6 replies to this topic

[AmyClark]

Hello,

I just started working on a Web site that has been structured so a few of the most recent blog article snippets are posted on the bottom half of the homepage. The snippets take up most of the page, except for a short paragraph about what the company offers. Since I've been working on the site, I've been optimizing the blog articles with keywords but they are often very different depending on the article topic. In one sense it's great because many of the blog articles are highly read and enjoyed by their target audience and they are featured quite prominently there, yet I'm wondering if it hurts or helps them in terms of SEO.

Any thoughts or advice?

Thanks!

[copywriter]

Hi Amy,

I may be mistaken, but your posts sounds as though you expect the blog, as a whole, to get ranked. Each, individual page of the blog will be ranked just as it is with typical websites. Because you're optimizing the blog posts for applicable keyphrases, and because the target audience is enjoying the posts, you'll probably do well overall, even if the Home page of the blog doesn't. If you don't already, I'd encourage you to add a social media plugin that allows readers to tweet the posts, share them on Facebook, etc. This will help build links and further boost rankings for each post.

[Jill]

Amy, do you mean that the home page of the rest of the site (not the blog) is featuring these snippets of blog posts?

If so, I understand your concern, as there will be ever-changing content on the home page making it difficult to pin down what it's all about.

Typically that is okay these days, but I would also suggest at least a good paragraph that sums up what the site/company is all about somewhere front and center so that people (and search engines) who get to the page know that they're at the right place and what they've found.

[copywriter]

Yes, true. I assumed you meant the Home page of the blog. If you're talking about the website and not the blog, Jill is absolutely right (as usual).

[AmyClark]

Hi Amy,
I may be mistaken, but your posts sounds as though you expect the blog, as a whole, to get ranked.

Hi Karon,

Not exactly, but let me try to explain it a little better. The blog article snippets are posted on the homepage of the entire Web site, not just the blog homepage. So in terms of content, the main homepage copy includes a short paragraph about the company & their services, then a list of recent blog posts with short blurbs underneath. I optimize the blog articles to achieve their own individual ranking but I'm just wondering if in the long run it will help or hurt the rankings for the homepage of the entire site. By adding blog posts that are optimized using different keywords, I almost feel like I'm hurting the homepage rankings because I'm throwing too many keywords into it rather than just focusing on two or three phrases.

I hope that's a bit more clear. I did some research and don't see many Web sites that list recent blog articles on their homepages so that's why I started questioning the way this site is structured.

Thanks for your help!

Amy

[AmyClark]

Yes, true. I assumed you meant the Home page of the blog. If you're talking about the website and not the blog, Jill is absolutely right (as usual).

Hi Jill & Karon,

Thank you for your feedback! It's good to know it's not necessarily a bad thing, so I'll focus my efforts on optimizing a good paragraph about the company and carefully monitor my analytics rather than pulling the blog articles off the homepage all together for now.

Thanks again!

Amy

[copywriter]

Ah! I see. No, if you're posting blog snippets on the bottom of the Home page, I would keep that to a limit. You have to consider your users as well as the search engines. If this is something that visitors are finding helpful - and if it's good for conversions - leave it. But from an SEO standpoint, I'd keep the snippets to a limit (just the last 2 or 3 posts) and I'd keep the description to a limit as well (just a sentence or two per snippet).

I would not recommend having most of the page taken up by snippets that change regularly.

From my experiences with clients, it's still best to have the majority of the content on the page static (not changing).