What Are Keywords, Posts and Pages Again?

byhowmuch

1.6K followers

10 years ago

Frank suggested someone write a post clarifying a couple of things about keywords and posts, and I suddenly remembered that when I first came here (lo those many weeks ago) I had a million similar questions.

Thanks to the kindly and sometimes saintly patience of several WA members and geniuses, and you know who you are because you're probably still a little annoyed with me (I see you rolling your eyes Robert), I now have a much better idea about keywords, posts and pages. Here is a little of what I have learned.

Keywords act like this:

You look for good keywords, ones that have high traffic and low competition. See Robert’s blog for selecting
good keywords: http://goo.gl/3S9iMZ

You use one long tail keyword (that is, several words in a phrase, such as “cabin style tents for eight people”) or one short tail keyword (which is only one or two words, such as “fire safety”) and write an article around it.

Example:
Your website is “Desserts.com”. You find a keyword—“pies for summer.” You discover that it has a thousand searches a month, but a QSR (“quoted search results”, or the number of websites that are also using that exact keyword) of 100. This is awesome! You write and publish an article titled “Pies For Summer”
and include that keyword in the first paragraph maybe. Google ranks it on page one. This is also awesome, because 75% of anyone using Google search checks out the first page only. Fortunately for the purposes of this example that is exactly where you are. They see your site. Thanks to your brilliant description, twenty people click on it and visit your site. Twenty people will see your ad for baking powder.

The next day you find another keyword—“cakes for kids”—and it too has huge traffic but little competition.
You write an article titled “Cakes For Kids—A Review”, using the keyword in the first paragraph or two, and publish it. Google page one! Woo-hoo! That day, a hundred people type in that keyword to search for cakes for kids. They see your site on page one. 75 click on it and visit your site and see your ad for baking
powder, or a link to a company that sells cakes. In two days 95 people have visited your site, but not for the same reason. All are interested in desserts, but 75 were interested in cakes for kids and 20 were interested in pies for summer. You addressed two different problems that people were searching for an answer to related to your site’s subject--desserts.

The more you utilize good keywords, the more articles will rank on Google page one, and the more people will see the thing they are searching for and visit your site. The more people that visit your site and see your affiliate (Amazon or other affiliate company or actual item or service for sale), the more likely they are to click on that link and buy that item or something else you get commission for. If you have written enough really good content, the ones that visit once will visit again and again, and that’s necessary, because generally people won’t buy on the first visit. They need to trust what you say is good or not.

The more keyword articles from your site that are out there for Google to rate, the more likely it is that your
site’s link will pop up for people looking for answers to their questions.That’s why you need to keep building out your site. Each page or post is like a little flyer going out into the nethersphere, to land on the virtual
windshields of potential shoppers. The more “flyers” you have, the greater the possibility is that someone in the group of people who have seen it will visit your site.

Changes Made To Your Post While Tweaking Your Site

When you write a post or page and share it on your social media (Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, Google +), if you go back at a later date and “tweak” that article, do you need to update that “share” that you made on your social media and update the link? No. There is no need to do that at all. The URL remains the same regardless—they will go to the same page or post that you have written. It will just be slightly changed—perhaps it now has that great image you found, or you corrected some spelling mistakes, or you put one paragraph further down in the article because it made the whole thing read better.

The only exception would be if you made a significant change that might impact the reader in some way. If you wrote that it was OK to play with matches and then discovered how wrong that was, you might want to re-share with a brief retraction and the link again with the new information in the post that playing with matches was bad; or if you have a site that mentions a car rally next Tuesday the 20^th and you discovered it was next Monday the 19^th, you might want to re-share, add the link again, and mention the date change.

Otherwise you need not worry.

What Is The Difference Between a Post and a Page?

Quite a bit, as it turns out. Posts are what show up in a continuous list on your home page. They are shown in reverse chronological order, with the latest post written showing up first. They will automatically be on your front page unless you change the settings. The URL (the www. “address” the post is at)will always display the date the post is published along with the name, for example:http://www.mysite.2014/01/10/post-title.

Pages, on the other hand, are stationary articles. They do not have a date displayed, nor do they use tags
and categories like posts do. There are a lot more differences, but just starting out that's all you really need to know. If you want more information you can visit www.wordpress.com and type "posts vs. pages" in the search box.

The number of pages or posts you can make on your wordpress website is limitless. How you use them is up to you—some use pages for reference information, and posts for on-running commentary. Others use the blogroll—the posts option—to give opinions, and the pages to list facts. Some people use only pages; some people use only posts. The choice is entirely up to you as you build your little kingdom of knowledge.

On your website dashboard, to the left, you can find two headings: “Posts” and “Pages”.Click on either of them and two choices will come up—“View All” and “New”. Just click on “New” to begin a new article as
either a post or a page.

I’ve only covered three subjects, and I know from personal experience that the list of things we want to get
clear in our heads when we’re beginning feels overwhelming. Hopefully, though, these three things have been clarified at least a little bit. If not, feel free to curse me endlessly in the comments section below.