Most Commented

Top Money Makers

Subscribe

The Right Number Of Posts To Show In Wordpress

Posted by Paul B | September 4, 2007 .

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before (only a hundred times!) but I’m new to this whole blogging/Wordpress thing so you’ll have to excuse me if this has been covered on every other blog, ever. My search engine referrals are very hit and miss at the moment, I suppose you’d expect this from a new website, but I have started to notice a pattern. If I write about something (Bet365 for example) then within 2 days I rank very well for related phrases, after 2 weeks I then disappear from the rankings down on page 7 etc. It’s the same with every other post I write, I’m sure this is something to do with the very nature of posting on Wordpress and other blogging platforms.

When a website is new it doesn’t have much trust, the most important page by far is the home page. It’s true for your blog as well, until you’ve been around 6-12 months then your home page is where it’s at in terms of search. Of course other pages get indexed but they’re just not trusted enough, it’s takes time for the love to spread. In trying to be clever I cut down the number of posts on my home page to 7, I thought this would improve the overall performance of the blog, however no sooner was an article getting search hits that it would disappear. I’m now up to 14 (roughly 2 weeks) posts on the home page, it will be interesting to see if my search results hang around for longer.

I don’t think that the number of posts you show in Wordpress matters that much once your website is established, but in the beginning I’m finding that it really helps with getting those search placements if you have articles on your home page for at least 2 weeks.

Social Sharing: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Netscape
  • StumbleUpon

Related Posts

Posted under Don't Make Money | Like this article? Subscribe to our RSS feed

Leave a Comment

If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Comments

6 Comments so far
  1. KingJacob UNITED STATES Ubuntu Linux Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7  September 6, 2007 5:04 am

    If your new definently go with about 10 posts on the front page, less if your theme blows in terms of load times.

  2. Paul B UNITED KINGDOM Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.6  September 6, 2007 11:38 am

    I think 10’s the default isn’t it? Wrodpress obviously know best, that’s what I get for messing around with settings.

  3. Adam UNITED KINGDOM Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.6  September 6, 2007 1:51 pm

    I would thought, this is what I do anyhow and it seems to work for me, for all your quality articles make use of the tag so that only an excerpt of the article is on the homepage and then any search traffic will land at the article page.

    Now this may be less successful short term perhaps? I’m not sure but I’m going to stick with it anyway.

  4. CatherineL UNITED STATES Windows Vista Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.6  September 9, 2007 2:10 pm

    Interesting post Paul. I hadn’t given much thought to how the number of posts on your home page affects your search engine rankings. But, it will be interesting to hear the results of your experiment.

  5. AlexRect UNITED STATES Windows XP Internet Explorer 6.0  October 1, 2007 9:47 pm

    Any new information on this topic? If so let us know!

  6. Paul B UNITED KINGDOM Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.7  October 1, 2007 9:54 pm

    http://www.themakemoneyonline.net/does-the-number-of-home-page-posts-matter-yes/