Page vs Post vs Product Listing - Barbara Williams SEO

Q: What's the difference between a page and a post?

They have different purposes within a website. A page normally keeps its position as one of the main topics. For instance, Home, About, Services, Blog, and Contact. Pages don't change position much. A post is content added from time to time, usually anchored by the Blog gateway page. Posts can have a different layout from a normal page. Sidebars are common, especially to display the most recent posts. Also, a post archive can be offered, plus a search option and a contact button. But for SEO pricing purposes, page = post.

What’s the difference between a page and a post?

And how does a product listing fit in? For pricing purposes here, consider them all as simply, pages. (My pricing structure is based on the number of ‘pages’ rather than setting a bulk price per website.) There are some important differences, however. And most of those are because of terminology.

First of all, recognize the difference between menu tabs/headings and SEO pricing pages. Your menu headings are kept general in order to make a place for other divisions within each. One menu heading can lead to 3 or 4 subtopics. That’s far more than one page, do you agree? A menu heading will lead to a main page, and 3 subtopics are considered 3 more pages here.

Using the same term for two very different (yet similar) entities is confusing, I’ll admit, and I apologize for that. Probably I should add an adjective to distinguish between them. Yoast SEO calls the main pages ‘categories’ but that’s confusing on a different level, considering that posts are categorized. So, here we’ll consider website pages vs. pricing pages. Good with that?

What is a website page?

Your website has a prescribed structure, to keep things organized and to make it easier for search engines to crawl. The ‘spiders’ prefer to travel from level to level, and if they get confused by disorganized structure, your search engine results will be penalized. Think of your site organization as an outline, with the website pages as main points.

There are a few main pages that usually anchor your website: Home, About, Shop, Blog and Gallery (or Portfolio) are most common. For pricing purposes here, each of these main website pages can be considered as a ‘page’. Make sure there is enough content on each for good optimization. Even on the Home page, 300 words will give the spiders a nice snack of key phrases. Your About page can go longer, and 500-700 words is a nice length.

Posts are the next level in website structure

There are 2 main pages that lead to posts, and those are the Blog and Gallery (or Portfolio) pages. In our outline model, the posts would be listed below the website pages. However, not every website page should lead to posts. Make posts regularly, to demonstrate to the crawl spiders that you’re serious about your business. Frequent website activity lends authority to your website.

Figure 1 post = 1 pricing page. A good content length is 500-700 words.

You can separate posts by category, avoiding a glob of them in the structure. For instance, have a look at my own post categories. There are several, and the ones most often used are SEO, Links, Intro to SEO and Content. Always put a post in a category, rarely 2 and almost never 3. Avoid leaving your posts Uncategorized. That’s like a stop sign to crawl spiders.

Gallery/Portfolio entries are like posts

Set them up either as a post, with content accompanied by images, or as images with captions. Both ways will work just as well, depending on your preference. Whichever you choose, always add a title and alt text (aka, alternate text) to each image. By doing this, you have 3 extra opportunities for optimizing.

Use keywords in both title and alt text. You can use different keywords in those places, in fact, it’s probably better that way. So this counts as 2 ways to optimize, really. But if you get caught needing to use the same words, just change the order. Make the title descriptive of the image: Alt Text Wedding Example. And then the alt text can be: wedding example for alt text.

Alt text is important in case the image can’t be displayed. For instance, on a WIN95 operating system (yes, they still do exist). Or if the link is broken for some reason. Also, if the image is indeed properly displayed but the user is legally blind, the alt text will be spoken by an app that does that when the cursor is hovered over it. You can even add a call to action for just that situation: Buy our Gold SEO Package to be optimized in our wedding example for alt text.

Images are very handy for SEO! If you’re a photographer and post jillions of pictures, we consider 10 photos = 1 pricing page.

Product listings are just as important as any other page

Think about it. The reason you have a website in the first place is to promote your business, right? So, stay in the zone by crafting the content of your product listings for SEO.

Describe each product in around 300 words. Make it interesting without being untruthful. As an example, have a look at my Gold SEO Package. The explanation is clear and easy to understand, but there aren’t any exaggerated claims. Nowhere is there any promise that SEO will instantly put your website on Google page 1. Nor will I ever tell you that your business will double in a week.

If you have several products that differ only in color or size, you can group them on the same page. Now that I think about it, my SEO Packages could have been done that way. See, this really is a work in progress.

Resist the urge to use the same description in every similar product listing. Not only is that boring and uninformative, but it also tells your prospective customers that you might be a little lazy and tend to cut corners. I know it’s handy to have placeholder content to get your product listings up quickly. But do take the time to make each description unique to its product.

So exactly how many pages do you have?

And how much is that going to cost? To get an idea of how I calculate what a pricing page is, have a look at Barbara Williams SEO and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

There are 7 menu headings, leading to main pages on my website. Count each one of them as a pricing page.

On the Shop website page, there are 19 products as of this date, each with its own listing. Each one counts as a pricing page.

Upon publishing this post, there will be 22 blog posts, which means another 22 pricing pages.

So now, let’s add up: 7 website pages + 19 product listings + 22 blog posts = 48 pages to consider for SEO.

To cover that total number of pages, order however many SEO Packages will match. Gold = 8 pages, so to cover any potential overage you should order 6 Gold Packages. And then there are the images, but we’ll leave those out temporarily to avoid further confusion. For now, just keep in mind that I consider 10 images = 1 pricing page.

For assistance in calculations, simply contact me and we’ll work out the best arrangement for both of us!