Limit The Number Of Posts On Your Blog
When you manage a blog site that is totally under your control of micro-management. Controlling your content is a pretty easy job. My site is an example of a site that is under extreme micro-management. I know where every link goes to and who I am linking to. This is important to know…
An added tip towards controlling your content is building bigger highways to your pages for Google.
How do you do that?
Easy. Reduce the amount of posts that are displayed per page.
WHY?
Most blogs… including mine go into /page2 and /page3 etc… If you are displaying 5 posts per page, when people view the next page, the URL is /page2 etc…
If you limit the amount of posts per page, you give Google a better chance at giving your site a Deeper Index into your pages.
My site lists two posts per page. and Each page is under 100 URL’s. Doing this assures that Google indexes every page that is linked to the current indexed page.
By limiting the amount of posts per page I am basically controlling and directing the Googlebots on where to travel to.
In road construction, workers can guide traffic in and around areas that are being worked on. And by limited the amount of posts you display on your blog, you basically tell the Googlebots where to go.
Where are they going?
The Googlebots are going right down your main artery of your blog. The main artery has many branches and veins (categories and tagged pages) that link to your actual content.
If you closely control and direct the Googlebots to travel on down the paths you want them to, ultimately you are giving your site the best depth in indexing available.
My site displays two posts per page. Each page is as close to 100 URL’s as possible.
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8 comments
Hmmm, that’s an interesting idea and one that I will consider. I know the tags that you mentioned on my blog are a big deal in the number of pages that Google has indexed and limiting the amount of posts on each page will not only increase the indexed pages in Google, but also cut down on the load times slightly. Good tip Garry.
Ryan,
There is one thing I can’t stand… Slow Loading Sites. And to me, I am plainly old school.. I have been using computers since I was a young kid (Commodore 64 LOL) I am an old school guy keeping up in a web 2.0 world.. LOL
I still prefer white space, white back grounds, zero css, straight HTML, nothing but info, and hyperlinks to images instead of waiting on the page to load to view it.
Load time is the most important thing I consider. If your site is fast on dial up, then it will knock your socks off in High Speed.
My site must load in less than 10 seconds on dial up. Period. Any page on my site, the page needs to load in less then 10 seconds.
Does that happen? No…. because some posts do display graphics and such… but I would say that this site does meet a very happy balance between looking good and loading quick. I only only wish it was fluid width…
On my money maker site… I found an awesome old school looking theme and I am really considering using it here…
But yes… back to your response. reducing posts being displayed reduce load time, the amount of URL’s per page, and optimizes indexing and tells the bots exactly where you want them going… which is straight down your site’s throat! page/2 page/3 etc….
All your posts eventually will reside in these pages… /page15 /page16 … /page1256
The older your blog gets, the more of these pages you will have (this is wordpress of course)… how far do you want these bots to go?
Not every page will get indexed off the /tag/video-game/ tag… and not every page will get indexed off the /category/nintendo-ds/ category either…
But one thing is fact: they can and will get indexed of /page1 or page2/ etc…
The higher your Google PageRank is in these deeper link /page pages.. the more you can post per day and worry less about the posts getting a good index.
page/1 is basically your home page… how many back links do you have to your home page and what is your Google PageRank?
ask yourself the same question for page/2 and page/3, etc…
If you were to spend a few months building these secondary pages by only showing two posts per page… then after a few months you will see a pretty good increase in these secondary page’s PageRank and back links….
When this happens you can open the value a little bit and produce more content per day and not worry about Google missing it…
If you home page is a PR6
page/2 is PR5
page/3 is PR5
page/4 is PR4
when you get to that point of growth with your blog… man you can open the gates back up to show 10 posts per page…and if load time permits even more….
If you can actually write 100 post per day… we are talking about a ton of Google indexing….
So, yeah… if you want an easier way to grow your secondary pages… just limit the posts down to 2 or 3 per page…
Hmmm that’s something I never really considered. I usually have 10-12 posts on the main page of my blogs, and never considered going with less than that. I may give it a shot on one, just to see how things turn out.
Leroy,
Your site is actually very nice… very interesting too! The new theme you have fits your blog like a glove.
Right out of the box, your site is doing pretty good in terms of SEO. I don’t think there is much you really should change. I counted your links on your home page and you are at about 150 on that page… which honestly isn’t bad compared to the many other sites I visit.
I would suggest reducing your posts down to about 5. Which will look nicer because it should be closer to being in line with the bottom of your sidebar content.
Second thing I would do is move your [next post / previous post] code to the top… because right now, it is the very last link the Googlebots travel to (minus the footer links of course).
The site is looking great! Your content is great! Very interesting and I am glad to have found your site again… subscribing and bookmarking.
Talk to you soon,
Garry
That’s a good call on both points – especially the next/previous. I never would’ve thought of that. Perhaps I’ll just duplicate it, and have one above the posts and one below, for ease of navigation and for Googlebot goodness.
Nice post Garry!
I keep mine at 5-6 per page for that very reason, plus it makes the sidebar take up “more” of the page.
Kyle and Leroy,
Both you guys do a great job keeping your content balanced with page appearance. Leroy, I especially enjoy viewing your site after your recent re-design.
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