WORD PRESS EXPERTS: Is It Better For Search Engines To Add PAGES or POSTS?

16 years ago

Hi Steve,

Posts are best for search engine spider attention, because WP has a built in ping feature. Each time you create a post on your WP site, it sends out a "ping", which is basically just a notice, to many different search engine spiders and tracking sites. So essentially your site will announce to the world that it has new content, and this brings everything running to index the latest stuff.

Do this regularly enough, and you can literally "train" Google and other large authority sites to constantly spider and index your site

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magentawave

16 years ago

Originally Posted by GuruGazette

Hi Steve,

Posts are best for search engine spider attention, because WP has a built in ping feature. Each time you create a post on your WP site, it sends out a "ping", which is basically just a notice, to many different search engine spiders and tracking sites. So essentially your site will announce to the world that it has new content, and this brings everything running to index the latest stuff.

Do this regularly enough, and you can literally "train" Google and other large authority sites to constantly spider and index your site

Thank you very much! Now that "pinging" thing brings me to the next WP questions please...

1) Okay cool, but don't WP PAGES (not posts) ping the search engines too?

2) And what about the issue of spamming the search engines with pinging? For example, lets say you discover a post (or page) has a misspelled word or whatever and you correct that post - thereby causing that page to be pinged again...and maybe again? I find that when building a new site that I end up making lots of changes which of course causes a lot of pinging. The people that made the Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger [Ultimate Plugins] claim to eliminate the possiblity of spamming the search engines by over-pinging them. So is it true that we can spam the search engines due to "over-pinging" from updating or correcting a post or page and then get penalized like the developers of that plugin say...or is that a bunch of b.s.?

Thanks again.
Steve

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jrsencio

16 years ago

Don't you just love wordpress.. I do!

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raydp

16 years ago

The answer to your question goes back to the reason for us using blogs in the first place. It is perceived that search engines love blogs. They don't love them for any reason other than the fact that the nature of a blog is it's frequently updated.

New fresh content is the holy grail to search engines, hence, they love regularly updated blogs.

Because of this, the answer is that it doesn't matter if you put up pages or posts so long as you keep adding content.

Some may have other ideas, and it is a fact that making more frequent small posts is easier and quicker than making pages.

Leave a blog without updating it for a few months and just watch it die!

Ray

PS. I've just read Kathy's post and pinging is of course, another factor. For pages you would have to ping manually.

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Julia Andersson 16 years ago

Originally Posted by raydp

PS. I've just read Kathy's post and pinging is of course, another factor. For pages you would have to ping manually.

Hi all

Question here Ray... how do you do a manual ping?

Personally, when I add content to blog sites I prefer to add pages because they're slightly easier to optimize (IMO). I'm also more comfortable with my ability to optimize a page. I worry that if I add new content as a post that it will scatter my seo efforts making it harder to rank for my chosen keywords.

Whether this is true or not I don't know. Does anybody know how seo works with blogs. Are posts treated as completely separate entities as far as seo or does the seo apply to the whole page (regardless of how many posts are active)?
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Ivancho

16 years ago

Ofcourse post are better, if you want to get quickly indexed. But it all depends why do you need them and all that stuff.

If you want to get better search engine rankings I would recomend you to go with posts

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Yaro

16 years ago

Consider how posts and pages are intended to be used...

A page is a standalone piece of content, that is usually part of your main navigation structure. It does not get added to your blog's main page updates.

Pages are added to the front page each time you create a new one and are designed for current content.

Your pages and your posts can rank well, but in almost all cases posts will outrank because they will attract links on a consistent basis.

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GuruGazette

16 years ago

Hi Steve,

No, WP pages don't send out pings when they're created or updated. Only posts do.

And yes, when you edit or update a post it will send out pings again. I've run hundreds of WP blogs over the years though and in my experience there is very little risk of "spamming" when posts are edited by humans. Even intelligently editing posts with automated systems like my Reposter plugin will not cause problems.

The theory of ping spam being possible with editing posts has a grain of truth in it of course though. Several years ago there were automation tools which would do things that made the site seem updated hundreds of times a second. Now that I think about it there are still some tools around like that.

The point though, is that usually you can't accidentally spam with pings in the course of normal updates and edits.

Hope that helps,
Kathy

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sylviad 16 years ago

You can avoid the extra pinging if you save your page as a draft after you've posted, rather than using the publish option. If you're using a recent version of WP, you can go into your settings and make it so that when you post it does not automatically publish. That will give you a chance to save and then go back and check your post for any errors, fix them, and then actually publish when you're sure it's okay.

Sylvia
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- magentawave 16 years ago
  
  This is really good stuff and thank you all very much for your answers...which of course leads to my next question please...
  
  Again, as far as what search engines like - which is better?
  
  Does it matter if my POSTS appear (in excerpt form) on my "home page" -- or is it just as effective to have links on a static home page to my posts?
  
  Thanks again!
  Steve
  
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Julia Andersson

16 years ago

Another thing to note regarding blog pinging is that you need to make sure that you have at least one ping server listed under your update services.

You can find this section by logging in to your blog and going to "Settings>writing" On mine it's down the bottom of the page and I would imagine that it would be the same in most if not all wordpress dashboards.

The default ping service is rpc.pingomatic.com

If you want to add more you can visit codex.wordpress.org/Update_Services

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raydp

16 years ago

Regarding the manual ping question from jewelenterprises, I just go to Ping-o-Matic! and fill in the blanks. This is good because you are able to submit your RSS feed at the same time.

Ray

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Yaro

16 years ago

Pinging is a helpful tool, but I think some of you are getting too caught up with it.

It's not a miracle SEO trick and if your content sucks, no amount of pinging is going to help. Also, since pinging is free, everyone does it, so it's not an advantage.

If you want an advantage, figure out how to over deliver through blog content - that will do more for your search engine rankings than pinging ever will.

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Leanne King

16 years ago

@Julia - just go to Pingoat and ping your url.

Leanne

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WORD PRESS EXPERTS: Is It Better For Search Engines To Add PAGES or POSTS?

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