Yesterday we took a detailed look at whether having lots of links from templates can help companies to rank well in the search engines. The answer was "yes" in MSN, but generally "no" in Google and Yahoo.
Today we’re going to take the research one step further and look and links from Joomla components.
The Hypothesis
Component developers who distribute their software with a link back to their own site should be able to accumulate 100s and 1000s of links, enough to rank highly for key searchwords.
The Research
First things first, I needed to study the top ten rankings. I chose to look at one of the most important keyphrases of all: "Joomla Components".
Websites have a check mark beside them if they distribute components with links back to them.
{moschart id=15}
The Main Conclusion
Most of the major companies who distribute Joomla component with links are either not listed here or barely rank well. Less than half the sites have incoming links from components on other people sites.
Component links work much better in MSN than in Google or Yahoo. In Google and Yahoo we can conclude that no matter how many links you have, they are probably not going to enable you to rank well.
There’s no reason for component developers to remove these links from their products, because they may well provide advertising and lead people back to their site, but developers should be aware that they’ll gain little SEO benefit.
Other Thoughts
- The MSN results are really unsatisfying. The MSN top ten includes 4 results from one site, a junk site built by Siteground and Extensions.joomla.org (where you’ll find the largest number of components) is only at #10. Its no wonder MSN is losing market share.
- JoomlaResource.com is far and away the best ranking site. Why this happens is still a mystery to me. It has few incoming links, is rarely updated and is selling a large number of text links. If you can work it out, I’ve love to hear from you!
- A general download site can out-rank commercial sites that have more visitors and more links. This is especially true in Google. On the other hand, Yahoo and MSN show more commercial results.