WordPress Pages Vs Posts
WordPress is not an alien term for anyone who has stepped into the digital marketing space. And if you know WordPress, you definitely know the two terms that are immediately associated with it: pages and posts.
To an amateur, they look more or less the same. However, this is far from the truth. Pages and posts are equally important for your website to rank well. However, people are often confused about which one to use, and when.
This blog will provide a simple explanation of how WordPress pages and posts are different.
What Are WordPress Pages?
They are your regular static website pages such as home page, about us, services contact us, etc.
These static website pages have no expiry date – they are timeless. You can update them as and when needed through the WordPress dashboard. The pages are fundamental for displaying businesses’ main services or products.
WordPress pages mean strict business.
What Are WordPress Posts?
Posts, as the name goes by, are your blog posts. WordPress started as a blog tool only but later it grew to become a popular Content Management System (CMS) for most websites.
Blogs are listed in chronological order with the recently updated post at the top of the blog page or section. Older posts are saved in archives after a certain time period. You would have to sift through the list to find the blog content posted a year or so back.
Blogs are time-bound with specific published date and time. Users get a notification when a new post is updated on the blog page via RSS feeds. You can automate your email marketing campaigns to provide a daily or weekly newsletter to targeted customers.
Blog posts are also very social in nature. WordPress offers many social sharing plugins allowing users to share the blog on their social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, etc.
Your WordPress posts have a conversational undertone. They arrive with a comment section where readers can add comments under any post. WordPress allows you to disable or enable comments and pingbacks and trackbacks. These are a PITA to monitor, so most use a separate plugin like Disqus or Facebook to comment. Though, keeping pingbacks live is good to see who is linking to – or stealing – your content.
Generally, every blog post comes with a predefined category and a set of tags.
- Category: defines what the blog post is all about. For instance, digital marketing, music, health, beauty, fashion, travel, etc. You can create these; ContentMender uses “SEO Services” or “Content Marketing.” We keep categories to a minimal due to our business, but some, like a news website, will have many more.
- Tags: specifies the details about the blog post. For instance, SEO, content marketing, website design, etc. can be used as tags for the category – digital marketing.
Remember, there is no limit on the number of posts, categories and tags. It’s at your discretion to manage the number and type of blog posts. We are creating a blog about the differences between categories and tags, and will link to it here once it’s live.
For more, here’s a quick snapshot via WordPress: WordPress Pages Vs Posts
A Caveat: Despite some of the explained differences, WordPress plugins can come handy to make significant changes in pages and posts, if needed.
Next Big Question: Which is Good for SEO?
To be fair, no one is better than the other. WordPress pages and posts hold individual importance to improve SEO. It all depends on the customer’s voice if you have to choose between the two: WordPress pages vs posts.
When To Use WordPress Pages?
WordPress pages are organizational-centric – they define everything about your business. These are permanent and least likely to be changed often – though refreshing the design and updating internal links/content is a good practice to keep UX strong.
Use WordPress pages in the following conditions:
- Create main sections of your website – About Us, Home, Services/Product, Portfolio, Contact Us and many more.
- Club and divide content that resembles a parent-child hierarchy (a page that lives under another – on ContentMender, a main (parent) page is Content Services, and (child) pages live underneath it like SCORE Content Marketing and Awareness PR.
When To Use WordPress Posts?
Any content that will be regularly published needs posts and NOT PAGES. In simple terms, any time-sensitive content takes the form of WordPress posts.
Use WordPress posts in the following conditions:
- Personal or business blogging on any subject: motorcycles, SEO, fashion, travel, food, etc.
- Corporate events or conferences
- Press releases
- Syndicated content via RSS feed
Concluding Thoughts
WordPress pages and posts are equally relevant for your website, though most fail to understand the finest differences. This post explains when to use posts, and when to use pages. Make sure to understand both so you can fully optimize your WordPress website, and get the most value for your business.
