Wordpress vs. Static Page sites?

by mooble
11 replies
  • SEO
  • |
I have a lot of web sites i've built over the months and they are doing pretty well. I use static page web sites and i'm wondering if i'm missing out on anything in terms of SEO value? As long as i cover all the on page SEO i should do just as well as a wordpress site, right? The reason i like static pages so much is they are easy to copy over and make other sites and keep things exactly how i want them with minimal effort. Is this ultimately just a preference issue? Or is one better than the other in some way?
#page #pages #sites #static #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author guitarjosh
    Originally Posted by mooble View Post

    I have a lot of web sites i've built over the months and they are doing pretty well. I use static page web sites and i'm wondering if i'm missing out on anything in terms of SEO value? As long as i cover all the on page SEO i should do just as well as a wordpress site, right? The reason i like static pages so much is they are easy to copy over and make other sites and keep things exactly how i want them with minimal effort. Is this ultimately just a preference issue? Or is one better than the other in some way?
    I personally think that non wordpress sites do much better in the serps. What you said was exactly the reason I ditched wordpress and started creating everything out of php/mysql. My sites are as lightweight as can be.. and they can be crawled as fast as can be imagined. Keep in mind that the crawler is just a text search engine so the less crap you have on your pages/site, the better the bot can go through it. So long as your on page SEO is up to par, no problems.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3802449].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author MrDay
    I doubt there's much difference between the two.

    But static site doing better than WP site in the serp's, I don't think so.
    Signature

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3802953].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author guitarjosh
      Originally Posted by MrDay View Post

      I doubt there's much difference between the two.

      But static site doing better than WP site in the serp's, I don't think so.
      If you're blogging on the wp site, it will obviously do better than a static page site. But, apples to apples, if both sites are thrown up and truly static.. as in no ongoing content for either, both will do the same.. which is poor.

      If you're updating both with dynamic content, I'll bet money the non-wp site will render faster if the on-page seo is up to par.. which would logically conclude that a text bot can crawl it faster. Google has publicly stated they crawl deeper when the site is faster (hosting and on page seo) so that's no secret.

      Ultimately though, all things equal, not likely to be much of a difference.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3803037].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author mrfusion
        There are cache plugins that can greatly speed up WP sites. Ever heard the phrase "digg-proof"? Aside from your cache plugin checking itself to see if it's enabled, there wouldn't be any other DB queries made if a local cache copy of a page was available, working just like a static site.

        Unless you can replicate the awesome SEO of WP, I wouldn't go with static.
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3803385].message }}
        • Profile picture of the author jefkas
          As a pretty active php developer, I can assure you that there's nothing that can't be done via MySQL query cache that is done through wordpress, which is after all.. run on a MySQL database. Another problem with wordpress are the vast amount of inefficient statements by the many different plugins which slow down performance (greatly) and in some cases render cache plugins completely useless without most bloggers being any the wiser. I've seen far too many that leave me shaking my head in wonder.

          However, it sounds to me like the OP is asking about a purely static site with no database behind it. In this case, nothing will run as fast as static as there's never a call to the database. From an SEO perspective, it's the best solution for a site with no back end and likely the best method for the OP of this thread. Google certainly won't penalize an all static site, if that's the question.
          {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3803758].message }}
          • Profile picture of the author mooble
            Originally Posted by jefkas View Post

            As a pretty active php developer, I can assure you that there's nothing that can't be done via MySQL query cache that is done through wordpress, which is after all.. run on a MySQL database. Another problem with wordpress are the vast amount of inefficient statements by the many different plugins which slow down performance (greatly) and in some cases render cache plugins completely useless without most bloggers being any the wiser. I've seen far too many that leave me shaking my head in wonder.

            However, it sounds to me like the OP is asking about a purely static site with no database behind it. In this case, nothing will run as fast as static as there's never a call to the database. From an SEO perspective, it's the best solution for a site with no back end and likely the best method for the OP of this thread. Google certainly won't penalize an all static site, if that's the question.
            You answered my question fully, and then some. Thanks very much this response!
            {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3804142].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author zvendor
    I think the solution is to use wordpress but for your static pages of your sites us a custom page template so that your content is not called in with the loop instead your content is in the template file. Then for your blog posts and dynamic content take advantage of the features of wordpress. The big benefit of wordpress is the many dynamic hooks you can use to display and link your content together easily so that you can inevitably post more content more often then you could with a static site. I still like wordpress, but I would defiantly use a custom theme and custom page templates.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3803798].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author soulpower
    i do the same with wordpress sites. You can make a database that has all the values you want across all your sites and just upload that db every time
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3803860].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author NastyBlast
    I think people put WordPress on way too high of a pedestal. It's a blogging software and even though it does things well for Seo... It's still limited to a blog structure which isn't very scalable. In fact it's not scalable and all you can't grow beyond the templates into your own custom navigation.

    If you're dealing with many sites you need to start thinking about content management and how you're going to deal with the manage that amount of sites as you may want to change things in the future.

    I'm a programmer and I use a database to build large sites that are static HTML files. But I have easy control over them because they originate in database and I'm not manually adjusting them. So I can deploy things in static HTML files in a very efficient way.

    It sounds like you are doing things in a manual way and eventually you will come to a point where it's taking a lot of effort to maintain your network.

    So my suggestion would be to find some type of system WordPress or not in which you can manage all these sites. You need to make that decision now for overhead time becomes a problem for you
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3804272].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author guitarjosh
      Originally Posted by NastyBlast View Post

      I think people put WordPress on way too high of a pedestal. It's a blogging software and even though it does things well for Seo... It's still limited to a blog structure which isn't very scalable. In fact it's not scalable and all you can't grow beyond the templates into your own custom navigation.

      If you're dealing with many sites you need to start thinking about content management and how you're going to deal with the manage that amount of sites as you may want to change things in the future.

      I'm a programmer and I use a database to build large sites that are static HTML files. But I have easy control over them because they originate in database and I'm not manually adjusting them. So I can deploy things in static HTML files in a very efficient way.

      It sounds like you are doing things in a manual way and eventually you will come to a point where it's taking a lot of effort to maintain your network.

      So my suggestion would be to find some type of system WordPress or not in which you can manage all these sites. You need to make that decision now for overhead time becomes a problem for you
      100% agree... as do most programmers. I obviously understand why so many use it. It's easy, but as a programmer, I learned the of the many shortcomings years ago and rarely use wp.

      As another poster above said though... It's easy enough to save your database and use it over and over again. A couple years ago, I used wp to try out wprobot3 and just simply created one database that had all my plugins configured and everything set, exported it and imported it back up for every new site. There was 1 table to go change the values in after that I believe to make the site functional. It was a very quick and easy process.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3806589].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author momentumrider
    mooble,

    Whenever 2 systems are compared to each other there will always be people on both side, wont there?

    Both html sites and wordpress based sites can be ranked in the SERPs, no question about it. The question is how soon do you want to rank your site? I personally prefer wordpress for building authority sites and review sites, because it ranks faster in Google, based on my experience.

    As long as you're achieving good results then using either static html sites or wordpress based sites becomes a matter of preference.


    Regards,
    Jon
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3804583].message }}

Trending Topics