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Yunhan
Yunhan

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Building SEO-Friendly Letter Pages for a Name Database

#seo #nextjs #webdev #beginners

One of the highest-traffic features on BabyNamePick is our letter-based browsing. Each letter of the alphabet gets its own page — A names, B names, all the way to Z.

Why Letter Pages Work for SEO

"Baby names starting with [letter]" is a high-volume search pattern. Parents often have a letter preference — matching siblings, family traditions, or just personal taste. These pages capture that intent directly.

Each letter page on BabyNamePick includes:

  • All names starting with that letter, grouped by gender
  • Origin distribution (how many Celtic, Latin, Greek names, etc.)
  • Quick links to related blog posts like B names guide
  • Structured data for rich search results

The Technical Implementation

We use Next.js generateStaticParams to create all 26 pages at build time:

export async function generateStaticParams() {
  return 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
    .split('')
    .map(letter => ({ letter }));
}
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Each page pulls from our central names database and filters client-side for instant interactivity:

const letterNames = allNames.filter(
  n => n.name.toLowerCase().startsWith(letter)
);
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Content Strategy Per Letter

Not all letters are equal. Some have hundreds of names (J, A, M), others have very few (X, Q, U). We handle this by:

  1. High-volume letters (J, A, M, S) — detailed blog posts with 2000+ word guides. See our J names article.
  2. Medium-volume letters (B, C, D, E, L) — focused guides covering classics and modern picks. Our newest additions: B names, C names, D names.
  3. Low-volume letters (X, Q, Z) — combined into "rare letters" content that highlights uniqueness.

Internal Linking

Each letter page links to:

  • The corresponding blog post (if it exists)
  • Adjacent letters (B links to A and C)
  • Related category pages (B links to British names since many B names are British)

This creates a dense internal link structure that helps both users and search engines navigate the site.

Results

Letter pages account for about 15% of our organic traffic. The key insight: programmatic pages work when each one provides genuine value, not just a filtered list. Adding cultural context, meaning clusters, and curated recommendations makes each letter page worth visiting.

Explore our full alphabet at babynamepick.com/browse.

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