We see this situation time and time again while working with our clients.
The carefully crafted, well-designed, conversion-optimized service pages that business owners and designers take pride in barely get any traffic.
At the same time “random” blog posts, knowledgebase articles, or PDF uploads pick a lot of diverse organic traffic from Google.
Most of our clients want to “fix” it immediately, but as we work together we find ways to actually amplify and leverage this effect.
5 Reasons posts rank better than pages
Let’s take a look at why blog posts pick up more organic Google traffic than service pages and what can you do about it.
1. They have more text
Plain and simple, that’s a factor that you can’t beat.
Most service pages have just around 300 words of copy.
That is absolutely fine because service page copy is aimed at addressing the needs of customer audience and getting visitors to convert – make a purchase, request a call back, or sign up for a trial version of the product.
Not every product or service needs a long sales page, especially if it’s something cheap and simple.
That’s why most service pages are short, appealing, right to the point, and, well, text-poor.
This is the way things should be – you don’t want to turn your service pages into an authority resource on your niche.
2. They have more unique text
This is actually a big one.
A lot of service pages have repeating text snippets – testimonials, case study snippets, blog feed elements, bulletpoints, about us sections, and so on.
Re-using these page elements is easy for designers and sometimes makes sense – but it’s a bad SEO practice.
Try to make sure each of your service pages is 100% unique.
Blog posts are always unique, because each article is dedicated to one specific topic or issue. That already gives them an advantage over service pages.
3. Their topical relevance is higher
Even when a service page has a lot of text on it, the text is hardly ever as topically focused as a blog post would be. Businesses want to showcase all of their strong sides on service pages, and that’s perfectly fine.
Here’s an example. If you are working on a service page for a social media scheduling SaaS, you will inevitably have a bunch of different topics mentioned on it:
- scheduling for different social media websites (Twitter LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and so on – each of those topics would normally “deserve” its’ own landing page).
- pricing info – and what each service package includes
- testimonials, some of them lengthy compared to other text snippets
- how-tos and bulletpoints on the types of problems that the software solves
- blog posts excerpts/feed
- case study excerpts
- FAQs (almost all entrepreneurs want them on their service pages, but they are usually bad for SEO)
etc.
As a result the page would be packed with all kinds of information and be so diluted that in reality it’s not that 100% relevant to either of the topics mentioned. In other words, Google just doesn’t really know what the page is really about.
A blog post, on the other hand, is usually dealing with one and the same topic from start to finish, which makes it a very tight and relevant unit in terms of SEO. Google has zero reasons to rank your page that has mixed topics, if you have a blog post solely dedicated to one specific topic.
Again, that’s totally fine, because the main goal of your service page is to convert visitors into customers, and if you need to talk about a all kinds of different stuff for that – do it!
Live example – here’s KWFinder’s homepage: https://kwfinder.com/ – notice how they mention all their features, pricing plans, and testimonials. Now take a look at their blog post on keyword mapping: https://mangools.com/blog/keyword-mapping/ – it covers the whole topic from starts to finish. Now, they obviously target the keyword “keyword mapping” with their blog post and even though the homepage could be somewhat relevant to “keyword mapping software” – they don’t go for that, focusing the homepage on the general query “keyword research software”,
3. There’s more onpage SEO freedom about them
With blog posts you are not limited by design, conversion optimization requirements, or anything else that puts constraints on writers.
You can put as many headings as you wish and tweak your keyword densities.
As a result each blog post topic is not just covered fully, but also contains all the useful blog post SEO bells and whistles that make up to an important part of their ranking –
- relevant outgoing links
- embedded YouTube videos on the topic
- downloads, tables, charts
- calculators and other interactive elements
and a lot more.
4. They get easier, more natural backlinks
It’s usually harder to find websites that will link to a commercial service page with buying-intent keywords as a link anchor. Because of that, most commercial pages are promoted with paid links from mediocre websites.
Blog posts, on the other hand, can be true link magnets and attract mentions from legitimate high-authority websites.
Well-planned content marketing and outreach campaigns can use blog posts to gather a massive amount of backlinks, incomparable to service pages.
5. They are a quick way to run focused experiments
If there are smaller, specific keywords that you want to take a swing at, you best bet is to create specific, targeted blog posts about them.
With blog posts you can produce great landing pages fast and relatively cheap – and that’s the smart way to go about it.
6 Solutions and remedies
Here’s how you can deal with the situation when your blog posts outperform your service pages:
1. Just go with it
Don’t waste time and resources trying to “fix” the situation and force your service pages to somehow outrank your posts for the same keywords.
First, it’s never a good idea to have different pages of your site compete for the same keywords.
Second, it may never be destined to work in the first place (see all the reasons above)
And third, there may be a cheaper and more effective ways to make it all work.
Most of the times we’ve dealt with this issue on clients’ sites we’ve just helped them capture that traffic and converting it into customers.
Please note – every situation is different. Sometimes a blog post takes up all the spotlight simply because the service pages are horrible. Reach out to us and request a free evaluation – we can help you fine-tune your service pages and make sure they are as effective as possible.
2. Plan right, and keep the pages strict & to the point.
The fact that service pages may have a disadvantage makes it absolutely essential you plan out the website right.
You need to assign only the commercial, converting keywords to your service pages, and make sure they don’t compete with each other or the future informational blog posts.
So keywords with buying intent need to go to the service pages. Keep the service pages focused on “money” keywords only. Anything else needs to go on your blog.
3. Blog more, not less
Many small business owners immediately want to start tweaking their service pages – and they get stuck in a loop of never ending versions and updates. While they work on that they miss out on a lot of traffic opportunities that blogging offers.
The reality is, if your blog pulls traffic from Google – use it! You’ve hit the right combination of domain authority and site speed, your writer does a good job, and Google thinks you’re very niche relevant. You’re doing something right!
Don’t stop blogging – expand the semantics of your domain even broader and cover the niche as much as you can.
Get a professional content plan researched and cover all possible interests of your target audience.
Your service pages won’t go anywhere – they will still be converting anyone interested, but you need to focus on your blog if it works.
4. Make your posts more conversion friendly
Many business blogs are plain and boring. Make sure your posts have the potential to funnel and convert the organic traffic they get.
Use conversion elements throughout the text.
Add several buttons, phone numbers, testimonials, and contact forms inside of your posts.
5. More internal links from posts
If your blog posts are doing well on Google, that means the search engine is viewing them highly. That means links from your blog posts to your pages carry more and more weight and relevance. Use that to your advantage.
Expand every service page you have with several supporting blog posts. Then make sure each of these supporting blog posts links to the service page with aggressive, keyword-rich anchors.
Once you start running outreach and link building campaigns for all blog posts you publish (you should be!) you will be funneling all of that link power over to your service pages with internal links.
6. More inbound links to pages
Last but not least, if you want to give your service pages a boost – do so by getting more inbound links to them. Build or purchase links with commercial keywords in anchors.
Since the pages have less opportunities for onpage SEO, as we’ve discussed above, you need to compensate for that with backlinks.
As you keep blogging and your site grows in authority and topical relevance, gradually getting more backlinks to your service pages will get them to where you want them to be on Google.
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If you want a long-term consistent organic traffic strategy developed for your website – get in touch with us and request a free evaluation!