Have you ever paid attention to how your WordPress posts perform in the SERPs compared to your pages?
I am often asked which is better for SEO, so I decided to create a video revealing my opinions and discussing what has worked best with my newest WordPress website.
I’d love to hear your stories too. I’ll see ya in the comments!
Pages do better in SERPs, but I know that posts too can rank high with the right SEO and keyword optimization.
Hi,
Lisa you have really put good forth a good debate. People are always looking at one thing only BACKLINKS BACKLINKS. SEO is a merger of both, you start from your own site and fix up glitches. I have given seo consultancy to some people and the first thing I tell them is What is your website structure ?
Your pages should be linked with proper anchor texts, same thing for posts, if they are not linked and follow a category structure where they are interlinked, BACKLINKS won’t do you any good.
Thanks and nice post.
Good video Lisa. I like your emphasis on internal linking and not being obsessed with back links 🙂
While I was watching your video I was thinking 2 things, 1 that google wouldn’t care about pages or posts, content is content at the end of the day. The other was that pages are usualy linked to in the navigation structure of a site, hence the reason why they can sometimes seem to be more popular to google.
That being said I do have comment on one thing and I love the way how you comment on some of your comments, keeping the conversation going and thus adding more content for google to crawl. Very smart indeed and well done Lisa.
Lisa I mostly use post in WordPress, but I do not have much of a problem getting ranked and I get ranked for keywords that I am not focusing on, Here is something some of you may be aware of but some may not be. Create an alert that people are more than likely searching for and write a post on that alert. Google will more than likely add you to their short list of searches ( about 5). The way this helps you is because the people that do that same alert will see your post and have it emailed to them. Just an idea, if you are not sure how this works ask me.
Cool idea ! I’ll try that one out and see if I can come up with some results ! Cheers !
I think that the ability to create pages or posts in WordPress was designed with approach you describe. All logical. And SEO optimization, from my point of view, is the same as for pages and for the posts.
My posts don’t rank well at all, but my pages rank great and hold rankings. Posts, if they do rank, only remain in the top of SERPs for a few days then slowly drop off.
I listened with interest to your very well presented video on WordPress Posts vs Pages and SEO. I agree with you it really depends on the way the website has been structured and optimized to favor either the posts or pages. Personally I prefer to use posts because I feel that WordPress is structured to favor posts.
I really love watching your videos. It’s straight to the point and really easy to understand. Like James, I was a bit worried about you mentioning that pages would be better than posts. But I like the fact that you stressed again the importance of SEO. Quite often, when there is a new technique that works well, lots of bloggers and website owners tend to join the bandwagon, completely forgetting about the basics like SEO. Your video is a great way to remind us never to forget something as basic as SEO when creating pages or blog posts.
Thanks Adeline!
Hi Lisa
I read something from Yoast once that said a page is better for ever green content like you said because it keeps its SEO rankings better than a post which is destroyed by the comments that are left. Plus if you use a page for great content whenever you add anything you can then write a blog post to say you have updated it and link to it. It is also easier to find than a blog post – especially once you have blogged for years.
I read that post Diane
He said that it was a good idea to turn your most successful posts into pages.
I remember thinking that what he said made a lot of sense.
Thanks for the reminder.
Not a problem Keith 🙂
I have asked myself this question for a while, that was a great post, thank you Lisa.
Nice detailed video and it solved some of my questions.Will have to take few steps now for my blog.
I’m just finally getting into the blogging arena for my business even though I have been engaged as a blogger for other businesses.
I use WordPress quite extensively for my projects and love the ease of use it adds for my clients. I frequently use pages instead of posts, but am learning new ways to start using the posts as page content.
The only thing that I think makes a difference between a post and a page to the search engines is likely that posts typically tend to be more frequent that new page content. Ultimately when it comes down to it, they are the same (structure-wise).
I do agree that we need to be linking internally more and helping users find content that will be relevant to that current post or useful.
Thanks!
You’re some of the few bloggers I’ve come across who has taken into vlogging now. Your presentation is quite nice along with useful info. Way to go Lisa.
I find wordpress so easy to use and customise to how you want it to work. There are so many great plugins around to help with your SEO that I find I can get pages ranked highly very quickly.
Hi Lisa.
That was really well explained.
Everyone goes link mad forgetting that all the pagerank in the world doesn’t mean that you will score for relevant keywords.
keywords have to be targeted and it all starts on page.
P.S. I’m not 100% sure but I’m fairly sure that it was you who actually got me into I.M a few years ago. Did you used to promote The Keyword Acadamy?
I’ll check the notify box and wait for your reply. I’m almost certain it was.
Hi Steve, nope never used or promoted that product.
Well Lisa, my apologies, I must be confusing you with someone else. Whoever it was, I’m grateful.
WordPress should be SEO friendly!
And, we got PR 4 in our WordPress blogTechTeric! CHEERS!!
I think wordpress is the best cms for SEO and we have to optimize posts or pages in our site based on wordpress.
If you want a SEO friendly site then WordPress is what your need. WordPress is continuously adding features and providing plug-ins to make SEO tasks more effective.
Youtube thingy is really nice. Thanks for that.. If wordpress posts are published with full optimization and tags, they can fetch a good amount of traffic without SEO. And also, static pages perform better than the dynamic ones. Thanks a lot for sharing this post.. 🙂
Great youtube post, i think static web page perform well compare to dynamic one, keywords selection in posts play major role in SERPs result, as i have seen quality of content determines the traffic to your post.
once again thanks for valuable post!!!
I just found your site Lisa, fantastic tips. I recently migrated my blog from blogger to wordpress and I’m already seeing a difference in my search engine traffic – mostly for my posts rather than pages.
That’s awesome, bloggybots. Keep up the fantastic work!
Hey Lisa..
Great stuff as always! I love blogging. I can’t believe the things I have learned over the last year or two from your posts and videos..
Just read a few of your last posts and I can see you still are providing your readers with the best tips and experiences of everything you have learned over the years.
Thanks for all your hard work, and more important your focus on really helping other people out there.
Best of luck Lisa and keep doing what your doing!
Thank you! Appreciate your support.
In the end it all comes down to the content. If you’ve good content, you’re sure to gain great SERP’s. Have shitty content or use Blackhat, you can still gain the high position but sooner than later the site will get blacklisted.
For me, posts usually work with a short but descriptive permalink. But, I’d give static page’s a try too.
Thanks for the post!
Interesting take on things Lisa. Have to tell you the truth, I’ve mainly used my pages for rules, storytelling, or to highlight a bunch of links on a specific topic. I’ve never even thought about whether I should apply SEO to them. Having said that, I have found that one or two pages on two of my blogs seems to generate some interest on search engines without the SEO, and I’m thinking that’s not such a bad thing.
This is my opinion about pages and this is how I treat them on my blogs. Pages to me are my money pages. In affiliate marketing these would be the pages that I am referring traffic from. My post point to these pages to give them internal links. This tactic shots them up the serps. But the pages must also have significant external links.
Agree. Great analogy.
My posts definitely outrank my pages, never really given it much thought until I read your article but it’s definitely worth considering when creating new content or putting something new out there.
Very good points, Lisa.
On-page optimization is often ignored these days – mostly out of ignorance, but it does play a huge role; especially for better established sites.
I am sure you’ve ranked on your on-page signals alone before, Lisa, without any external backlinks; that just shows you the power of what’s entirely under our control!
Absolutely, Ana. Even my hair site that I don’t even do any backlink building for does fairly well just form organic search.
Lisa it would be hard for me to say, I agree with you pages and post are content, I do not believe Google cares. I bet a lot of people do not realize that their tags and categories are considered indexable by Google. If you go to you (webmaster tools) search queries you and click on a specific keyword. You should see a list of URLs, look at the url closely and you should see tag or category.
You get an Amen from me, Lisa. 😀
I was worried you were going to suggest that pages work better than posts (and I keep hearing that from people for some reason)…but the only difference for my own business is contingent on the WordPress theme I’m using.
Or if I’m using Blogger or whatever, the way the CMS/blogging platform (*since I only use blogs*) will handle the layout differently.
For example, on the Flexsqueeze theme – you have TONS of options for formatting a page layout as a squeeze page, video sales page, membership site download page, whatever…
Otherwise it’s going to format (on Flexsqueeze) as a blog page with your header, etc.
I’ve heard that too, James. Google could care less what the format of the page is as long as they can read it.
I haven’t noticed any difference between my pages and posts as far as Search Rankings go. As long as I have done on-page and off-page SEO on both they both do about the same in the rankings.
Hi Lisa
Thank you for sharing your experiences on this matter. I think I will have to take a closer look on some of my static pages on my blog to see if I can do some optimization there. I have not been paying much attention to them lately.
Sorry for the link in the post above, hope I am not breaking any of your rules 🙁
No it’s fine, Stephen. It was all relevant to the post and I appreciate the explanation. 🙂
Ok, Hi Lisa, Nice video. I will break down what I do believe has worked for me, and how simple it is. I have a method that works well for both page and post and gets ranking pretty quickly. I agree 100% it is all about structure and NOT backlinks.
When I create a post/page, simply. I link to home page, to other posts/pages if possible, I also link out (wiki etc. or even better as I have noticed, to a .gov or .edu page which is related to your content) Even a youtube video at the end of the post/page, related to your subject drastically helps your content get ranked.
I also (only) post the page/post to facebook, twitter, Digg and stumleupon, and these backlinks are so strong they should be enough. I only made a post a couple of weeks a go http://therantingbeast.com/how-to-write-a-rictameter-poetry-form/ and it now already has page rank 2 and is second in all search engines below e-how.
Craftily linking in and out of the page/post, seems to be in favour with Google and the likes.
Thank You Lisa and Thank You Stephen for great explanation. Helped me a lot.
That is great post and video. Actaully Static page is better for to put new articles and what is the important to create a page in static. About wordpress blog, as wee know google loved it. becuase wordpress blog is always indexed in search engine and I liked this part. But there is bad thing in wordpress which has more spams but I could not know how can I solve this spam
Hi Lisa,
Once again an awesome video!
I do mostly pages right now as the site I’m currently working on is pretty much a static site like you mentioned your hair one was. But I’m also experimenting with blogs and embedding links in there to other categories on my blog like you mention. I’m also testing out what amount of text ranks better. Meaning the number of words I’m using in a certain post. So I’ll keep you posted and let you know how that goes 🙂
Thank you once again Lisa as I love learning from your blog/site and also hearing what others have to say.
Don
Hi Lisa,
quick question…I did a wordpress blog for my wedding. Since its just my wedding info can I still get affiliates and google adsense?
When I first started out on wordpress my whole site was pretty much ‘static’ I rarely ever used posts… wow was I missing out. Posts seem to rank much better on serps in my opinion. They also seem especially good if you list your recent posts on your homepage as google seems to like dynamic content.
I’ve actually done better with blog posts ranking in Google and on occasion, I go back and edit old post and interlink them with new posts. This helps me rank well in Google..
I have a static page on my blog on how to create a website which is pretty well written that i link to every chance I get and it ranks 3rd in Google for it’s keyword.. I’m going to put a little more work into it though and see if I can snatch that #1 spot..
Seeing the kind of videos you shoot, I just got a lot of ideas for videos.. Thanks
I use pages for things like, about us, contact, privacy and the homepage which I normally have as a static page. The rest will be posts. This has worked well for me with my wordpress blogs. BTW, your videos on the Thesis theme really helped me building one of by blogs
Hi Lisa
I’ve found that posts get ranked very quickly but pages take a little longer.
Good advice to keep faith with the basics including internal links.
I often forget about those internal links.
For me, on page optimization works miracles to start with. Sure links are great but on a blog that isn’t brand new, on page optimization with a link from navigation is like a recipe to PR 2, lol.
I have a bit more “static” content on the blog now and it is working great, using Premise for landing pages and for now, I am very satisfied.
So comparing pages to posts, although I have some great ranked posts, if I want to make something visible and rank it, I would go with a page with more “landing” feel than a regular post with comments turned on.
I love these golden nuggets! Your information is so easy to digest especially for a newbie. As much as I like posts with 50 ways to do XYZ. I can take one idea and run with it. This is coming from a teacher.
Back to the topic. After doing this for a year, I do notice that I get more hits when I link within. It seems to point the reader in the right direction that they want to go in. I also agree that the keywords really hook people when I use them in my posts.
Thanks, Karen! Really appreciate your feedback.
I am very thankful to you & appreciate for this.
Absolutely love your videos on you tube which got me started reading your 2 Create website. I think you are the best out there with practical advice on building your own website.
However I really wish your video was more than 4:11 minutes. It is such a tease. I do not know what the technical difference between a 4 minute and 10 minute video is for you. I know you have more you can say on each topic.
Hope you will make longer video posts in the future or post twice as often. You are one of those I really look forward to seeing your video, and written articles. I have you on my google reader.
Thanks
Hatsune Miku
I have found that pages and posts can both rank equally well. I think the main thing is to use proper on site seo techniques. Static urls with keywords, H1 tags, keyword density, and links to those pages.
I prefer pages so that I can build my wordpress site more like a traditional website from a site structure standpoint. But I get equal traffic to both types of pages.
I used the keywords in headlines and posts, linked oldest posts as coin words in blog posts. It is a slower process but still works!
by the way i use blogger
from a logical “website structure” perspective, if one keeps in mind and applies what Google has said to date (Matt Cutts) about search engine optimization, then one would assume that pages would do better for several reasons:
1) keyword density
2) direct / exact match and
3) ease of use (user implications).
that said, in my experience, more than the structure of the URL itself, which is what we are really talking about here when we distinguish between blog posts and blog static pages, what truly determines the performance of the post or page purely from an SEO perspective is the keyword I am targeting.
Not everything I write on my blog is keyword focused, but for those articles that are, when I go back to evaluate how each one performs, whether a page or a post, it turns out that the results vary, but one thing is consistent throughout.
those posts or pages that are targeted for a high value keyword (high search demand and low supply or competition) are ones that perform the best.
this of course assumes that the URL contains the exact match keyword (in spite of a post’s URL further diluting the keyword density), and that the content of the post or page is optimized for the keyword (metas, headings, sub headings, links, anchor texts, etc)
So while in theory a static page is supposed to perform better from an SEO standpoint, it is the actual keyword being targeted that determines the organic performance of the page, at least in my experience.
Note that I am leaving link building initiatives out of the equation as I would not be able to do a fair comparison of the two if I factored in my internet marketing initiatives as those are heavily biased/weighted on one of the two URL structured we are discussing in this article/video.
Lisa, my experience with this is all over the place.
Even though most of my top ranking urls are blog posts I do have a few pages that rank well also. There are a couple of posts that do well with very little internal linking and I think Google just latched on to them for some reason – although I have not been able to figure out why, because they don’t have a ton of external links either. Thanks for the video, it’s a great reminder that we always need to pop over to Google Analytics once in awhile to see what’s ranking well, and most of all, build those internal links to posts and pages.
Yeah, I have to remind myself to do that because it’s so easy to forget. 🙂 I spent a good hour last night doing this on my other blog.
Lisa,
WordPress is definitely better for seo. With my experience using wordpress and seo optimizing my articles I have been able to rank page of google first spot for some very competitive keywords, but most importantly I add high quality value in all my article post.
Thanks for the video. i have 2 question about wordpress:
first, i think blog (like wordpress) get lower traffical than forum.
and second, there are so many spam in wordpress.
Well, forum is open for all people who care about anything and so, it has many topics to talk about. Unlike forum, each blog narrow focus on one or two topics so it got lower traffic than forum. But, I think a blog (build on WP) is easier to manage than forum and so, it will get lesser spam content (like comment) than forum.
Lisa, the video is exceptional. Its easy to understand and to apply the learning’s. Recommend strongly to future website starters to download the video and view it regularly to become more familiar with its workings.
You have made the tutorial very easy to understand by the way you explain and the language you use is non-technical.Well done on sharing this wonderful video and I can’t wait to view future tutorials.
Suresh