Welcome to the Joomla SEO Club and Book

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.

	Google [-]	Yahoo [-]	MSN [-]
1	JoomlaResource.com	JoomlaHacks.com	iJoomla.com
2	Extensions.joomla.org	Phil-Taylor.com	Joomla-addons.org
3	Extensions.joomla.org/...	JoomlaResource.com	JoomlaResource.com
4	JoomlaHacks.com	Joomla-Components.co.uk	Phil-Taylor.com/...
5	JoomlaHacks.com/...	JoomlaEquipment.com	Phil-Taylor.com/...
6	JoomlaCollection.com	ComponentsLab.com	JoomlaEquipment.com/...
7	OneStopJoomla.com/...	Extensions.joomla.org	blog.phil-taylor.com/...
8	Forum.joomla.org/...	Joomlaya.com	blog.phil-taylor.com/...
9	ELearningforce.biz/...	Mailcaster.com.au/...	Joomla-addons.net/...
10	Mosets.com	Mosets.com	Extensions.joomla.org
Total	3 with component links	4 with component links	6 with component links

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

1. 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.
   
2. 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!
   
3. 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.
   

Comments (6)

Google? Are there other search engines our there then?
written by Phil Taylor, April 25, 2007

Your results are interesting - however does anyone ever use anything BUT google? Also a google search right now for Joomla Components, made from my PC in the UK ranks www.phil-taylor.com number 2 and 4,5(indented) - so I think google results are also dependant on location and possibly time of day - who knows! Google changed the world

...
written by steve, April 25, 2007

Hi Phil

Thats a really good point. Google is producing different results now for people in different locations and for people logged in (based on their past searches). Thus this can't be a 100% accurate survey.

Nonetheless, I think your domain is proof of the idea that component links don't matter much. You don't have many component links, but you do have other key advantages:

1) age (since 2001!)
2) natural links from news articles, blog posts etc.

Finding you International Rankings...
written by Hummerbie, April 26, 2007

Hello Steve,

Nice post, I wrote some time ago on http://blog.design-cars.com/yo...in-google/ about the Geo Targetting of Search Engines.
With some links in it to check out you International rankings

I have one Joomla component, but the keyword in it gives me high rankings on all major three search engines.

But there ar other factors to consider on out going links, like what keywords you use in your text link.. but you now that.

...
written by steve, April 27, 2007

Hi Hummerbie - interesting... how much of your SEO success do you attribute to your component links?

One way to absolutely maximise any SEO effect might be to vary the keywords. It might work if a developer released the first 500 components with the keyword link "Joomla Components", the next 500 with "Joomla Extensions", the next.... etc.

...
written by Hummerbie, April 30, 2007

Steve, I think it is a combination of several things I did to get the site into ranking as high as it does.

But I do think that the incoming links from the component made a large part of the succes.
The First series of the component did not have my target keyword in it, I changed that later on.

The site only got to the top of the Google resluts after 6 months, but it then also ranked well in Yahoo.

So you might have a point , although it was not how it was though up, but by mere accident that there are now two different keywords pointing to the domain.

Maybe next time I will change the keyword again...

P.s. The Way I blog post will be on http://www.pathos-seo.com/joomlablog/

i agree with you
written by Macone, January 29, 2008

i have to say that i agree with you about the MSN search results. they do deffer from those from yahoo and google and are far more irrelevant.

also have to stress out that the effective web design is also important.

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