Google: Pages And Posts Have Equal Ranking Opportunity

Google SEO companies and webmasters strive to create relevant content for their website to cater to their target audience’s needs. This typically comes in the form of either web page content and blog posts. But some SEO companies and website owners wonder: is there a difference in the way Google ranks these types of content?

A site owner recently asked John Mueller if Google ranks pages and posts differently. Mueller discussed that Google could not distinguish between web pages and blog posts when indexing and ranking content, which means that a web page can rank as high as a blog post.

The Difference Between Pages And Blog Posts

Pages are a site’s foundation; they contain the most important information about a significant topic, mostly about the website’s niche. Online businesses and site owners optimise a page’s parent topic, which is the highest-searched keyphrase, containing the essential details one should know about the product or service that the site is offering.

Blog posts, on the other hand, can be treated as “add-ons” to supplement the web pages. Such content is all about the topics related to the website’s niche but is not necessarily directly relevant to the site’s product or service. Businesses and webmasters usually create blog posts with the specific nature of the subject or timeliness in mind, so their related topics are not practical for the overarching page. Some common topics include announcing upcoming events, sharing industry trends, or answering frequently answered questions.

Another difference between the two is that web pages are constant, while blog posts are published regularly – although publishers also update the former from time to time. Readers also turn to blogs and pages for completely different reasons. People read web pages to seek information about the business site or its products and services. On the other hand, blog posts are much more helpful at providing information about a specific topic.

Mueller Comments On Ranking Posts And Pages

Mueller discussed how Google ranks posts and pages in the weekly SEO hangout on 4 June. A website owner explained that their blog posts do not get as much traffic as their web pages, particularly the services pages. The person asked if Google treats content published as blog posts differently from other types of content.

In response, Mueller said that a blog post’s traffic is irrelevant to where a piece of content is published. He added that Googlebot probably can’t discern between a blog post and a page. The only difference between the two is something that has to do with WordPress or the backend within the CMS that site owners use. SEO companies and website owners do this to organise their content, but Google cannot actually recognise the difference.

So, when Google looks at the content, they simply consider it as an HTML page and rank it based on the content and how it is linked within a website. It does not matter if it is a web page, a blog post, or an informational article. Googlebot sees it all as an HTML page with content interlinked within the website.

The person then asked another question, this time about using longer URLs. They thought that longer URLs on blog posts might be causing problems.

According to Mueller, the URL itself is probably not the cause of the problem. Instead, online businesses and site owners should look at how they link their blog posts from other web pages on their websites.

He said that if more internal links are directed to web pages than blog posts, then Googlebot will consider those pages more important than other posts. Moreover, when blog posts do not link to other web pages on a website, the search engine would not accurately assess the level of importance, which is a massive challenge for Google SEO companies and webmasters who want to boost their search rankings.

Mueller, however, admitted that he does not know the person’s website, so it is quite challenging to say. But his best guess is that their blog section has a different internal linking from the services section and other parts of the website.

Because of the different internal linking in different parts of the website, Google sees the blog content as unrelated to the links or page type. In this case, the search engine might not recognise that this piece of content is an important part of the website. Therefore, if blog posts do not get as much traffic as the services page or other web pages, businesses and webmasters should add more internal links.

Linking to a site’s recent blog posts always lets Google know that the content is a crucial part of the website. One could also add contextual URLs to relevant blog posts from high-ranking content pages.

What Is More Important In Terms Of Content?

It is important for businesses and site owners to expand and refine their web pages over time – but so is keeping blog feeds active. When investing time and resources into creating content, publishers are torn between blog posts and web pages. But there is one guiding rule that one should follow: pages are a business site’s cornerstone; therefore, publishers should prioritise them in their content marketing strategy.

Although web pages often rank high due to the comprehensive content they provide, blogs can also rank impressively in search results. The important thing to note is that Google prefers relevant, up-to-date content for users, regardless of type. After all, the best way one can optimise their websites is by catering to the needs of their target audience; what pleases the readers also pleases Google.

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