WordPress SEO: Do Posts Work Better Than Pages?

We do a lot of WordPress SEO so we’re always trying to figure out the best way to optimize it—experimenting, reading tips from other pros, etc.

There are obviously all types of plugins and custom WordPress themes that you can download/build to enhance SEO for WordPress. But this striking thought dawned on me the other day:

Is the secret to WordPress SEO just building your site with posts instead of pages?

For Newbs: “What’s A Post?”

In case you’re not familiar w/ the difference b/w posts & pages, here’s a little background. The basic difference is that posts are historically associated with blogs – as in “blog post”.

Pages, on the other hand, are associated with static websites—like your website would be if you didn’t have a content management system. A flat HTML site—one with no CMS—is built with pages and is therefore static.

But when you’re using WordPress as your CMS (or Joomla or DNN or Drupal or what have you), depending on how you configure it, you can have different types of content—pages & posts. Each has certain unique attributes.

I don’t know all the technical differences, but I do know they’re significant. If you really want to know all the tech specs, read what WordPress says about pages vs. posts.

So Here’s My WordPress SEO Hypothesis

Irrespective of any plugins, themes and other WordPress SEO optimization tactics you follow, my hypothesis is that a WordPress site built primarily with posts will perform BETTER in search engines than one built mostly with pages—all things equal.

Here’s why I think that:

I have two sites built in WordPress, one with pages, one with posts.

Both sites have the same exact SEO plugins and are running on the same theme. Other optimization tactics (titles, URLs, copy, link structure, keyword research, etc.) are very similar. Backlink structure & domain age are not exactly the same, but close.

The WordPress site built with pages has DOZENS of them—55 to be exact. The one built with posts only has about 15. Both sites get roughly 1,000 search engine visits per month. That in itself is kinda crazy, but here’s the funnier part:

I just started publishing & building links to both of them again recently after having taken a few months off. And the site built with posts has been growing by about 10% with each post that’s published. The one built using the pages WordPress SEO strategy is flat-lining.

That’s a BIG difference!

Obviously there are a lot of other factors that could effect a WordPress SEO experiment like this.

The sites are in different niches, one (the pages site) is pretty competitive, while the other is less—but still sizable. I may have been in the zone for some reason and done much better keyword research and developed much better content for the pages site than the posts site (it’s possible).

And there’s probably 30 others that I could think of right now. Some science is necessary and I’m on it.

Right now I’m setting up a much more even test WordPress SEO test. I’m going to start with two similarly structured, brand new domains in the SAME niche. I’ll perform keyword research once and publish for the SAME keywords on both sites. I’ll even have the same writer write the content (unique content obviously).

Basically do everything exactly the same.

I expect to have meaningful results within 3-4 months. I’m writing this on 12/10/10. If you want to get the results when I publish them, sign-up for the newsletter (on the right) and I’ll send you the link when it’s up.

Want more info about the best SEO plugins & themes for WordPress? Or just general WordPress optimization tips? Check out this piece and this piece.

Or, if you don’t feel like thinking about it, get in touch w/ my partner, Chris, and he’ll do it for you.

View all posts about WordPress.

Develop a lead-generating website with our WordPress Services.