → Page → Action.

But discovery doesn't behave that neatly.

People enter in different places, with different questions and different levels of familiarity.

So instead of imagining your website only as a hierarchy, imagine it as a web of useful entrances and pathways.

An article can lead to another article.

Several articles can lead toward a deeper guide.

A guide can help someone understand your intellectual territory.

A useful resource can introduce someone to an offer.

And any one of those assets might be the place where the relationship begins.

The strength isn't in forcing everyone onto the same path.

It's in making sure wherever they enter, there's somewhere meaningful to go.

Your Website Doesn't Have One Front Door Anymore

This is the bigger shift.

Search, referrals, social platforms, podcasts, newsletters, links, and AI-driven discovery have created countless possible entrances into our work.

We don't control which door someone uses.

But we can control what they find when they open it.

So when you evaluate your website content strategy, don't only stand on your homepage and admire the foyer.

Go through the side doors.

Open an old article as though you've never heard of yourself.

Follow a search result into the middle of your website.

Look at the individual pages people actually encounter.

Then ask:

If this were someone's first experience of my work, would they know where to go next?

Every page doesn't need to explain everything you know.

It simply needs to provide enough value, context, and connection to make another step possible.

Because increasingly, your website isn't one entrance leading into a collection of content.

Your content is the collection of entrances.

N.B. Post revised 2026.