Wordpress - number of blogs posts per page

10 replies
Been doing a bit of dabbling with a Wordpress blog I set up a few months ago. I have around 20 posts in my blog, and had Wordpress set to display a maximum of 5 posts per page. My blog was ranking around page 2 on Google.

I decided to change the number of posts per page to see if would have any effect, and set it to 10 per page - doubling the number of posts. The effect was almost immediate and within days, the blog dropped to page 11 on Google.

Has anyone done any similar kind of testing and is there an optimum figure you use for the number of posts per page?
#blogs #number #page #posts #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author dvduval
    I don't know for sure, but when I look at some of the "big dogs" in SEO I usually see 5-6 range. I wouldn't say for certain the change you made would be the only reason for your SERP change, however, though it wouldn't hurt to switch back to 5.
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  • Profile picture of the author bannor32
    Not sure how you plan to monetize your blog, but if you are using Adsense you'll want to limit your blog to a single post per page. This will help the ad server most closely match contextual ads to your content.
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  • Profile picture of the author ragnartm
    I changed to 3 posts per page and google started instantly indexing my new posts and ranking me among the top 10 for my main search terms. This might be the delayed effect of do-follow links though. The most important thing in my opinions is that the content fills up as far as the sidebar goes, if the sidebar keeps going and the content stops it looks very unprofessional.
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    Quality over quantity. Hire me to write highly shareable, user focused blog posts or articles.

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    • Profile picture of the author Stefan Vee
      IMO, it's better to put your sitemap on top of the html pyramid.
      That way, the first thing the bots see is your nicely organised permalink structure.
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      • Profile picture of the author mike52683
        I use 3 posts per page on my wordpress blog. Also, I use the teaser function so the page isn't so long.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mohsin Rasool
    Hi,

    I always suggest to have only excerpts on any pages like home.php, index.php, category.php,archive.php.... and let the whole post show only at the main post/page page
    in this way you have very focused post/page with unique content , having other links to this page....this makes this page to rank high in SERPS.

    Regards,
    Mohsin
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    • Profile picture of the author oregongal
      I think it can be a matter of trial and error - therefore testing is important. You noticed a difference when you added more posts, I would pay attention to that. I think the more targeted you can be, the better. Being able to focus on your keywords and not distract with too much content could have an effect.
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      • Profile picture of the author Antilles
        Thankyou all for all the replies!

        Some interesting ideas here, I'll do a bit of testing I think until I come up with optimum solution.

        But it seems like a low post count (5 or less) seems to have positive results, and the excerpts / teaser feature also seems like a good idea.
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