Posts vs Pages and Rankings Differ Greatly
-
I use wordpress for most of my sites and generally have a post 'news' section. What I've noticed is that just about every time a post will always rank much higher and much faster than a 'page'.
As long as I don't let it get buried in the news archives it continues to rank well, better than if I were to create a 'page'.
Is there any sort of reason this might occur? I'd like to be able to just create 'pages' but at this point in time it makes no sense.
-
Lots of my news posts were announcements of a much more detailed article that was posted on a "page" of my site. Because my blog got eight to ten posts per day the post pages would be quickly buried deep in the blog. The article pages were evergreen content. So, I would redirect those posts to the article page. I thought that it helped rankings.
I don't consider it blackhat because the newsy nature of the posts made them of "temporary value". We deleted and redirected thousands of post per year.
-
Right. I was just thinking and I don't know if this is blackhat but because the news posts always rank better than pages, I'm going to test 301 redirecting a news post to a new page and see what happens.
Normally I would just leave it be, but I would like to set up navigational columns within these posts and can not do so because of their structure.
Basically: Make a news post => let it rank for a week => 301 it to its permanent 'page' home.
This is not something I would normally do except for somewhat aged sites where not much new static content is added...
-
Up until about six months ago I had a blog that was focused on news content. The blog got several posts per day of very fresh news. New posts on that blog would be indexed within moments and land on the first page of google - sometimes in difficult SERPs. The rankings would stick for a while - not more than 24 to 48 hours and then quickly slip down the SERPs and disappear.
My guess is that google recognized the "newsy" nature of that blog (lots of queries with "news" as the keyword) and would give that blog short-term good rankings for queries that were getting a surge in volume. Again, that is a guess. But I saw the same treatment that you described.
-
EGOL - Any way to tell google that for the 'pages'.
Or, do they just categorize 'posts' to deserve this and rank higher even if they don't deserve the freshness/news boost? -
This could be cause by "query deserves freshness".
-
Hi guys, thanks for the input.
Sean - The url structure is the same, except for it is in a /news/ folder and I tend to leave the path the same as the page title (for whatever reason that actually helps it even if its long). But not using any time sensitive permalinks on any of the sites.
Sha - I definitely hear what you're saying, when we are the first to post about something it definitely continues to rank highly even after the competition comes in. The thing is, we could put up a 'page' and it wouldn't.
Just seems to make no sense how google treats posts vs pages whether they're in G news or not. I haven't tried it, but I'm pretty sure I could just post a 'post' with no content and it would rank good whereas a 'page' wouldn't get indexed likely.
-
Hi GYMSN,
The most obvious explanation would be the content itself.
If you are following the general idea that pages are for "evergreen" content and posts are for "news", then it follows that the content in your posts tends to be much more topical than that in your pages.
If the content happens to also be timely (appears before others), fresh (up-to-date) and well written/good quality, then it should rank well and may even have a little potential for virality if very topical.
This would easily explain a significant difference in rankings.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
How are your permalinks setup? Posts typically have a dated url structure which could add to their freshness for the site. It is also argued one of the things you should do with post permalinks is move away from that url structure if you want your post urls to rank for a period of time.
Outside of that it really has to do with the site. Are posts given any better visibility from an internal linking standpoint? Are their technical aspects different? title tags, h1 tags etc?
You need to write out every different aspect down and start thinking of what it can be.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Paid Guest Post Links - Value?
Hey guys, Just wanted to put the question out there about guest blogging opportunities that are paid for. It's not something we ever go for but a client has the resources to get a few quality paid backlinks. What are people's general thoughts on guest blogging - for a nominal fee - to do so? Pros and cons of the whole process? Cheers!
Content Development | | wearehappymedia0 -
How to write a good case study page?
Hello all, What components go into making a good case study please? Is there a specific structure that works well from an seo perspective - or is it just about making something read well? Thanks William
Content Development | | wseabrook0 -
New sister site VS site redesign and dangers of SEO dilution??
Hi I’ve got a site that is ranking #2 in my area for my chosen keyword but the site is in need of an expansion and overhaul its only one page at the moment and to rank for more keywords its need to be expanded. Or another option is I do own another domain and I was thinking of maybe instead of overhauling the new site launching that as a sister company aimed more at the corporate market, as my first site is a bit more alternative in domain name and content. The thing is i'm not sure how this will affect my SEO they will be on the same CBlock and be offering similar services.
Content Development | | genkee0 -
Does every keyword need its own landing page?
So we're doing a bunch of keyword research. We've identified the big traffic, higher competition keywords and we've identified tons (thousands) of long-tail keywords that would be appropriate. What I'm wondering is: does every keyword need its own landing page (or content page)? Obviously, we'll be building content for all the primary keywords we're targeting. I'm less mystified about that. What I'm more confused about is what to do about the long tail keywords. For there to be any measurable traffic increase, we need to rank well for thousands of long tail keywords. But it's just not realistic to create thousands of quality content pieces to target each of these long tail keywords individually. So how do you go about ranking for large numbers of long tail keywords? I saw somebody post about using an FAQ page to target multiple long tail keywords which makes sense but even with that I'm not going to have a thousand questions. How does one go after large volumes of long tail keywords? Thanks, --eric
Content Development | | EricOliver0 -
Content Architecture - Breakout Pages
If you have a page that summarizes four different product types adequately in a chart that requires no scroll, is there an SEO justification to also breaking out each product into a separate page, but basically it would contain the same information? The SEO in me says yes, because that's more crawlable content you can optimize, but wouldn't it go against usability and general common sense?
Content Development | | SSFCU0 -
Is it possible to over create/post content?
My company has signed up with a vendor to help write content. They are going to be supplying 50 articles per month so we'd basically be adding 2 or more articles per day. Is that too much or is that okay as long as it's quality content?
Content Development | | baudvilleweb0 -
Root page not coming up first
Hello. Any idea why site:www.bestprice.gr query doesn't bring the www.bestprice.gr as the first result? Could it be that the site is under a penalty? Thanks.
Content Development | | phaistonian0 -
Does anyone have some examples of Ecommerce websites that have great product reviews that are SEO friendly?
I am trying setup product reviews on an Ecommerce site and was wondering if there were some good websites to create a model around that is SEO friendly. Right now my reviews are in a separate directory off the review (http://www.example.com/review/product/etc) and I would like my reviews to be attributed to the product page to add in free, fresh, unique content that contains valuable information for both the user and SEO (new keyword derivatives). Also any suggestions on getting users to leave reviews? Whether it is a monetary incentive/coupon or a free method (of course this is preferred :)) Thanks in advance!
Content Development | | ResponseMine0