I also find this with my sites too.

As long as the html site is well organised and has easy an navigational layout it will certainly outperform a wordpress blog.

My first thought is always html unless there is a very good reason to use wordpress. e.g a true blog with followers and daily posts.

Kenj

I think from the SEO perspective, html pages probably perform better. But from the maintenance perspective, it's easier to maintain with wordpress.

Personally, I only use wordpress for blogging. For most of my websites, I created myself using cakephp.

Too many plug-ins will slow WP down. That alone can be a killer. If WP is used for a static non-updated daily or regularly CMS, it should perform no better than a non-up-dated HTML site; and lots of gunk to make it perform worse.

WP is easier, however to actually use IF you are adding content regularly. If you use an HTML site, add content often and rebuild the sitemap, you are likely using far less code that a plug-in heavy WP install or even one with few plug-ins. It should load twice as fast, (unless you use a 2004 version of Dreamweaver that adds 2 pages of code just for the nav bar). Takes longer to add pages though.

& as Istvan pointed out, WP opens lots of opportunities to screw the pooch.

After I find a stable version, I stop updating. Same with forums. Had one stable version run great for 8 years. Never saw a reason to upgrade for one little bell or whistle. I will go to WP3.01 and watch how stable it stays, but barring a security hole I cannot plug myself, I will probably stay with that as it looks pretty stable... at least at this point.

(I am resisting the temptation to SSL the whole thing. Lol.)

I use homestead site builder myself and my sites rank fine.

I find html pages out rank Wordpress blogs. But have to say those wordpress does make it pretty easy to set up a niche quickly.

Regards,
Robert

Sorry, I must be confused.

Last time I checked, Wordpress generates HTML code that is as simple or complex as the site designer wants it to be -- just like Dreamweaver. And often WAY LESS complex than FrontPage produces.

HTML is HTML. That's not what's causing a difference in rankings.

You can use a theme in Wordpress that will generate pages virtually indistinguishable from something you'd get from a simple hand-made HTML page. That's not why people use Wordpress, tho.

Rather than ranting on with unfounded opinions about what may or may not be the cause, how about somebody post some metrics that compares the internal SEO metrics of each of these sites. I'd bet the Wordpress site simply hasn't got as much "SEO garnish" on its pages.

Is that the fault of using Wordpress?

SHOW US AN APPLES-TO-APPLES COMPARISON! Nothing here is more than just random thoughts and opinions.

Well, I think that it has nothing to do with Wordpress or static HTML sites. Nobody ever told that Wordpress ranks better just because it is Wordpress. What most people mean is that Wordpress is easier to construct to get better rankings.

My experience shows that it all depends how you structure your site and how you construct the settings of your Wordpress blog.

Somebody told here about permalinks - well, I completely agree, it is one of the points in checklist you should get right, if you want to rank higher and outperform your competition.

[DELETED]

Don't you find it much harder to create navigation and menus on HTML sites? If a site is 100 pages+ Wordpress makes it easier to set links for navigation making the management a lot easier. Has anyone got any fast way of doing this with HTML?

BINGO...I have been seeing this same result for a long time, myself.

Most marketers are happy that WP blogs get indexed so fast or even ranked so quickly, or are easier to add content to, but over time, I see a very different result.

My simple html sites HOLD rankings much better. Regardless of the niche I still find this to be true.
_____
Bruce

from my personal opinion, there is no difference in ranking, it all matters on the content as well as the backlinks... but when it comes to maintenance and flipping the site, it will make a huge difference...

I think if you built exactly the same backlinks to both html and WP pages, then the html pages would rank slightly higher.

However what I like about blogs is that once you have some authority, any new pages you create will be indexed quickly and start picking up some search engine traffic, whereas the same cannot always be said about any new html pages you create. Sometimes you have to send them a lot of new backlinks just to get them noticed by the search engines.

I think it all depends on how you manage your static HTML site but for me WordPress is the best for SEO, that’s simple! Just because it is easier to modify, manage and build anything with it. WordPress changed my way to work on the internet.

97% of my sites are static html sites and they do extremely well as long as I build them right. I've never really been a big fan of Wordpress but do understand why other marketers like it so much.

Part of my reluctance to switch to it is because I truly prefer working with html code instead of trying to optimize a blog with plug-ins and such.

Glad to see you validate what I was also seeing with my own sites.

Respectfully,
Tim

Basically wordpress outputs HTML too.
Just you can't change HTML easily especially if you dont know much about HTML code.
You can use wordpress to generate the page first, save the page as HTML, upload it, whats the difference?

Here's a theory:
WP sites are notoriously slow. Especially when you load it with (poorly written) plug-ins. Google rewards fast sites. Raw HTML/custom php is fast. Could that have anything to do with it?

If you aren't using caching on your WP sites, then you definitely should. This reduces the overheads of PHP processing and database calls.

It pretty much makes it a true HTML to HTML comparison.

Surprisingly...

What I read today is totally the opposite of the majority voice some months ago..

Hmm.. lazy to dig that old thread.. but just surprised with the opinion this time.

I have wondered the same, i used to hand code my sites but the easiness of one-click wordpress setups with fantastico was to much of a lure LOL

The best program i have found for html sites is xsitepro, it has options for everything and is pretty light on the code output.

cheers

Graham

to be honest it doesn't matter, WP or HTML or Joomla or Movable Type - just stick to basic rules: 1. good text formating (Title, H1, H2 etc.) 2. get links 3. make good content.

as per I am concerned, for me wordpress works better, they index faster and are friendly with search engines.

If I want to add some new feature in one or two clicks I can search a database for the latest free plugins (most have been rated and tested)
With rssfeeds I can tell hundreds of agregators I have updated my content instantly.
Using onlywire and ping.fm the whole world is going to know I have fresh content.
I can instantly tell socialbookmaking sites how clever I am.
The list goes on and on.
I used html for 10 years I find it much easier and also faster to rank top of google using a blog because of all this leverage.

I still love HTML. Though, for my clients I usually build Wordpress sites. (It's just much easier for them to manage.)

If you're creating a super targeted, small niche site, nothing beats HTML IMO. Target your keywords, optimize the crap out of it, add a few new pages a week, and do some basic SEO.

And I agree with the posters that said speed is essential. I've found this to be true, too. My mini HTML sites load fast as heck and always seem to rank higher than bloated WP sites.

Could it just be a coincidence? Who knows.

Have you tried to use clean and simple WP theme + minimal plugins + remove WP footprints + use example.com/page-title.html permalink structure??
I've tried this myself for many sites and it works like charm! its almost equal to static HTML sites in both ranking and speed, give this strategy a try and see the results yourself

As other people wrote here, comparing wordpress with html is like comparing apples and oranges.

HTML is the language, wordpress is a platform that produces html templates. For the search engines there is NO difference at all.

The thing that makes the wordpress, in some cases, better is the ease of maintain, the out-of-the-box, permalinks, seo plugins etc. Things that makes easier for everyone to create a seo-optimized website, without any knowledge.

But all these generate also some cons for the wordpress side. Many database calls, includes of many different files, a huge pile of javascripts etc. making the site load quite slow. And load speed is something you have to consider when we talk about search engines and especially google.

Wordpress sites are not stable in terms of ranking. Its easy to get ranking with wordpress site but its quite hard to maintain ranking

There is no doubt that if you aren't careful and use the wrong theme - or one that is configured 'badly' then Wordpress can cause some SEO issues. On the other hand, with a well-crafted theme and the right plug-ins you can create Wordpress based sites that will rank very well. I don't think there is a single 'correct' answer to this debate I'm afraid and the choice between static HTML and Wordpress should largely come down to what sort of site you want to create. As with most options, there are pros and cons.

I think Google adds an extra criteria of timeliness to WP blogs that they don't for static html pages. SO if your blog is about current issues, then WP is probably better. But for nor-current subjects, html keeps its rank better. Anyway, this is something that I've personally observed.

I have less than a dozen sites. Half are html built with dreamweaver, other half is wordpress. While I am proficient at dreamweaver, the process of setting up templates, customizing CSS, setting up menus, setting up php includes, manually creating htaccess files, and monkeying around with headers and logos is a lot of work.

Wordpress is so much more plug and play that it's faster to go from domain acquistion to functional website than with the dreamweaver sites.

The reason I prefer html only sites over wordpress is because I want to avoid the extra load of the mysql databases that wordpress requires. I like to use the cheapo hosts and I have noticed that the mysql databases are the real bottleneck causing my wordpress sites to load slowly.


One of my html sites is over 300 pages and I also like the security of knowing that there is no mysql database to be hacked and tables dropped by some script kiddies looking to destroy sites for kicks.

I have not noticed that my html sites are better in the serps than wordpress sites.

Well my main site are static pages... the other is a wordpress. My joomla has better ranking than my wordpress but sadly after the Google Panda update last January I drop in ranking from #1 to 3 sometimes #6 and back to #3.. It's really annoying..

If you need to update with new material frequently then choose wp, but it's just a simple information page you might as well use static html. One should not forget the safety aspect, if you make a blog for a company that forgets to update. Then the blog sooner or later be hacked. However, one can always use the "automatic update" plugin, it allows your wp blogs updated automatically.

Also saw a static html page ranking ridiculously high, comparing to more complex cms websites, but can't tell about wordpress particularly.
Maybe the problem of WP is that is comes with too many features, and especially links.
For example, "arhives", "caterogies", "comments", "powered by", "author credits", "follow us on facebook" - all these links can theoretically steal you authority to be distributed where you wanted it less. In addition all kinds of widgets and, likes and share buttons also count as outbound links, that makes page authority flowing off your site away. With static html you would never bother with all these trifles, and the simplicity could result to a better structure and authority flow. Have you thought of about that?

From my view, I would say wordpress is easy to work with for the people with less web designing and coding skills. It is easy to do any required changes than HTML.