Currently all my blogs are set up to the wordpress’ default 10 posts per page, and if the visitor wants to see more posts he needs to click the next button (obviously ). It looks like this number is too small for the contemporary times and devices, and I would like to increase it to, e.g. 14 or 15 posts per page. However, I’m not sure if that’s wise to do because of SEO. All my current categories, tags and archive pages are indexed by search engines with 10 posts per page in mind, and if I change that the posts that now appear on, say, 10th page will move to some other page. I know that google will eventually re-index all the pages, but I’m concerned if that may cause some visitors to not find what they are looking for, or that search engines might penalize me in some way.
Is that a real problem or perhaps I worry too much about unnecessary stuff?
Also, what is your take on infinite scrolling? Is that good for an adult blog?
Over the years I’ve increased the amount of posts / articles per page and not seen anything negative from doing so. Obviously there must be a limit where there simply are too many per page both for the visitor and page load speed. But you should be fine to increase it to 15 or so.
It depends on how much you show on the page. If you’re showing full blog posts, 10 is too much (IMHO). If you’re more “magazine style” with an image and a blurb of text, then you can put a lot more on the page. (And there’s plenty of middle ground between full posts and total magazine style). The problem with magazine style is that it will probably reduce your outbound clicks to sponsors.
It also depends on if you let Google index pages beyond page 1. I always noindex,follow any URL with ?page=x in it. But if you’ve let Google index all those pages then changing the number of posts per page will send most of the indexed pages for your site into chaos.
Thanks Bjorn and Jay. I thought such a move shouldn’t cause any negative consequences.
Well, my main blog is sort of a mixed bag when it comes to the way the posts are displayed. The regular posts on the home page (which the visitor sees when he comes to my blog) are excerpts, with only a blurb of text and two pictures for each post. But my categories, tags and archive pages contain full posts. Several years ago I wanted to switch to excerpts for those as well, but gave up because a lot of sales were coming from them (especially categories and tags pages), and I thought it would be stupid to add one more step for the visitor to go from an exceprt to the full post when he can click to the sponsor right away.
Nowadays I don’t even know where my sales come from exactly because sponsors rarely show that piece of information anymore. But I suspect the categories and tags are still good for sales and I’m hesitant to change them to excerpts. On the other hand my home page might be perceived as outdated because of only 10 posts per page). So, I’m not quite sure what to do…
I ask about this because in my opinion a large portion of my blog (older posts) remains hidden from an average visitor. Only the posts from the first page get a significant number of views, while the others get viewed only rarely. There are some exceptions (e.g. if some of my posts are listed on a forum etc. then they’ll get more views), but by and large I think the older posts are often neglected by visitors, which is a pity. I’m trying to find ways how the exposure to older posts can be increased. I’ve had a random posts widget and “popular posts” widget for quite some time, but maybe there are other options/methods to achieve this?
The best way to give older posts a boost is with a “related posts” section. There are probably WordPress plug-ins that can do it for you. You’d want one that analyzes the tags you have and finds other posts with similar tags.
Oh, and Google likes “related posts” as well last I heard.
Thanks Jay and Bec. I have been using the contextual posts plugin for quite some time, and I think it does the job well, although the number of clicks to older posts that come from it is usually lower than one might expect.
Could you please explain what is the rationale for disallowing google to index pages beyond page 1? Is it because you want it to index only the individual posts, while indexing these posts within the pages would just produce duplicate content for google? Also, how exactly do you do it?
I use Yoast SEO plugin and I can see there’s the option “show pages in search results?” (yes/no), but I suppose there’s a way to do it without any plugin as well.
“Pages” in WordPress is not the same as page=X. Wordpress has pages and posts. In most cases pages are used for things like “about this site”, “contact us”, stuff like that.
The logic of noindexing everything beyond page 1 is pretty simple â there’s nothing on pages 2+ that is unique content. Everything on those pages is duplicate content can can be found at another URL. The blog post content can be found on the blog post page. And the concept you’re shooting for in the category or tag is best found on page 1.
). It looks like this number is too small for the contemporary times and devices, and I would like to increase it to, e.g. 14 or 15 posts per page. However, I’m not sure if that’s wise to do because of SEO. All my current categories, tags and archive pages are indexed by search engines with 10 posts per page in mind, and if I change that the posts that now appear on, say, 10th page will move to some other page. I know that google will eventually re-index all the pages, but I’m concerned if that may cause some visitors to not find what they are looking for, or that search engines might penalize me in some way.