Content Architecture — Spring 2026 Launch
Content Architecture — Spring 2026 Launch Summary
Section titled “Content Architecture — Spring 2026 Launch Summary”Practice Sessions & Study Group · March 2026
Context
Section titled “Context”With both the Spring Study Group and Practice Sessions needing to launch immediately, we worked through the content architecture decisions required to do this correctly without creating SEO problems that would need to be cleaned up later.
Spring Study Group — No New Problems
Section titled “Spring Study Group — No New Problems”The architecture for the Study Group was already mapped out in the SEO session notes. Two pages need to exist:
- Campaign landing page at
/smsg-spring-2026/— already live, noindexed, used as the Meta ad destination - Event post at
/event/montreal-study-group-spring-2026/— needs to be created; this is the canonical target for the campaign page and the indexed, discoverable version of the program
Nothing structurally complicated here. The event post just needs to be built.
Practice Sessions — Three Problems Identified
Section titled “Practice Sessions — Three Problems Identified”Problem 1: Wrong URL slug
Section titled “Problem 1: Wrong URL slug”The current page sits at /practice-sessions/ — a generic slug that implies a global or evergreen hub. We don’t have a hub yet; what we have is a single Montreal season. More importantly, if we ever run Practice Sessions in another city, this slug creates a naming collision with no clean resolution.
Solution: Rename the page to /montreal-practice-sessions/ now. WordPress auto-generates a 301 redirect from the old slug. Since the page is new and has no significant ranking equity, the redirect cost is negligible. This gets the right slug in place immediately and skips a cleanup step later.
Action required after rename: verify in SEOPress that the redirect from /practice-sessions/ is a single-hop 301, not a chain.
Problem 2: Duplicate content between program page and event post
Section titled “Problem 2: Duplicate content between program page and event post”The current page at /practice-sessions/ contains the full program treatment — format, eligibility, intake quiz, pricing, booking widget, FAQ, venue detail. An event post covering the same program would be substantially identical content, which Google penalises.
Setting a canonical from the program page to the event post doesn’t make sense either — it would tell Google that an evergreen program page is a copy of a dated event.
Solution: The two pages serve genuinely different intents and should reflect that in their content.
/montreal-practice-sessions/carries the evergreen program content: who it’s for, format, intake quiz, pricing philosophy, community, FAQ, venue. No specific dates./event/montreal-practice-sessions-spring-2026/carries the season-specific content: dates, schedule, season pricing, booking CTA, and a link to the program page for full details and eligibility. Copy: practice-sessions-spring-2026-event-post.
No canonical manipulation needed. No duplicate content. Each page serves a different search intent.
Problem 3: Sidebar discovery requires a substantial event post
Section titled “Problem 3: Sidebar discovery requires a substantial event post”The reason for creating an event post at all (beyond SEO) is that upcoming events automatically populate sidebars across the site. A skeletal event post would appear in sidebars but wouldn’t hold attention.
Solution: The sidebar concern is addressable without making the event post a full duplicate of the program page. WordPress sidebar widgets render from post meta and the excerpt field — not the full page body. A well-written excerpt on the event post is what the sidebar displays. The post body can be lean (dates, brief description, CTA to the full program page) while the excerpt carries the weight needed for sidebar visibility.
Hub Pages — Deferred, Not Abandoned
Section titled “Hub Pages — Deferred, Not Abandoned”The full target architecture calls for hub pages at /programs/montreal-study-group/ and /programs/montreal-practice-sessions/. These don’t need to exist for launch.
- The Study Group hub (
/programs/montreal-study-group/) is a medium-term task — the ranking asset at/montreal-study-program/needs to be renamed and reparented in a single save, with redirects from all duplicate URLs cleaned up. This is already documented in the SEO architecture notes. - The Practice Sessions hub doesn’t need to be created until there’s more than one season to organise under it, or until a second city is added.
On slug conventions: city name belongs in the program slug, not as a separate URL level. /programs/montreal-practice-sessions/ and /programs/montreal-study-group/ — not /programs/practice-sessions/montreal/. This avoids collision between program types sharing a city and keeps the /programs/ level clean.
Launch Sequence
Section titled “Launch Sequence”Immediate (this week):
- Rename
/practice-sessions/→/montreal-practice-sessions/, verify 301 in SEOPress ✅ - Publish the page ✅
- Create
/event/montreal-study-group-spring-2026/event post ✅
Within a few days of launch:
4. Create /event/montreal-practice-sessions-spring-2026/ — lean event post with strong excerpt, dates, CTA to program page → copy in practice-sessions-spring-2026-event-post ✅
5. Set breadcrumb schema on this event post to Home → Programs → Montreal Practice Sessions → Spring 2026 — even though the hub page doesn’t exist yet, setting this now avoids a return visit later
Medium-term (after campaign launches, before URL restructuring):
6. Rename + reparent /montreal-study-program/ → /programs/montreal-study-group/ in a single save
7. Clean up duplicate Montreal Study Group pages with direct 301s
8. Create Practice Sessions hub page at /programs/montreal-practice-sessions/ when a second season or second city warrants it