What is better for search engine optimization, blogs or "non blog" websites - test results here

[jamawebinc]

It is said that google loves blogs and blog software like wordpress and using wordpress is great for search engine optimization.

I was reading an article where someone presented the opposite opinion. To paraphrase him, he said that when you look at search results, you hardly ever see blog posts among the results. You see almost all static "evergreen" websites.

This was the exact opposite of what is quoted online over and over again about one of the biggest benefits of using blog software like wordpress - and that is good search engine results

I tested this statement for myself to see if blogs or non blogs were better for search engine results from Google and here are the results.

A few notes first:

1) - I started out testing searches for the Internet Marketing "market" since that is the target audience most people reading this are familiar with.

2) - I determined what is a blog 2 ways. The first way is if a website is clearly a blog by observation - meaning it has the common elements of a blog like a content column and a sidebar with "recent posts", comments under the posts, etc or it clearly states that wordpress is used. (ex: it has "wordpress theme by..." in the footer).
The second way I would determine if something is a blog is to look at the source code.

I started with a basic search someone in this market may search for - how to sell online.

Test Results:

** I made some comments next to the results detailing some interesting stuff like if the site was a very high traffic site, what program it was made with, etc.

1) How to sell online:
Google keyword tool : 22,200 global searches

Search result page 1:

1 - non blog
2 - non blog (yahoo store page)
3 - Blog ("6 ways to sell your stuff online" alexa rank of 2154)
4 - non blog - sell.com classified site
5 - non blog (looked like a blog but was made with mozilla)
6 - Blog
7 - non blog
8 - non blog - ebay
9 - non blog
10 - non blog (about.com)

2 videos at the bottom of the page

** I usually don't go past page 1 in search engine results, but some people do, so I did page 2 as well for my tests.

search result page 2

11 - non blog
12 - non blog (craigs list)
13 - non blog
14 - non blog (dreamweaver)
15 - non blog (front page 6.0)
16 - blog
17 - non blog (about.com)
18 - non blog
19 - non blog
20 - blog

Result: 80% non blogs, 20% blogs

Test 2

I wanted to test a search term that was more popular than 22,200 global searches.

search term: marketing tips
Google keyword tool: 74,000 global searches

1 - non blog
2 - non blog
3 - non blog (front page 4.0)
4 - blog
5 - non blog
6 - non blog
7 - non blog
8 - non blog (adobe pagemill 3.0)
9 - non blog (but probably cms)
10 - non blog (about.com)

separate section at the bottom with blog posts about marketing tips

2 videos after that on the bottom

----

Search Results Page 2

11 - non blog
12 - non blog
13 - blog (alexa rank 398)
14 - non blog
15 - non blog
16 - blog ( alexa rank119,830)
17 - non blog
18 - blog (alexa rank 9,609)
19 - blog (bit set up like a regular site)
20 - non blog

Result: 75% non blogs, 25% blogs

Test 3

I thought maybe those searches were too general and I needed a more focused search to test so I came up with this next.

how to start a web based business:
Google Keyword tool: 1,600 global searches

search results page 1

1 - non blog
2 - non blog (but probably cms)
3 - non blog
4 - blog
5 - non blog
6 - non blog
7 - non blog
8 - non blog
9 - non blog
10 - non blog

------

Search results page 2:

11 - non blog
12 - non blog
13 - non blog
14 - non blog
15 - non blog
16 - non blog
17 - non blog
18 - non blog
19 - non blog
20 - blog (time.com)

Result: 90% non blogs, 10% blogs - and the results are probably worse than this because time.com (#20) is not a "personal" blog but a large entity.

I then got even more focused with my search...

Test 4

how to overcome writers block:
Google keyword tool: 140 global searches

search results page 1

1 - non blog
2 - blog
3 - non blog
4 - non blog (about.com)
5 - non blog
6 - non blog (cms)
7 - blog
8 - non blog
9 - blog
10 - non blog (about.com)

-----
Search results page 2

11 - non blog
12 - non blog
13 - non blog (about.com)
14 - non blog
15 - non blog (blog like)
16 - blog
17 - blog
18 - non blog
19 - non blog
20 - non blog (cms)

Result: 75% non blogs, 25% blogs
* "blog like" means it had the layout common to a blog, but was not a blog

There was a definite pattern. I decided to make a test away from the "internet marketing" crowd - so I tested Charlie Chaplin

Test 5

charlie chaplin
Google keyword tool: 673,000 global searches

Search results page 1

news: 3 links to news sites with time related info about chaplin

1 - non blog
2 - non blog
3 - non blog
4 - 8 images
5 - 2 videos
6 - blog (pbs.org)
7 - non blog
8 - non blog
9 - non blog (blog like - a repeat of one of the news site links at the top)
10 - non blog

--------

11 - non blog
12 - non blog
13 - non blog
14 - non blog
15 - non blog
16 - non blog
17 - non blog
18 - non blog
19 - non blog
20 - non blog

Result: 95% non blogs, 5% blogs

Next, I went to a popular blog, chose a post to "find" and searched for a particular post on google using the title of the blog post.

I went to problogger.net knowing it is a very popular blog and when I was looking for a post to "find" on google I realized something. Most posts are about...blogging.

I figured I would come back to investigate that tidbit more later on...

So, next I went to copyblogger (a blog I enjoy) to search for an article to "find" and there were also many posts about - blogging, as well as tips for social media like twitter.

So I picked one that would not have social media or blogging involved in the post as that seemed like it be a fairer test.

Test 6

The article I wanted to "find" was titled - how to write an article in 20 minutes

Here are the results

Search results page 1

1 - blog (copyblogger)
2 - blog (copyblogger)
3 - non blog
4 - non blog
5 - blog like (squidoo)
6 - blog like (associated content)
7 - non blog (blog like)
8 - non blog (social media site)
9 - blog like (hubpages)
10 - blog

----
Search results page 2

11 - video
12 - blog
13 - blog
14 - non blog
15 - blog
16 - non blog
17 - non blog (amazon)
18 - non blog (warrior forum)
19 - non blog (blog like)
20 - blog

Result: 50% non blogs, 50% blogs - This is being generous to "blog" results and counting web 2.0 sites like squidoo and hubpages as "blogs"

I repeated this test going back to problogger.net and using a post about blogging. I expected to find just about all blogs in the search results as it was a blog post about improving a blog.

Test 7

7 Questions to Ask On Your Blog

Search results page 1
1 - blog (problogger.net)
2 - blog (problogger.net)
3 - non blog (social media site)
4 - blog (not a good search)
5 - non blog (social media site)
6 - non blog (trackback)
7 - blog (link to the original article)
8 - blog
9 - blog (non targeted)
10 - blog (non targeted)

I didn't bother going to page 2 as the results at the end of page 1 were so off target.

Result: 30% non blogs, 70% blogs - Although a good number of the "blog" results were very untargeted and about 7 "Other Things" besides the 7 things I was searching for.

Overall Results:

These search terms were chosen one after the other and results recorded. I did not try searches and only record results that skewed the results one way or the other.

A clear pattern is obvious.

The results show that Google favors non blog websites over blogs for it's search results.

The market didn't matter.

Even a more detailed search term with less competition didn't seem to matter much.

Yes, the more general term, with the largest number of searches produced the least number of blogs in the search results.

The searches that produced the greatest number of blogs in the search results were clearly blog posts that either are about blogging or are so focused that hardly anyone would be searching for them to begin with.

The conclusion has to be reached that Google does not favor blogs or wordpress in any way over traditional websites. In fact, based on the results you can say that it in fact favors regular websites.

Therefore using blogging software like wordpress to gain the benefit of ranking high in the search engine may just be a myth, unless you are writing about blogging itself.

This is not to say that there aren't other benefits to using software such as wordpress such as

ease of use
a good way to manage content
can start a site quickly

- but these results show that search engine optimization is not one of these benefits.

[SEO_Pro]

Thats very interesting results. I personally dont believe google favoures either of them.
Its going to be interesting what the other seo pros think about this post

[LIndaB]

One question I would have about these results are: what are the percentage of sites online that are blogs as compared to static sites? I suspect that it is a much lower percentage than static html sites, which would skew your results somewhat. Also, I think you would need to check out a lot more keywords in many different niches to come to a valid conclusion.

[Goatboy]

What is the overall ratio of blog-based sites to non-blog sites on the internet?

If there is a disproportionate number, for instance a ratio like 1000-to-1, then the results may be skewed in favor of non-blog sites simply by the sheer volume.

While the results are interesting, I am concerned that 7 searches may not be an adequately wide sample to determine what is taking place in the wider population.

[Marian Berghes]

What kinda gets me thinking from these results are not the number of blogs but their position on the serps...I expected to see more static websites because of their volume but I was expecting to see alot more blogs in 1-2-3 positions.

[primemarketingmind]

I believe blogs are better as long as they are created with word press and your key word research was done properly I have not have had a problem yet

[butters]

Originally Posted by Marian Berghes

What kinda gets me thinking from these results are not the number of blogs but their position on the serps...I expected to see more static websites because of their volume but I was expecting to see alot more blogs in 1-2-3 positions.

Why? Just to ask the question.

[VegasGreg]

A good breakdown of information, but your test is skewed.

You claim to be comparing WP to static sites, yet in your 1st example you mention Yahoo stores, a classified site, ebay and about.com. Last time I checked, those are not static by a long shot. They are constantly updating with new and dynamic content. And I venture to say that all those sites do have blogs on them as well (just not Wordpress.

So, if you were to really compare apples to apples, you will find that it doesn't matter if it is WP or anything else as a deciding factor, it has a lot to do with authority of the site (backlinks among other things) and fresh content.

The reason people claim WP is more liked by Google is because WP has built in gadgets to make it easier to ping (notify G of fresh content), add titles/descriptions and all those other seo goodies. Static HTML sites can still do all those other things, but usually require a few extra steps or services for the average user.

So to truly test your theory. Build 2 new sites from scratch. Add the exact same backlinks to each. Ping each of them at the same time you add new content. Add all the proper onsite seo features to each site. Etc... Then see who wins.

[Alexa Smith]

Since I know absolutely nothing about it, I'll give my opinion, too.

It has almost nothing to do with whether or not they're "blogs", per se.

It's about all the standard off-page SEO stuff, plus whether or not they're regularly updated web sites.

A blog is a web site. A blog can be regularly updated, or not regularly updated. A "static site" can be regularly updated just like a blog is.

All the standard blogging software these days has static page facilities. You can make a static site with blogging software. You can make a site that's updated once a day without it. It's almost a meaningless distinction.

That was my opinion, knowing nothing about it.

[fiero]

It's just an observation not necessarily cause and effect.

1. Google rank for relevancy not platform
2. There are themes or templates that make blog look like non-blog
3. Regardless of ranking, blog may get indexed faster because of the auto ping feature and easy rss feed submission.

[erosraino]

Google like free of cost distribution of information, thus it index blogs rather than sites.

[JohnMcCabe]

I think the results are interesting. I'm far from being an SEO "pro", but I'm not a fool, either.

What this particular test seems to indicate (indicate, not prove) is that having "Powered by WordPress" buried in the code somewhere is not the magic key to front page wonderland.

I know that when I'm searching, I really don't give a rat's behind what platform the page is constructed on. I want to know the answer to my question.

[N4PGW]

How do you determine if it is a 'blog'? do you check the software used to display the site. Even WP can look like a static html page.

[jamawebinc]

Let me make 2 clarifications -

1) I should not have used the word "static" in the original title for this thread. I tested blog sites, created with blog software such as wordpress, with non blog sites. I have corrected the title of the thread to reflect this.

The main purpose for this research was to put to the test the theory that blogs and blogging software are great for SEO. Just because this statement is repeated over and over again, I wanted to see some hard data to prove that it's true.

If it were true, blogs should dominate search result pages. This test showed, that does not happen.


2) - I determined what is a blog in 2 ways.

The first way is if a website is clearly a blog by observation - meaning it has the common elements of a blog like a content column and a sidebar with "recent posts", "archives", comments under the posts, etc or it clearly states that blog software was used to create the blog, whether it's wordpress, typepad, etc.

The second way I would determine if something is a blog is to look at the source code.

[dotcomdesigns]

Great post.

Anyone can determine this themselves. Just try some searches and see the results. Obviously searching for blogging will bring up blogs and searching for sites selling products tends to bring up non blogs. However static traditional html non blog sites dominate the search results.

A lot of us have jumped on the WordPress/blogging bandwagon, me included. Despite shelling out a fortune for Dreamweaver Studio 8 a couple of years back I never use it now because I moved over to WordPress. And I don't think I've had any greater success because I'm using WordPress. But it is a lot easier to use!!

I may well dust off the old Dreamweaver and see if I can one, remember to use it and 2, see if I can get a hand built a html site high on the serps again because I'm not convinced about all the hype around blogging.

Having said that Matt Cutts from Google tells us the way to go is WordPress, try searching Matt Cutts Wordcamp 2009 to see a great speech he made there about seo and WordPress.

[DogScout]

Dreamweaver is junk, IMO. Has bloated code worse than WP and DMCA 'phone home' spyware before being able to use it. (unless disabled).

As said, fresh content is more important than the brand or type of fresh content producer. (Shopping cart commenter or blog etc). That and the fact that the are so many more static sites that have longevity on their side really puts the basis of the test in question.

A better test would be to make a WP site and an exact duplicate HTML site and watch them as they rise, and if making a new post, adding a page to the HTML site with the same content at the same time.

[lexilexi]

Awesome news! I always did resent attempts to make me feel as though I had to start a blog otherwise I would be a nobody. I always liked that comment about blogging "Never before has so much been said by so many about so little."

[Sandor Verebi]

Originally Posted by fiero

It's just an observation not necessarily cause and effect.

1. Google rank for relevancy not platform
2. There are themes or templates that make blog look like non-blog
3. Regardless of ranking, blog may get indexed faster because of the auto ping feature and easy rss feed submission.

I have similar experiences, too.

[jamawebinc]

Some people have said that you have to take into account that there are so many more regular websites out there than blogs so the results would be skewed.

So just how many blogs are there?

- According to different reports -
In December of 2007 Technorati was tracking over 112 million blogs

Another report states that in September 2008 Technorati had indexed 133 million blogs - and Technorati themselves said in August , 2006 - the number of blogs doubles once every 6 1/2 months.

According to the TheBlogHerald.com in February of 2006 there were over 200 million blogs

So, with at least 200 million blogs out there, why don't they dominate search results in google?

Especially since the other prevailing thought is that google loves fresh content. Certainly most of these blogs are newer and fresher than the old non blog websites that do dominate the search results.

** An interesting side note **
When I google this: google loves wordpress

The #1 result is a squidoo lens. And at least 4 of the first 10 results are not wordpress blogs

[Alminc]

Nothing can beat highly optimized static HTML page
regarding the on-page optimization.

The main benefits of blogs are inbuilt rss and pinging features,
but in a pure on-page SEO contest the static HTML page is a winner.

Have a couple of SEOed static pages on top level AND blog in a subfolder,
and you can't lose.

[jasonmorgan]

The results show that Google favors non blog websites over blogs for it's search results.

I just wanted to point out that not all blogs are created equal. Many WP themes including the default them are horrible for SEO.

The benefit of a static HTML sits would be you have more control over the on-page SEO elements.

With that said, if you are able to apply correct SEO to a static html page you should also be able to tweak your WP themes to achieve the same results.

but all-in-all an interesting read.

[refernshare]

Hey Jamawebinc,

Thank you very much for digging deep into the subject. Myself, I had asked the same question over and over again. With your research, I am quite sure I can make my own conclusion which way to move forward.

[Daniel Harken]

I applaud your efforts. They weren't, however, a truly objective test. In order to do a valid test, you have to take a control group, and then look at a LOT of experimental groups. I think that's what vegasgreg was getting at.

You also need to understand that it's not so much that it's a blog, as it is that it's frequently updated. If you have a 'static' site, as it was put, you can still update it regularly and get crawled very frequently. That's been my experience, at least.

[Daniel Harken]

To clarify my post - the advantage of blogs is that they are perceived to be updated more often. The reality of it is that Google doesn't care what it is, it looks at how frequently it's updated. The perceived inherent value of a blog is useless. People THINK blogs are updated more often, so they assume Google thinks the same, but that's not the case. Google looks at how often it actually is updated, and adjusts accordingly.

[jamawebinc]

There also seems to be a prevailing opinion that google prefers fresh content. However, has a study with hard results been done on that? I'm not saying it's not true, but I haven't seen a test result on it.

I know that in my research, I saw many sites ranked very highly with copyrights on them that were years old.

Remember the point of this test was to simply see if the "common knowledge" statement that blog software like wordpress is great for getting good rankings in google.

Many people ask a question such as, "should I use an html editor or wordpress to make my website" and I have seen time and time again people recommend wordpress with one of the major benefits being that google loves wordpress and it will help your search engine rankings.

Based on this test result, it is not true.

[vision2000]

I also agree static html sites do better than blogs in the search engines. I have had both for several years..the static site content consistently ranks better
Read Create a Blog or Build a WebSite: Which is Best?

[tony-raymondo]

It's not so much a matter of "which does Google like more".

Its more of a matter of who's layout is optimized better. I have seen absolutely horrible Wordpress themes with bad SEO. And I've seen some with great SEO.

You can make a wordpress theme such that it will look EXACTLY like a "static" site. And no one would ever be able to know because - all google sees is the resultant HTML. So the act of using a CMS is not necessarily the culprit.

We should also note that the notion of using a CMS is still a pretty new concept for most people. Your results would be better if you would have put the Domain Age of the website next to the page rank.

I think we would see that the Wordpress sites are usually pretty new, and hence, usually have fewer backlinks.

The older "static" sites have usually been there a while. And hence, have more backlinks and more authority.

Another factor to note, however, is, all things being PRECISELY equal (and they never are), a static site will beat a wordpress site simply because a static site will load faster -- as it doesn't have to do any table lookup in the database - like wordpress does for each page.

[Lloyd Buchinski]

Originally Posted by DogScout

Dreamweaver is junk, IMO.

I enjoyed that, can I quote you on it?

I haven't used it but one thing that surprised me is that it is really difficult to get it to save code as UTF-8. One thread in the design section of Webhostingtalk had a guy mention that he puts in a few Japanese characters and comments them out of the code to force it to save as UTF-8.

Originally Posted by lexilexi

Awesome news! I always did resent attempts to make me feel as though I had to start a blog otherwise I would be a nobody. I always liked that comment about blogging "Never before has so much been said by so many about so little."

Reminds me of a cartoon where one dog is telling another "I had a blog, but I decided to go back to pointless incessant barking."

Originally Posted by tony-raymondo

I think we would see that the Wordpress sites are usually pretty new, and hence, usually have fewer backlinks.

The older "static" sites have usually been there a while. And hence, have more backlinks and more authority.

This was what I was wondering most about these results and you are the first person to mention it. Older sites have a huge advantage which doesn't seem to ever get mentioned to newbies (!) I suppose the only way you could compensate and even out the survey would be to just include sites since 2007 or something like that, and that would be a lot of work.

Originally Posted by tony-raymondo

Another factor to note, however, is, all things being PRECISELY equal (and they never are), a static site will beat a wordpress site simply because a static site will load faster -- as it doesn't have to do any table lookup in the database - like wordpress does for each page.

I read this lately somewhere else. I was on dial up for years and really appreciate light sites. Hate wasting anything even if it as cheap and common as bandwidth.

If that is true that puts blogs at least at a small disadvantage. (To go along with some of their advantages.) Does anyone know any references to this? Is it really true?

PS jamawebinc, thought I'd add a thank you for a 'think for yourself' type of post. It's just a coincidence that it happens to go along with what I think (for myself). I also noticed you were polite enough to repeat yourself for someone, etc. Enjoyed the attitude.

best wishes

And another edit. Found the Google source of the information about ranking sites by load time.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...webmaster.html

That does mean blogs take a big heavy hit in rankings, right?

[tony-raymondo]

Originally Posted by Lloyd Buchinski

load times...If that is true that puts blogs at least at a small disadvantage. Does anyone know any references to this? Is it really true?

Google has said the 'quality of the interface' is a factor in the sauce.

this issue also comes up for the PPC people and their quality scores.

most likley it's probably not a big issue and really only comes in to play when people load their websites with HUGE digital camera photography - that they didnt take the time to downsample.

Also, i've noticed that even most photoshop users do not understand the importance of the SAVE FOR WEB function in photoshop.

simply by using this function, I see lots of websites that could cut their load times in half.

[tjcocker]

Learning HTML is not hard and can be done in just a few days. It's not some mystical alien language only able to be learned by the chosen one. (ok, I saw Avatar 3D) Go to w3schools and go through their HTML tutorial. While you're at it, do the others. Then move on to other websites, absorbing knowledge like a pack of locusts...

I never update my static HTML pages and routinely outrank wordpress and other blog sites for product niches. It's not hard to highly optimize, and my load times are fast due to having as little code as needed. In the last update I got 2 pr4s and 2 pr3s, a pr2, and a bunch of my 0s were upped to 1s. Just write informative, grammatically correct, engaging, creative, and highly optimized content then backlink it.

[CANIMBILL]

I have been using Blogger for several blogs and I notice it isn't happy with me placing a line of keyword text in the html. Could that be a reason why blogs don't rank as high for a given keyword? Other sites are loaded with keywords.

b.

[jamawebinc]

Originally Posted by vision2000

I also agree static html sites do better than blogs in the search engines. I have had both for several years..the static site content consistently ranks better
Read Create a Blog or Build a WebSite: Which is Best?

I first had this thread title "blogs or static pages" which really was not what I was testing so I changed it to blogs vs. non blogs.

Although I didn't put any numbers to it, I saw plenty of static html pages that were years old rank very well - better than newer wordpress blogs.

[TheAngelGuy]

Thanks very much.

This REALLY helped to solidigy a decision I was contemplating AWAY from a static HTML site (I'm a really good HTML coder).

Could be that some of the negative feedback here (don't mean to ruffle any feathers) is from people who don't WANT the resulsts to show as they did. That's at least the vibe I got from more than one "your results are skewed" reply.

[jamawebinc]

A couple of followup thoughts.

Just by making a few observations and search trials or yourself , many blogs with a lot of traffic are blogs about - blogging.

You have to remember that most people spend time in niches other than internet marketing.

Go do some searches for different topics. Try to step back and observe yourself when you are just doing a search that has nothing to do with internet marketing and you will find search engine results void of blogs.

You can go do it for yourself right now in about 60 seconds.

[Oling]

You have done a great experiment!
But there is so much to digest when it comes to which does Big G prefers to rank first and in the first examples, the names are hard to beat. eBay, classifieds, about.com. Most if not all these static sites have a blog on them and that can power them more into the rankings.

It's been great to see your experiment and I now I have a bit of concern about my blogs .... Ahhhh.......... I don't know if I have to change strategies..

Thanks

[Preben Frenning]

Many opinions on this here, and I'll first add that I'm at work, so I haven't read all replies.

Here are my main thoughts though:

The test is far from thorough enough to give any usable results.
Also, in the IM niche especially, many people know how to build backlinks, so it doesn't matter if it's a blog or a static html site.

I would think there are many reasons for why you saw most non-wordpress sites. (I'll refer to them as non-wordpress sites, as many of them are parasite hosting sites as well as many of them use a CMS)

One of them being the age of the sites. Did you check this?
Google often prefers old "established" content over new. This being because of old and established backlinks as well. It can be the ugliest site you have ever seen, but it can still rank high.

Like others have stated earlier, there are more "other" sites than wordpress sites on the web now.

Also, parasite hosting sites uses CMS, and are usually quite established sites in the eyes of google. Much for being updated very often, as they get new users, and existing users update their content.

So comparing established parasite hosting sites with stand-alone wordpress sites won't go. And also, like others have mentioned, the parasite hosting sites have blogs too.

But it's still little point in saying wordpress is better for SEO all in all, as the same things can be done to a static html site as well, apart from the fact that wordpress creates a lot more pages on your site automatically than a static site would. (Ex. tags,categories,comments etc.)

This is also one of the reasons for why people are saying google loves wordpress. - They get visitors from google to pages wordpress have automatically created, meaning you "get another chance" of ranking your wordpress blog, as you get more pages than you manually create.

Also, all pages in wordpress has RSS feeds. Comments, categories,posts,tags etc.
So if you have a site with lots of content, it gives you the option to do some "RSS spamming" as all of the feeds you submit will be of decent value for backlinks and content.

Also, the way wordpress builds intern links is very efficient, without me having time to explain why right now.

And in terms of value, you are able to create by far more sites using wordpress, than with a normal html-builder, as well as it's easier to update and add functions to. Not to mention the learning curve. - So earnings compared to the time you spend creating the site is better with wordpress. Though off-topic, I'd still say it counts, as I'm sure people will read this thread to decide whether to use wordpress or not.

Another factor of wordpress sites, is the theme, and how clean it is coded. (Regarding CSS for example)

Some themes are crap, and others are awesome.

To take an example, my dj website (Which happens to be a wordpress blog) is ranking like crazy for a couple of keywords with barely any effort from my part. (It's euphoricvibes.com btw)

I did my usual on-page optimization, and I have submitted RSS feeds and pinged the site. I think that's it. (Also, no keyword and competition research)

Try searching for "tech house tracklist" in google.
26,400,000 results, and I'm 5.th.

Also: progressive tracklist (9.th position, 17mill results)
And best of all: tech house track list (43,7 MILL, and I have 4.th and 5.th position)

The site only has a few posts and pages and barely any promo. (The searches was made without quotes btw.)

I'm pretty sure that would never have happened if I built it as a static html site.

And to answer to some people in this thread:

@VegasGreg - Right on!

@dotcomdesigns - Good point. I'd rather listen to Matt Cutts than the results of a tiny test here.

@jamawebinc - "So, with at least 200 million blogs out there, why don't they dominate search results in google?"

Because:

1. Not all blogs are wordpress
2. Few people know SEO (Of those 200mill)
3. Many of them have junk content
4. Many of them have duplicate content, and are autogenerated
4. Many of them are about nothing. Ex.: "What I did today"

@Alminc - True. If you know your SEO, and are prepared to
do the extra work, I would believe a static site is best.

I hope this helps for some!

Regards,
Preben

[Preben Frenning]

Wow, that was a massive post!
Sorry for that , I hope it's of use to someone.

[WareTime]

Originally Posted by Goatboy

I am concerned that 7 searches may not be an adequately wide sample to determine what is taking place in the wider population.

I do it on a niche by niche basis. If the top sites are not blogs, I don't build a blog.

I don't build many blogs.

[jasonmorgan]

Try searching for "tech house tracklist" in google.
26,400,000 results, and I'm 5.th.

Also: progressive tracklist (9.th position, 17mill results)
And best of all: tech house track list (43,7 MILL, and I have 4.th and 5.th position)

not to burst your bubble but here is your actual competition.

353 for tech house tracklist
397 for progressive tracklist
405 for tech house track list

you're using inaccurate methods of determining your keyword competition.

[euhlir]

Wordpress does give good optimization, but any site with thousands of backlinks even slightly optimized will usually outrank another site with no backlinks.

[Preben Frenning]

@jasonmorgan - How did you get those numbers?

When doing competition analysis and determining ranking possibilities I use allintitle.
So results in google with allintitle: (as in REAL competition)
tech house tracklist - 851. 1.st and 2.nd position.
progressive tracklist - 500 5.th position.
tech house track list - 316 None. - Tracklist is not a split word.

But that wasn't really the point, though I'd still say it's good compared to the competition since I didn't promote it.

Also, competition analysis can be done in many ways, although I think allintitle gives the best indication.

Still, you got me curious. How did you get those numbers?

[jasonmorgan]

set your google settings to show 100 results per page and then click on page 10... you'll see that google will only return those numbers.

the truth is google will only return 1,000 results for any search term no matter what it is.

you're max competition for any keyword is at the most 1,000 pages.

the larger number google returns are pages that might have certain criteria on the page that match your search but google doesn't feel those pages are important or relevant and has trapped them in the supplemental results.

this doesn't diminish you're rankings in any way, you are still ranking ahead of a couple hundred other pages so you are doing something right.

the whole quotes, no quotes, allintitle can be very misleading and often times can turn someone away from a keyword that is very much within their reach.

my eyeballs are burning so here is a video that explains most of the concept from a keyword research pov 'Secret' Keyword Research Tip - This is VERY Eye Opening!

I do things slightly different but following this method will lead you to smarter keyword research.

[WareTime]

Originally Posted by jasonmorgan

the truth is google will only return 1,000 results for any search term no matter what it is.

you're max competition for any keyword is at the most 1,000 pages.

Yes and no in a way. No in that with Google shoveling personalized results at us. The 1000 pages may differ in content and order, so there are more than 1000 sites that could show in the results overall, but only in 1000 site increments per anyone's search as you say Jason.

It's likely that the top sites are the top sites with not much change in the top 25 sites from one person's search to the next.

[Mike Anthony]

I'm going to try this another way.

How many times does the book Moby Dick contain the word fish?


Besides the author who else was competing for the word fish?

Answer - no one.


The amount of times a word or phrase comes back HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH COMPETITION FOR THAT WORD. You can type in BOB and get million of pages but it doesn't mean million of people want to rank for the word Bob. It just telling you how many results are found in the index.

YOU can be number one for many terms as i proved here


How can I compete against 10 million other pages? Easy

[Mike Anthony]

There one wrinkle to this blog debate and a reason I think that HTML pages have a HUGE advantage over Blogs but its not related to on page SEO directly.

Blogs are for the most part cumbersome to breakout of the box design wise and harder to add features to. Sites with more features tend to attract and keep visitors and get backlinks. You can add all kinds of features and layouts that are appealing to customers/visitors but try and add a fairly standard piece of ajax to a wordpress page can give you headaches.

[Preben Frenning]

We're getting a bit off-topic here... This thread is about wordpress sites vs. other sites in terms of SEO, not keyword research/competition analysis etc.

As for me, and my first points, I never mentioned competing sites etc. I showed it as it was - x million results without quotes.

I know how to do keyword research and competition analysis, and that was not it. It was just a vague argument for the sake of wordpress with SEO. Point being I got my rarely-updated-with-very-little-content-dj-websiteblog ranked decently.

Barely any promo/linkbuilding etc, and 1.st+2.nd spot in google for a keyword phrase with 849 competitors. (If they have the entire sentence in their title, I'd call them competitors since they have a post/page/thread with the same in the title)

I'd call that a vote for wordpress for SEO!

[aramyus]

[quote]what are the percentage of sites online that are blogs as compared to static sites? I suspect that it is a much lower percentage than static html sites[/quote



Although I have no statistics, I am under the impression that 90% of sites are blogs and that, out of these 90% blogs, perhaps 90% are spammy or semi-spammy. That is a percentage in numbers, not a percentage of google SERP.

I have also the vague impression that a webmaster will link less easily to a blog than a non-blog. Personally, I will very rarely link to a blog unless it's outstanding, perhaps because I associate blogs with spam or at least to lack of real interest or volatile content.

Blogs used to rank very easily because of their dense internal linking structure. That does not seem to be the case anymore.

If I look at my own sites, I can see clearly that my non-blogs sites perform better and more permanently than my blogs. Even my WP sites who have only wp-pages seem to have some disadvantage.

That's purely intuitive.

[aramyus]

what are the percentage of sites online that are blogs as compared to static sites? I suspect that it is a much lower percentage than static html sites

Although I have no statistics, I am under the impression that 90% of sites are blogs and that, out of these 90% blogs, perhaps 90% are spammy or semi-spammy. That is a percentage in numbers, not a percentage of google SERP.

I have also the vague impression that a webmaster will link less easily to a blog than a non-blog. Personally, I will very rarely link to a blog unless it's outstanding, perhaps because I associate blogs with spam or at least to lack of real interest or volatile content.

Blogs used to rank very easily because of their dense internal linking structure. That does not seem to be the case anymore.

If I look at my own sites, I can see clearly that my non-blogs sites perform better and more permanently than my blogs. Even my WP sites who have only wp-pages seem to have some disadvantage.

That's purely intuitive.

[tonygreg]

Google likes blogs then static sites due to its SEO frindly structure. That's why I can say Blogs are more profitable.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Preben Frenning

Barely any promo/linkbuilding etc, and 1.st+2.nd spot in google for a keyword phrase with 849 competitors. (If they have the entire sentence in their title, I'd call them competitors since they have a post/page/thread with the same in the title)

I'd call that a vote for wordpress for SEO!

I'd call that horrible analysis and a terribly faulty conclusion. Why?

tech house track list - December - Global searches = 58

This IS a VERY low competition keyword and doesn't mean a thing and shouldn't be used for drawing any conclusion. Your other result is just a variant on spacing and the other example is relatively low as well. I'm not making the issue of competition a point - You are and I am merely pointing out that it isn't a good point by the numbers. Although I think Wordpress is solid for SEO (HTML as well) its pretty easy to rank for sites very few people search for. Sorry hundreds of people are not competing very hard to get less than two visits per day. Thats not how things work.

Jason was right to point out competition issues. Actually they are worse than he let on. Its in the readers interest to point it out . Its not a personal attack. I'm happy that you are happy but its not something that can be used as a point.