blog categories Archives by Mark Murnahan

SEO and Blogs: How Many Blog Posts Should I Have on My Home Page?

The question of how many blog posts to display on the home page of a blog is a pretty tough call for a lot of people. After all, it affects the page load time, the number of generated pages in your archive, the number of pages indexed by search engines, and most importantly, the user experience.

What is the best number of blog posts per page? The answer will depend on a number of things, but I want to offer some food for thought, and share what I have experienced.

If you don’t already have a blog, you may want to sit this one out, but if that is the case, I encourage you to read “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog“.

As an SEO guy, I am not always right about every SEO topic. I try my best to keep my percentage of being right pretty high, but even I can get it wrong sometimes. It usually happens because of overlooking the obvious things I should be doing, but conveniently neglect.

The reality about SEO is that sometimes the right answers take a little bit of testing. Some people may call it “tinkering”, but that implies doing it without forethought. My suggestion is to stop “tinkering”, but always be testing. In this instance, I do not suggest making frequent changes, so it is good to make your best guess the first time.

Changing Number of Posts Per Page: Think Ahead!

It was not so long ago that I faced the question of changing the number of blog posts per page, on this blog. I had previously displayed ten articles on the home page and on each archive page. It was not a good idea, but then, I get wrapped up in client work and forget about my own stuff. I am often like a cobbler with barefoot children. Once I got around to this issue of blog posts per page, I was really glad to finally address it. I know that others have this question, and in fact, a friend who writes “Social Media Philanthropy” recently had a poll of his readers to see what they think.

Depending on your blog theme, the number of blog posts on your home page will generally be the same number which will be listed in each of your archive pages, too. I don’t mean the kind of archive like my complete archive where I list all of my articles, but rather the pages that are generated for chronological archiving, tag archiving, and category archiving.

If you do not know exactly what I mean, just click on the “older articles” link at the bottom of this page, click on any tag (for example, SEO), or click on a category (for example Marketing). My blog presently lists a total of five articles for each of these types of generated pages, and then has a link to the next page of posts.

Changing the number of posts per page will change other factors of your website, so it is best to think ahead and not do it too often. I will tell you a bit about what it will change.

Changing Blog Posts Per Page Has Multiple Effects

Let’s think about how a change in the number of posts per page will change other things. When my blog displayed ten posts per page, there was the obvious outcome that each page was longer. It makes sense that the potential for keyword phrase matching in a given search engine index may be higher, because of the lengthier content on each page. It also took a bit longer for each page to load, so that was a downside. Plus, consider how daunting a huge long scrollbar can look to somebody just wanting some quick and easy information.

An even greater downside to having large numbers of posts per page is the much lower number of total pages of the blog. More pages can be a really good thing, but of course not just any pages. You can add pages just by adding a bunch of extra blog tags or categories, too, but it is not recommended.

I am certainly not saying that you should go and set your blog to display two articles per page just to bump up your page count. That could be a bad thing. After all, just consider how many times somebody will want to click to the next page, and how annoying that could be. The rule of thumb is that you have three clicks before you lose somebody. Certainly some blogs are much higher, and some are much lower, but it is really important to keep those readers happily surfing on your awesome wave. You do this by having everything just right … or at least as close as possible.

The most important factor is how it will affect the people reading your blog, and not the search engine indexing. If people like your blog, they are more likely to link to it, subscribe to it, and keep coming back. This should always be the primary consideration, but this really can make a big difference in search engine indexing, too.

Fewer Blog Posts Per Page Means More Indexed Pages

This is something I offer with caution. You do not want to aspire to a bunch of frivolous extra pages in search engines. You want search engines to index valuable, useful, and human-worthy content. That is what search engines want, too.

There is a lot of hype on one side or the other about allowing blog tag archives and category archives to be indexed by search engines. There are multiple easy ways to control this, and I use a (highly modified) WordPress plugin called “All-in-One SEO Pack” on this blog. Everything it does can be manually programmed into a WordPress blog, or any other website, but I consider it a handy tool.

A lot of people will argue about the perfect settings, and what to tell the search engines to not index. For example, in my category archive pages, I added the directive for search engines to not index the pages, but to follow the links found within them to other pages. It is in the header of the page and it looks like this:

Example of NoIndex, Follow Directive (click to see it applied):

meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,follow”

Against some people’s notion of what works best, I have not included the content=”noindex,follow” directive in my blog tag pages (see example source code). This means that by default, my blog tag pages are being indexed. That is a lot of pages, and when you add up the differences in switching from ten blog posts per page to five blog posts per page, it multiplied the number of indexed pages in search engines. Best of all, it happened without any devious trickery or being spammy to search engines, and it simultaneously improved the user experience.

What About Duplicate Content Penalties?

I know that it is popular for people to wake up sweating profusely after having a nightmare about being penalized by search engines for having duplicate content. Search engines frown on duplicated content, because it has often been used in attempts to cheat rankings. It is the topic of many SEO discussions, and a fright to many bloggers and webmasters.

What is duplicate content? An easy way to describe this is by looking at two given blog tag pages. For example, if you seem my “SEO” tag, it may be significantly similar to the content of my “SEO blogging” tag. I also use the rel=”tag” attribute, but that is another article, and still relatively speculative in search engine recognition, and adherence.

If this gives you sweaty nightmares, stop freaking out, walk to the kitchen, and fix yourself a glass of warm milk (or better yet, Scotch). Then take a calming suggestion from good old Murnahan, and try to get back to sleep. Google and other search engines already have figured this out, and they know how blogs work. Yes, Google and other search engines have this under control, and they have indexed more than just a few other blogs.

It is extremely unlikely that you will be penalized for duplicate content, unless you are doing something to intentionally cheat the system. This is a topic for another blog post, but let me just stroke your hair and carry you back to bed. You will be just fine, and the monster under the bed will leave you alone until another time.

A Summary About Posts Per Page

Every blog is different, and some of us have really long and drawn out content, while others are much shorter articles. I also addressed this in a previous article about whether to use blog excerpts or full-length articles on your pages. The article is titled “Blogging Dilemma: Truncated Blog Excerpts or Full Blog Articles?” It is worth a read if you are on the fence about how to display your blog posts.

Because this can make such significant changes to the number of pages on your website, in your XML sitemap, and number of pages indexed in search engines, I suggest carefully limiting the number of times you change this.

I welcome your input, and if you found this useful or thought provoking, maybe your friends will, too. Please add your comments or questions and pass this along to other fellow bloggers.

Changing Blog Formats and Blogging the Extra Mile

People ask me about blogging every day. They often ask me by way of a search engine, but they also ask me by telephone, in person, and a lot of other communications methods (no carrier pigeons, please).

I have written a lot of blog articles, and I have written a lot about blogging. As an example, I offer you my “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog“, along with the many others you will find in my blog archive. I have also written about reasons blogs fail.

A blog is a great hub for search engine optimization and social media marketing efforts. This is a fact which is undeniable and proven with a lot of data. A blog can also require a lot of time. Time is money, and somebody must be held accountable.

When I consider the various blogs (websites) where I write, it is as if each one of them represents different aspects of my persona. Some of them bring out my perfectionist side (the prominent side), and I am compelled to read them over and over to be sure they are perfect before publishing. Other blogs (websites) are more fun and I can whip out my wacky sense of humor.

In any blogging effort, I find that the more time and effort I invest, the more valuable it becomes to me. In the case of my blog at awebguy.com, I have invested a lot of time and effort to have all the pieces fit. It serves me commensurate with my effort.

I normally include a creative image to represent each article. The pictures in a blog post have a surprising affect with readers. They enhance the message and set a tone. I suggest always using a creative image in a blog post! I am skipping the image this time.

I also spend a lot of time adding page descriptions, blog tags, blog categories, and even recording a podcast for many of my articles so that people can listen instead of reading. Of course, these things require a lot of work.

When I finish all the production, then I need to share my articles across my social networks. Sure, a lot of this can be reasonably automated, but a human approach is always better. In fact, the effort is quantifiable and I am going against my own style to produce and publish this article.

Changing Blog Formats

The point here is that I am changing formats. I will still provide my lengthy articles making strong points using things I know. In fact, I have some great pieces coming up soon, so if you have not subscribed, I would like to encourage that you subscribe now. I will also be including some short and simplified clips in the mix … like this one. This particular article is intended to be a quickie, and I will actually save a ton of effort which some people will notice.

As I contemplate changing formats to a less time consuming style of blog, I feel compelled to offer the advice given by many parents as follows: “Do as I say, and not as I do.”

I want to offer you this cautionary consideration. Many people think they can get by doing less than what it takes to produce a great blog, but then still expect great results. It does not work! I have paid a lot of dues in the realm of blogging, and I can assure you that this article will garner far less attention than the ones I spend a lot of time and effort to produce and publicize. For me, that is fine, because I am actually not here to sell you anything. If you want to sell something, you really should do all of that extra work that may seem useless to you.

I will likely provide much more of the “bare bones Murnahan” in the future. This time, I just wanted to say something useful and fast. OK, maybe it did not seem fast to you, but I nixed the podcast, image, and a ton of the other work that has helped to make this blog popular. I also hope that you still find it useful, and preferably before you choose to cut corners.

Look Mom … no frills! If you intend to skip the extra work in producing your blog, just be sure that you do not rely on it to bring in more business.

The bottom line is that if you want a blog to boost your bottom line, you should go the extra mile.

Blogging Tips: Use Evergreen Content and Revive Your Archive

Have you ever noticed that when you visit a blog, you generally only look through the most recent articles? It is pretty common that upon visiting a blog’s home page, people will just scan through a few items and see if there is something they want to read. In the blogging world, it is often assumed that newer is better, but this is quite often not the case. It is just more visible.

I am guilty of looking at the date something was published. I am not sure why in some cases, but I guess I am just so accustomed to seeing a date on blog articles. I suppose it is just one more way that people can feel that they are getting the latest and greatest news. A reality check for bloggers and readers alike can come in the form of these two little questions:

For Blog Readers: What about all of the great information that is not just recent or new?
For Blog Authors: What about the people who are not there for the news, but who just want great information?

I have noticed many blogs removing their publish date from articles, and it actually makes sense for some blogs. If the information is still useful, does it really matter whether it was written this week, this month, or even this year? A lot of great information is timeless. As I ponder this, I am reminded of an article I wrote about eight or nine years ago on the topic of H1 tags titled “H1 Tags Improve Search Engine Placement”. Thousands of people per month read that article. It is the top ranked article in search engines on the topic, and has been since the day I published it. Does the date really matter? H1 tags (web page headings) are still as important today as they were then. The information is still useful.

Some Blogs Are “Evergreen”

When I say “evergreen”, I mean that the information is as useful a year from now as it is today. Blogs have widely varying degrees of “evergreen” content, but most business blogs will have a good level of content that is still relevant and useful for a long time. It would be pretty hard for most businesses to have a blog that was no better than a used newspaper.

For blog authors, it can sometimes feel like a huge shame that people are actually missing some of your greatest pieces of work. So what do you do? Do you try to make everything more genius than the last? That is a good idea, but it is probably not always going to work. In my case, I know darn well that some days I am just a whole lot less brilliant than I would like. I often write blog articles on those days, too.

Scanning through the first few items listed on the home page of your blog is often how new readers will decide whether to come back, subscribe to your blog, or schedule an afternoon of reading through page after page of your past articles. This makes it pretty important to have something right up front to impress them, but how? You cannot just leave your best work parked on the front page of your blog forever. Your regular readers would get sick of seeing it. Do you just stop blogging until you can come up with something to beat the last piece? That is probably not the best answer. In fact, that is a pretty terrible answer.

You could republish some of your best work, but the same problem of repetition arises when you consider your long-time readers. Plus for many blogs where the date is part of the URL, there is the tragedy of changing the URL where all of those great incoming links are pointing. Sure, a 301 permanent redirect to the article’s new location is easy, but you still lose some of the link value for those older works.

Of course, you could just count on excellent search engine ranking for everything on your blog, and use Google as your website navigation. That way, if they are looking for it they will find you anyway. I have often counted on this, but then again, search engine optimization is my job. What about the people already on your blog who may find some of your past articles to be really useful? Larger websites often have a user-friendly sitemap to help people find useful information. The equivalent for a blog is the archive. Website search tools are excellent, but some people want to browse, and you should make it easy for them.

What about all of those readers discovering your blog from an older article? Will they even notice your most recent brilliance? What can you do to grab their attention to your latest and greatest stuff? Maybe a better solution is to create more evergreen content and to revive your archive.

Revive Your Archive!

Scanning the home page of a blog makes sense if you are a regular reader who has participated in the blog for a while, or if the blog is mostly about recent news. Let’s face it, though, many blogs are full of “evergreen” content that is not just seasonal or only applies to right now. If this is the case with your blog, it is a good idea to promote some of your past articles for those who may have missed them. The trouble is that you don’t want to annoy your current readers by saying the same old thing over and over. So how do you deal with keeping things current and fresh, while also being sure that people can see that you have been brilliant long before they happened upon your blog?

You can tell where this is going, right? Sure, I want you to go back and browse my blog archive. There are some excellent tips there, and a lot of information that I am confident can help you. I also want to be sure that you are thinking of this with your blog, so I am not just being selfish.

Make Your Blog Archive Easy to Navigate!

I have noticed that it is easy to assume that I have not missed much on some of the blogs I regularly keep up with. However, I still sometimes like to go back through the archives of my favorite blogs. Sometimes this can be a hassle, and sometimes it is a breeze. Now consider the people reading your blog, do you want it to be a hassle for them, or a breeze?

There are a lot of types of archives, but many of them require a lot of clicking back through a chronological month-by-month archive structure or going to the end of the page and clicking on a link for previous articles. Some will have archives nicely paginated so you can flip through them quickly. Other blogs seem to make it a challenge to read what they have had to say in the past.

A lot of blogs have killed their tag clouds, and do not even show their tags on posts. I still love them, and appreciate bloggers who make a tag cloud available, or at least tags on individual posts. For example, go click on a tag for this article (listed at the bottom, such as blogging) and see how easy it is to find more related information. Some blogs do not even list the blog categories for articles. Call me old fashioned, but I still love tags and categories. I can use them to find other things with similar information. I think I love them even more because I know from my website statistics logs that they are used extensively by readers on my blog.

I hope that you will consider your archived blog content and how you may keep it easily accessible. Making it easy for people to find and for them to browse could add up to a lot more subscribers over time. You may notice that on my blog, I have my archive linked at the very top of every page, just below the recent articles listed on the left, and at the bottom of every article along with links to my most recent articles. Isn’t redundancy awesome?

10 Really Good Reasons to Blog
6 Essential Blogging Tools for Bloggers and Non-Bloggers
Weren’t you reading? Go click on one of the tags listed below or on my blog archive. 😉

Image credit to MPF via Wikipedia

SEO Tip: WordPress Category Descriptions Matter

SEO: It is the art and science of getting your website listed in search engine results for more search terms and listed higher than all the others. This is a pretty important factor to website success … and business success. So, it would seem tragic if you had done almost all the right things, but then you just forgot some of the basics.

Nobody is perfect. We all forget things. I want to give you a reminder of something that I frequently find overlooked by WordPress blog owners when they set up a new blog, and as the blog grows. The basic principle can apply to any website, really. The little things really do add up, and this is a quick SEO tip that you can use to improve your SEO so fast that you may wonder why you ever neglected it.

WordPress Category Descriptions

Sure, you have set up your categories, and you may add to them now and then. Blogs change over time, and so their focus changes. Categorizing your content is important, and so you probably did not forget that part. What I find that a lot of people do forget is to optimize WordPress category descriptions to match their content.

WordPress categories are a way to make it easier for people to find more information on the same topic. They also help search engines to better index your blog. It only makes good sense to have your category descriptions reflect the content of that category correctly, and keep it up to date.

The category description is where WordPress gets the page description for category pages to include in the meta description. If you do not have a description, or it is an old description that does not reflect changes to your blog and to the state of that category, your blog is missing an important element.

Using “Noindex, Follow” in WordPress Category Pages

You may say, “but I have a noindex, follow meta tag in my categories.” This is good, and I do, too. I use “All in One SEO Pack“, and I recommend it to others. It allows easy management of meta indexing directives.

I do not want search engines to index my categories, but I want them to know exactly what the categories are about and then follow the category page links to my article pages. It makes sense that I should give them a good meta description.

It may seem trivial, but when you consider it, many of the things we do to optimize our websites for search engine ranking really are just little pieces. Those little pieces add up to be one big picture, and until you get them all together, the puzzle is still not complete.

Managing WordPress Category Descriptions

Just to be sure I did not give you a great idea and motivate you to take action, but not follow through with a “how to”, I will tell you a couple of tips on where to go and do this, and also what to include.

First, for anybody unfamiliar with where to edit WordPress categories. Depending on the version of WordPress you are using, you will find it in your blog administration either under “Posts” and then “Categories” or under “Manage” and then “Categories”. From there, you will see all of your categories listed. Simply click on a category name and add or modify the description. I would not suggest changing the “slug”, because it would change the URL and upset your internal link structure and search engines would have to learn it all over again.

Now that you are ready to edit your blog categories, try to create a description that reflects the emphasis of the category, and how it relates to the overall content of the site. As an example, my “Internet Marketing” category description reads as follows:

“Internet marketing has many sub-categories and this information focuses on marketing content creation, SEO, and social media marketing.”.

As you can see here, it reflects the blog category, but it also reflects how it relates to the overall subject of the blog.

I hope you have found this to be useful. It is sometimes easy to forget the little steps, but they all matter.

For more useful WordPress-specific tips and tricks, I recommend my friend, Ruhani Rabin‘s blog. Here is a link directly to his WordPress category where he has a lot of useful articles about tweaking WordPress blogs.

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