Wordpress versus html and google ranking
-
My current SEO has always recommended that I take my site to wordpress. I really don't want to move to wordpress. I don't like it... I just like writing code in raw html, css, and script. I feel like I have more control that way. Wordpress just seems like a platform for blogs (I have my blog in wordpress).
My question is, do wordpress websites typically rank better? Is there benefit to moving to it?
-
Thank you everyone! I will be building a site for one of our other companies soon... maybe I'll try wordpress to give it a chance.
-
I hear what you are saying re having the control over the code, I've been coding for more years than I care to remember however I prefer to run sites on Wordpress for a number of reasons such as control over content, navigation is simplified, translation management, hundreds of plug ins and it's written in php so is a standard language.
I always use a child theme and recommend anyone to create one for their theme if the developers has not provided one for you. This is where the real control over a well written theme comes into play. I have full e-commerce sites using woocommerce, optimised using yoast and customised to work and look exactly how I want by me and my team.
I would just say try it, get a decent pre built theme (suggestion only - http://themeforest.net/item/impreza-retina-responsive-wordpress-theme/6434280) to give you some idea what Wordpress and a theme can actually do.
-
it is around 20% of the world sites are run using Wordpress (as George says), from simple blogs like you mention to some of the worlds biggest sites.
Wordpress does have its very good features some great plugins like Yoast, which helps to improve your site from an google presepective - changing meta deta, titles etc.
I do use wordpress for my sites for one reason only - I can't code and wouldn't know where to start.
If you are a competent coder and by the sounds of it you are - I would stay away from WP, for all its great benefits and there are loads, its still an out of the box solution that is trying to meet everybodys needs so is not brilliant and while you can do some wonderful themes etc in wordpress you are still working within their framework.
Starting from scratch (if you have the skills and the time) is always a much better solution. So much more can be done
-
I think the notion of WP based sites doing well in search comes from the fact that it makes posting content very easy. So you could end up with more content, and better content (ie with images and image galleries/videos) compared to hand coding everything Also because the market share of WP sites is so high (around 20% of world's sites run WP) google is probably optimised to crawl and evaluate that structure well.
But WP suffers with a few faults out of the box depending on template, for example category pages/tag pages spit out the whole posts which causes duplicate content. Some SEO plugins alleviate that problem. Also another problem i've heard is of stale content, where an old post becomes more and more buried and many levels deep further from the homepage. This only applies if you are planning to use WP in its blog format rather then use the Pages functionality.
-
In the end it is all HTML/CSS and some scripts. What search engines need in code is to be able to find what they're looking for easily: sitemaps, Title, etc
Wordpress does a lot of this automatically, but there is absolutely no reason why a clean hand-coded site wouldn't achieve all these requirements as good as a Wordpress site. Wordpress sites also need optimizations in terms of SEO, speedetc before they become top-rank.
-
Thank you I'll stick with writing my own code for now. Thanks for responding! I am really trying to understand all of this and improve my SEO. I'm good at making a lovely website... just not so good at getting it to rank.
-
Wordpress has the capability to do so much more than be a blog, its like saying a car is only for getting you from a to b whilst technically true there is more to it. If you don't like wordpress don't use it, use a format that gives you passion if you really enjoying coding etc. then do that it will come across better and the more passion you put into a site the better it normally is. Wordpress tends to have more plugins to help with SEO which is why it might seem better but isn't anything you can't get on a normal site.
TL;DR
Use a format you know inside and out and can work well with and you will get better results, Wordpress has lots of plugins that can help which is why it might look good.
Hope that helps & good luck
-
I don't think they rank better but it isn't just used for blogging. You can make decent website but if you know how to code and are happy doing it then probably stick to it.
Wordpress is easy though and you can write a custom theme.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why do they rank the home page?
We are trying to rank for the key word Motorcycle Parts. We have moved up to page 2 over the past couple months; however, google is ranking our home page not our http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/s/49/61/Motorcycle-Parts page that is for motorcycle parts. We are working on internal linking to help point the right signals too. Any other thoughts? ( we have new content written to put in as well we just have to wait for an issue to be fixed before we can put it in)
Technical SEO | | DoRM0 -
Wrong Page Ranking
Higher-level page with more power getting pushed out by weaker page in the SERPs for an important keyword. I don't care about losing the weaker page. Should I: 404 the weaker page and wait for Google to (hopefully) replace it with the stronger page? 301 the weaker page to the stronger page? NOTE: Due to poor communication between content team and myself, the weak and strong pages have similar title tags (i.e, "lawsuits" and "litigation")
Technical SEO | | LCNetwork0 -
Google Reconsideration Request (Penguin) - Will Google give links to remove?
When Penguin v1 hit, our site took a hit for a single phrase (i.e. "widgets") due to the techniques our SEO company was using (network). We've since had those links cleaned up, and our rankings have not recovered. Our SEO company said they submitted a reconsideration request on our behalf, and that Google denied it and didn't provide which links we needed removed. Does Google list links that need removing if they are still not happy with your link profile?
Technical SEO | | crucialx0 -
Google Places Question......
Hi Guys. I am working with a photographer they do not have a studio they shoot on location. However I noticed many photographers within their industry have their home address listed in their google places, and they too shoot on location. My client doesn't want their home address listed so I wondered what options there would be? Do you think renting mail forwarding address would suffice?
Technical SEO | | RankStealer0 -
0 Google Backlinks
A sudden drop in the number of google backlinks. Earlier this month I had 15 google backlinks and now all of a sudden I have none. My google impression has also dropped drastically, my website's average is 10000 impression per day and now we have none. I have increased the crawler's speed on the website, would this be the cause of it? 4pmdesign.com
Technical SEO | | 4pm0 -
Google has not been visiting my site
Hi I am working on a site at the moment http://www.cheapflightsgatwick.com and i had the site using a different template and in the search engines for the search term cheap flights gatwick we were fourth and for the term holiday magazine we were 12th in google but now we are not even in google on the first page for the search terms. But now after changing the template in joomla our rankings have gone out of the window. It took me about a day to sort out the site with the new template so i was not expecting any problems with the search engines but for some reason there is. If you put into the search engine www.cheapflightsgatwick.com then you will see that google has not visited the site for four days and also it is not showing the description and instead it is showing details about joomla. Can anyone let me know if there is anything i need to do to sort this out and why google is taking so long to visit my site
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Frustration With Google Places
I have been trying to solve this problem with Google Places for quite some time now and just can't figure out where to go from here. I've tried several sent messages explaining the problem and even received several phone calls from Google Places trying to correct the issue with no luck. I have even tried totally deleting the listing and started over from scratch and re-verified the address with a mailed postcard. My site: http://www.captainrichsmith.com has a Google Places account set up and verified http://maps.google.com/maps/place?hl=en&georestrict=input_srcid:1c8fa43cf77e0c93&ie=UTF8&t=h&z=14&vpsrc=0 For some reason when you do a Google search for one of my keywords Miami Fishing Charters On the listings normally under the letter "E" on the Map another website has a placemark at my location Miami Fishing Charters Directory
Technical SEO | | captainrichsmith
www.fishing-charters-miami.com/ - Cached Fishing Charters Miami is a quality directory of the best fishing boats in the Miami area. The top Miami fishing charters are listed on this website.
2550 South Bayshore Drive, Miami
(786) 263-9231
captainrichsmith.com (7) When you view this Google places listing further. I see it is using my images, videos, placemark on map but NOT the address, phone number, or reviews. Any help on this issue would greatly be appreciated0 -
Why won't google rank my homepage
I have a site that ranks high on the first page for it's main keyword at both Bing and Yahoo but horribly at Google. It's a domain I recently acquired and am in the process of optimizing. My goal is to improve the relevancy for the site in Google so that the site shows up better for it's main keyword. With that said I've been working on building valuable links to the page and I would like some opinions on why the homepage is not ranking for the main keyword. Instead I have a junky content page that is ranking for the term. So in the event that you have a exact match domain showing up very high in Bing and Yahoo but not in Google for the homepage, what factors would you look at? Add in the complexity that a page other than the homepage is making grounds on the exact match keyword having moved up from "not in the top 100" to the 50's, what's my best solution to ranking the homepage? The site is optimized well and most inbound links predominantly point to the homepage.
Technical SEO | | DotCar0