Parent Page WordPress: What is it & How to Use it Correctly

What Are Parent and Child Pages in WordPress?

A Parent Page is essentially a page that acts as a broad category or a main section of your website. The Child Pages are those that are linked to and nested under the parent. This hierarchy allows you to create a logical structure for your content and keep everything organized in a way that makes sense to your users.

For instance, consider a company website. You might have a parent page titled “Services”, with child pages for each specific service you offer, such as “Web Development”, “SEO Consulting”, and “Digital Marketing”. In this way, a visitor can navigate easily from a high-level overview of your offerings to more detailed information on each individual service.

Why Should You Use Parent-Child Pages?

1. Improved Navigation:
   Parent-child relationships help to structure content logically, making it easier for users to navigate your website. Visitors can quickly understand the content structure and find what they are looking for, reducing bounce rates and improving the overall user experience. By nesting related content under a clear parent page, you create a more organized and predictable navigation system.

2. Enhanced SEO Benefits:
   Search engines, like Google, prefer websites that are well-organized and have a clear content structure. By using parent-child relationships, you create a content hierarchy that is easier for search engine bots to crawl and index. A well-structured site helps search engines understand the context and relevance of different pages, potentially improving your rankings.

   • Keyword Relevance: Parent pages can target broad, high-level keywords, while child pages can focus on more specific long-tail keywords related to the parent topic. For example, your parent page on “Digital Marketing” could target the broader keyword, while the child page for “SEO Consulting” would target a more niche keyword, providing more focused content for both users and search engines.

   • Internal Linking Structure: WordPress automatically creates internal links between parent and child pages, which can boost the SEO of both pages by spreading link equity and improving the overall structure. You can also manually include links to child pages within the content of parent pages for even more focused internal linking.

What Is a Parent Page in WordPress?

In WordPress, pages (unlike posts) are hierarchical. This means you can assign a page to be the “parent” of another page, creating a tree-like structure. The page that sits beneath is known as a child page.

Example:

This hierarchy is not just visual—it affects your site’s permalinks, breadcrumbs, navigation, and SEO relevance.

Where to Find the Parent Page Option

When editing a WordPress page in the block or classic editor:

• Look for the Page Attributes box in the right sidebar.

• Under the Parent dropdown, select another page from your list.

• Save or update your page.

In Full Site Editing (FSE) themes, this might be under the “Template” or “Hierarchy” settings depending on the block structure.

Why Use Parent Pages? (Advanced Use Cases)

Here’s why experienced developers and content strategists use parent pages strategically:

1. Improved URL Structure

WordPress will structure your URLs like this:

This makes URLs more descriptive, organized, and semantic—great for SEO and user navigation.

2. Better Breadcrumbs & Navigation

Breadcrumb plugins and themes with hierarchical menus use the parent-child relationship to display intuitive navigation paths:

This improves user orientation and reduces bounce rates.

3. Content Grouping for Custom Templates

Advanced developers often use conditional template logic based on parent pages:

This allows for modular design: child pages under “Products” can inherit a unique layout automatically.

4. Logical Grouping for Admins & Editors

When managing dozens or hundreds of pages, the parent-child view in Pages > All Pages helps content teams easily locate and manage related content.

 Best Practices for Using Parent Pages Effectively

Here are some advanced tips to ensure your parent-child hierarchy is working with you, not against you:

✅ 1. Use for Structure, Not Style

Don’t rely on parent pages to visually group content—use them to logically structure it. Visual layout should be handled with templates, blocks, or page builders.

✅ 2. Don’t Go Too Deep

While WordPress allows nested pages indefinitely, more than 2–3 levels deep can break breadcrumbs, complicate URLs, and confuse users. Stick to shallow hierarchies.

✅ 3. Combine with Custom Menus

Parent pages and WordPress menus are separate systems—but they can complement each other. Use the “Automatically add new top-level pages” option with caution. Define your hierarchy manually in Appearance > Menus for best control.

✅ 4. Watch for Slug Conflicts

If two child pages under different parents have the same name, they must have unique slugs. WordPress will otherwise add numeric suffixes (/our-team-2/), which isn’t SEO-friendly. Plan your slugs intentionally.

✅ 5. Custom Templates by Parent ID

Want to create a page template only for pages under a certain parent? You can use template hierarchy and conditional logic like:

Bonus: Automating Hierarchy in Programmatic Page Creation

If you’re programmatically creating pages (e.g., via a plugin or import script), you can set the parent page using the post_parent attribute:

When Not to Use Parent Pages

Avoid using parent pages in the following cases:

• For posts (use categories/tags instead).

• When URLs are strictly controlled by external routing (e.g., headless WordPress setups).

• If all navigation is handled via JavaScript SPA frameworks.

Final Thoughts

The Parent Page feature in WordPress is more than a basic page setting—it’s a strategic tool for scalable, maintainable, and SEO-optimized site architecture. When used thoughtfully, it makes content easier to navigate for both users and administrators, all while improving semantic structure for search engines.

Whether you’re building a brochure site, a documentation portal, or a large multilingual platform, parent-child page relationships are foundational to smart WordPress development.