SEO Competition

Our Drupal vs WordPress vs Jooomla search engine test has been running our for six months now.

If we’re going to get any conclusions at all, then they should be emerging by now. Let’s see what’s up:

Continue reading “June Update to Search Engine Optimization Test”

As reported in earlier posts (launch post, first update and second update) we’re running a test comparing the search engine optimization capabilites of Joomla, Drupal and WordPress.  We created three sites, Jabalpur.net.in (WordPress) Amritsar.net.in (Drupal) and Vadodara.net.in (Joomla). Each website was created with a similar amount of content, similar Overture results and a similar domain name.

Within two weeks the WordPress site was so far ahead that it looked as if they competition was over. Slowly however, Drupal and Joomla have recovered until they now lead the pack. The Joomla site now has 5 top ten rankings in every search engine that we’re following and the Drupal site continues to climb, only in second place by a small amount.

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OK, Cool…But what does this mean in the real world?

 

SEORefugee.com has a post discussing how irregular updates may be more damaging to your search engine ranking than never posting at all. By looking at Google’s Patent Application, he summises that Google makes a decision about your site….

• Is it a blog? If so, we’ll expect it to be updated regularly
• Is it a corporate website? If so, we can expect it to remain relatively unchanged

Basically, Google is asking you to decide what kind of site you want to be and then to walk the walk. If run a blog that used to be updated every day, but now hasn’t seen fresh content two months, why should Google rank you? Why should searchers have to wade through months-old blog posts?

What is the one of the easiest ways Google can determine what kind of site you’re running? Your software. If you install a WordPress site you are telling Google that you’re starting a blog and that it will be updated regularly. If you install Joomla or Drupal, Google has no such expectations. Maybe that is why WordPress started so strongly, but has since fallen behind. If you don’t meet expectations, you will be penalised.

 

Where next for our SEO tests?

We’d like to pick your brains. This time next month, we’re going to launch another SEO test to run alongside this one.

Hopefully this new test will be bigger, better and more accurate. How should we do this? We’re interested in testing the SEO capabilities of Open Source websites. How can we improve on this first small-scale test?

• Should we add an HTML site for comparison purposes (a control sample) ?
• Should we build sites focusing on a more competitive topic or less?
• Are there errors in this current test that we need to corrrect?

All opinions welcome….

As reported in earlier posts (launch post and first update) we’re running a test comparing the search engine optimization capabilites of Joomla, Drupal and WordPress. 

We created three sites, Jabalpur.net.in (WordPress) Amritsar.net.in (Drupal) and Vadodara.net.in (Joomla). Each website was created with a similar amount of content, similar Overture results and a similar domain name.

Within two weeks the WordPress site was so far ahead that it looked as if they competition was over. Slowly however, Drupal and Joomla have recovered until they now lead the pack. The Joomla site is now #1 for 6 of its 9 keywords in Yahoo India and the Drupal site has two top-10 rankings in every search engine we measure except for Yahoo.

All of this makes me wonder – can and do search engines distinguish between different forms of software? Does Google penalize a blog (WordPress) site if it is not updated in two months, whereas it doesn’t expect such frequent updates from a CMS (Drupal and Joomla)?

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After just a month, our Search Engine Optimization test is already producing some really interesting results.

Our WordPress test site already has a sizeable lead with Drupal in second place and Joomla quite a way behind. On the most important ranking (top ten rankings in Google), the WordPress site is twice as successful as Drupal and three times more so than Joomla.

The overall score is calculated using WebCEO, and is based upon a website’s top-5, top-10, top-20, top-30 rankings. 

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So, is this a fluke so far?

Yes – Jabalpur has fewer results in Google than either of the other two cities which means it may be easier for it to rank more highly. This may help explain Jabalpur’s low number of visits despite it’s high rankings.

 

Yes – As these sites only have 8 pages each, the success or failure of just one page can make a big difference.

 

Yes – Its too early to produce real results. MSN and Yahoo have not begun to rank the sites yet.

No – We ran WordPress and Drupal out-of-the-box but added an extra search engine-friendly URL component to Joomla. The results for Joomla might have been even lower had we truly used it out-of-the-box or with the default search engine-friendly URLs.

 

No – We ran two more sites, one in WordPress and another in Joomla. The results were very similar.

 

No – Jabalpur actually had a much larger lead early on. After two weeks the results were even further apart than they were after four weeks.  Does Google perhaps realise the difference between software designed for a blog and software designed for a CMS, and then punish the blog if it is not regularly update? We shall see in the coming months…

 

• As promised we will shortly be adding a Drupal 5.0 site and also a Joomla 1.5 site when it is released.
• We hope these test results will prove to be interesting and are open to suggestions for improving the study.

 

While these initial results seem to sugges that Joomla and Drupal are not as well optimized for SEO as they might be, I certainly don’t believe they mean that a Joomla or Drupal website is doomed to rank lowly in the search engines. As has been often said, content is what will bring you good rankings. A good Drupal or Joomla site will provide a much better long-term platform for large amounts of content than will WordPress. However, those considering moving to Drupal or Joomla need to bear in mind that you may need to focus on closely on your new sites’s SEO.