Wordpress SEO - Static Homepage or Latest Posts ranks best?

8 replies
Hey Warriors,

I was wondering if any of you have tested this or experienced a difference between the ranking ability of your wordpress site. Does a static page work better? Or your latest posts?

Thanks for any advice you can give!

Tyson
#homepage #latest #posts #ranks #seo #static #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author CityTiger
    From a purely SEO point of view I have found that latest posts on your homepage rather than a static page does tend to have a slight edge for rankings.

    Probably because that way you are keeping your homepage fresh with constantly updated content.

    However, I have also found that not having a static page can harm your conversions. Therefore what I tend to do is have a static page but then include the excerpts from the latest few posts at the botttom. This then gives you the best of both worlds
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    • Profile picture of the author DeborahDera
      Originally Posted by CityTiger View Post

      From a purely SEO point of view I have found that latest posts on your homepage rather than a static page does tend to have a slight edge for rankings.

      Probably because that way you are keeping your homepage fresh with constantly updated content.

      However, I have also found that not having a static page can harm your conversions. Therefore what I tend to do is have a static page but then include the excerpts from the latest few posts at the botttom. This then gives you the best of both worlds
      Oh! That's a great idea! I built my store in WP and noticed that my PR is different for the sub-pages but not for the main page. I was wondering if it was because I set a static page...

      Must make more changes!
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  • Profile picture of the author BloggerHigh
    I agree with citytiger. Fresh content is the bets way to ensure the spiders keep on coming back to crawl you. And as he says, even if people bookmark a static site, they stop coming after a while.
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    • Profile picture of the author QuickSurf
      what if you want to use wordpress to make a website (static), but keep maybe a blog portion on another page, how would that work with the serps? My home/static page I want as-is with no real updates as it's selling a service.
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  • Profile picture of the author taylormarek
    Tyson,

    I've found that fresh content makes my homepage have a slight edge SEO-wise. The latest posts for the homepage always attract the spiders, which Google loves. They now index my site within 10min of my posts!

    However, if you do use a static page, it should be for a product or service you are selling, not for promoting a blog or latest posts or pages. It just works out better that way.
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    • Profile picture of the author pluto1
      I had the same questions. So far, my freshly updated contents on the front page give me the best results. Lately though, I have noticed many who are successful tend to set a static front page, and keep adding more pages. Looking for the stats from warriors what works for them.
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  • Profile picture of the author thebitbotdotcom
    I have actually been experimenting lately. I actually added my squeeze page content to my main index template above the blog post excerpts. So basically, when you load the homepage, you see an article petitioning opt in and then latest posts beneath that.
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  • Profile picture of the author Quentin
    I think it is basically a business decision.

    We build a lot of CMS sites (static front page) for our customers and find that as long as you include a blog component it will still rank well. Most visitors come in through the blog and then go to find more.

    Q
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