Is there a technical difference between a Post and a Page in Wordpress? And should I stop showing the Date on content?

[Grey]

First question:

If I'm starting out using WordPress and ads to monetize with search engine traffic, does it matter if I use a "page"-based silo structure (I think that's what it's still called) or just throw everything under "posts?"

I'm thinking the page-based approach is superior, but I keep seeing a lot of sites that just seem to throw everything under posts, so I thought I'd ask.

Second question:

With either of the above approaches, should I remove the dates from the posts? If so, I guess I'll have to figure out how to go about that (unless it's as easy as setting up a child theme and editing it?)

For reference, I'm targeting a sort of "evergreen" niche where things don't change much over time. Think self-help or some other gobbledygook people throw money at.

 

[Ryuzaki]

does it matter if I use a "page"-based silo structure (I think that's what it's still called) or just throw everything under "posts?"

They're the exact same thing. Pages vs. Posts only exist in Wordpress to help you be organized. Pages are meant for stuff like About, Contact, Terms of Service, Product Landers, etc. Posts are meant for your regular content that you roll out a bunch of, like you see in a blog or on an authority site. Anything you can achieve with Pages (like having folders and sub-folders in the URL paths) you can achieve with Posts, and to the user or Google, they don't know which you used.

With either of the above approaches, should I remove the dates from the posts?

There's zero benefit to removing dates these days. There's benefits to showing dates, not only with the freshness part of the algorithm but the ability to get into Google Discover, etc. If a post gets outdated, you can update the date. It gives the user confidence that you're maintaining your content. I choose to not show a Publish date but a Last Updated date, myself, that gets updated automatically if I re-save anything on the post. Sometimes I'll even update the date on every post on a site to within a 3 day time span of each other in the recent past so everything is "updated" for Google and the readers.

 

[Grey]

I choose to not show a Publish date but a Last Updated date, myself, that gets updated automatically if I re-save anything on the post.

Okay cool. I'm going to use the posts thing since that's always seemed more organized to me in the backend, and I'm going to steal this "last updated" idea too.

I appreciate the help.

 

[sgtrok]

To add on to what @Ryuzaki said, there is no technical difference between a Wordpress Post or Page. The intent of a Wordpress Page is for more static content or for content you don't want in the RSS feed. That's why you'll typically put content like a contact us, privacy policies, etc. into a Wordpress Page.

Besides the RSS feed only containing posts, most Wordpress plugins, themes and widgets are designed around showing/displaying and linking between posts. Posts also have categories, for further organizing your content.

Want a fancy content carousel on your homepage that only shows articles about blue widgets? In most cases you could only do that with a post that has a category of "blue widgets".

As far as dates go, I 100% agree with Ryuzaki. Don't remove them, but look into how to modify your theme to use the "Last Modified Date". Some themes make it easier than others, but I'm sure with a little googlefu you'll be able to figure it out.