If you’ve decided to use WordPress as a publishing platform for your website, you’ll want to know the difference between pages and posts. As a blogging platform, WordPress is oriented around posts. Posts are individual entries that are published sequentially. Blog posts are also usually dated, and can include a variety of media – like images and graphics, video, audio and other rich content. But what are pages?
WordPress SEO: Pages and how you should use them
In addition to providing a blogging platform, WordPress provides support for pages – which are more permanent, non-sequential pages. This support enables website operators to use WordPress for maintaining an entire website, and allows operators to take advantage of the built-in WordPress SEO support.
Unlike items in a blog, which are eventually replaced by newer material, pages are not replaced until the website operator replaces or updates them. Pages are easily locatable from any other page on the website, provided that the website operator has used good website design and navigation techniques.
Pages can support any type of content, including text, graphics, images, links, scripts, videos and audio. Each page can have its own header and footer content, allowing you to customize your WordPress SEO for each page. You can also apply style sheets to pages on your website, allowing you to standardize the appearance of the text, content and design attributes among all pages. Using style sheets also enables you to make changes across all pages from a single location, rather than having to edit every page on your site to roll out a style change.
Another key difference between pages and posts is comment support. Blog posts allow (or at least support) comments from visitors. When you construct a page in WordPress, the content is largely static, and is probably designed to take advantage of WordPress SEO targets like keywords and keyword density. Comments on a blog post can be an indicator of how many people are visiting your blog, but they can change things like keywords and keyword densities. A popular but off-topic comment can easily shift the SEO focus away from the post subject.
With pages, comments are not supported, so your WordPress SEO metrics like keywords and keyword densities are preserved, and they will have a better, more controlled impact on your search engine rankings. In short, using pages to publish your website allows you to control your WordPress SEO strategy carefully and easily.
If you would like more information about WordPress SEO options, using WordPress as a website publishing platform, or website design in general, please contact our Creative Director, Dave Ramsell or give Dave a call at (330) 243-0651 to set up a consultation.
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