SEObits:How To Improve Your Blog Homepage

Treat Your /blog like a homepage

Don’t forget to update your /blog page format beyond what’s “Out of the box” in WordPress. There’s so much more you can achieve than a simple, reverse-chronological listing of content! (Mostly because your BEST content may not have been the most RECENT!)

This page should not just be a short list of content that you have recently posted. Instead, it should be a useful homepage-type format!

You aim to surface high-value content based on your keyword forecasts/research and off-board you to specific tag pages or posts.

Content plans should include link plans, and follow target term goals.

Simply picking keywords and slapping out content is wasteful – more so if lacking basic site optimisations such as IA and nav structures etc.
— Darth Autocrat (Lyndon NA) (@darth_na) February 17, 2022

You need to go beyond just what ANY CMS(Even it it’s awesome) does if you want to optimize your website! This is where a headless CMS platform comes in, allowing you greater flexibility and control over your website’s design and functionality.

Pagination is a terrible system to just HOPE ya get crawled properly. It gets worse at larger outfits, publishing volumes of content from multiple teams. No one really stays highlighted or even on the main page for a long!

H/t to Ahrefs and @patrickstox for doing a fantastic job on this score – You can see they have surfaced categories, and highlighted useful content for each sub-topic

Increase The Default # of Posts

A lot of you need to increase the number of blog posts on each page of your blog's pagination. 2x the number of posts, cut the number of pages in 1/2 and I bet your organic traffic will improve too.
— John Doherty 👍 (@dohertyjf) February 17, 2022

You need to increase the number of blog posts that display on your primary blog page. If you increase the number of posts by 2x, you decrease your paginated pages at the same time. Take This tip from @john-doherty of Editor Ninja & Get Credo: If you want to do this, you can find the setting in WordPress found at /wp-admin/options-reading.php.

Highlight Content Types & Categories

See the value addition here? Different categories with different types of content.

If your team is large enough to generate different TYPES of content, such as white papers, eBooks, Videos, Webinars, or other content types then you shouldn’t allow all of those different pieces to fall into singular categories. Find a way to highlight these unique content takes!

Your Blog Customizations

What other methods of updating the “out of the box” blogging approach have you deployed? Have you made custom-loading graphics for your site? Have you swapped hero images for a video or something awesome? We’d love to feature more screenshots of your best blog upgrades.

Learn SEO 1 Bit at a time

I figure out quite a BIT of SEO by hanging out on Twitter, Facebook, and Slack groups. I’m taking the time to record answers to common SEO questions or challenges in posts like these so you can also learn SEO. Here are some recent #seobits I’ve tackled: