Wordpress as CMS: Pages vs. Posts for SEO

As far as SEO goes, there's really no added benefit because you can easily change the permalink structure for posts to look exactly like pages (as I do on my blog).

If you're using a theme such as Headway or Thesis, there are plenty of SEO options already included, otherwise, use a free plugin like All-in-One SEO.

You can opt to use pages instead of posts, but personally, I recommend using POSTS because you can better manage them with categories and such when you've got a lot, and posts work better with archives plugins and things like that.

However, if you do use posts, the best way to get them to "behave" more like pages is to do the following:

- Change the permalink structure to /%postname%/ or /%category%/%postname%/ (if you want a hierarchy)

- Edit your theme and remove (or comment out) where it shows post meta data (such as date/time, categories, etc).

- Disable comments by default, then go into your individual posts and make sure comments are disabled.

You can even take it a step further (depending on your theme) and edit your theme to remove the 'Comments are disabled' message at the bottom of the post.

Hope that helps!

Jonathan Beebe

Comments can improve SEO because it's UGC.. which Google does consider.

At the same time, it could throw-out your keyword density so it might be a choice between that and UGC.. personally I'd go for UGC so the search bots have something to come back and crawl.

You can have category parent-child relationships as well that will work in a similar way to what you looking for.

Look more into query_posts and how you can use it to really customize how wordpress displays content.

There isn't much you can't do with wordpress if you know a little php and understand how wordpress functions beneath the hood. It's extremely flexible.

And back to your question, I use posts for just about everything except stand alone pages like 'about us' 'contact' etc...

Keep in mind, you can have custom category pages, custom archive pages and whatever else you want to dream up to deliver your content any way you want.

I'm a complete wordpress fanboy.

I almost always go with posts rather than pages since that tends to work better with the overall internal design of WordPress and how most plugins work. If you're managing a lot of sites, keeping things simple and standardized is important. If you're building a single site, then you probably won't be as concerned about going with the flow.

For SEO purposes, it doesn't matter a whole lot unless you're wanting to go for a silo-ish design. In that case, the category/post option will work better for you.

Very helpful.
Thanks.

LifeIsGood ~ It's About To Get Even Better!

This is an interestting thread on using wordpress!

I ve always wondered about the relative benefits of posts or pages, and I think Jon described some good benefits of posts over pages. I tend to have a main page as landing page, with high word count, high keyword targeted, and with posts as supporting docs pointing back to main keyword page. Many rank in their own right of course if well constructed.

If you are planning to build an authority site with many pages, I'd go for CMS rather than blog. Sure, UGC is useful in that it helps generate fresh content. But, Google is placing less and less value on UGC. If you recall, last year or so, Google downgraded many UGC websites like ezinearticles, hubpages and so on.

I personally prefer pages because I like to create large sites with pages in the hundreds. It usually takes about 15 months to complete each site. I also do the page optimization and link building as I build each page.

By the end of the 15 month-period, many of my pages will be ranking in the top 30 sites in Google search result. So, pages do work for me.