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SEO Competition
Dec
14
2006
Joomla v. Wordpress v. Drupal
Written by Steve Burge   
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Drupal LogoDrupal LogoDrupal LogoToday we're building up to a little Search Engine Optimization competition we're going to be running over the next year.

 

We're curious to see how Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal stack up against each other in a fair SEO fight.

 

The Study:

  • Launch 3 sites: Amritsar.net.in (Drupal), Jabalpur.net.in (Wordpress) and Vadodara.net.in (Joomla!)
  • Make them as similar as possible. Each site has 8 articles of 500 words. Each site has had some keyword and title optimization. Each city is of a similar size and has comparable Overture results.
  • Choose a relatively uncompetitive field (Indian cities) so that each domain has the potential for a big move in the search engine rankings.
  • Watch them carefully using Google Analytics and WebCEO, to track how well each one performs for its keywords.
  • After a year, see which solution has the best built-in SEO.

Why are you doing this? Because its fun, we're curious and the results may actually prove to be useful.

 

Reasons why this is a bad idea #1: Joomla 1.5 and Drupal 5.0 are coming out soon with substantially different architectures.

Solution: When they're launched we'll add two more sites, one using 1.5 and the other using 5.0. They'll be a little behind but we'll still enable us to track whether the new versions add any improvements in terms of SEO.

 

Reasons why this is a bad idea #2: You're going to wait a year to tell us the results!?!?

Solution: Obviously we'll have some results at the end of each month, but yes: have some patience. 

 

Reasons why this is a bad idea #3: How can you guarantee each site will be equal?

Solution: We can't. We've just done our best. Send us any ideas at all about how we can make this race more fairer and more scientific.

 

Reasons why this is a bad idea #4: One only site for each? Isn't it possible that a freak event occuring to one site can skew the results.

Solution: Yes. But we'll be keeping an eye out for such events and anyone else who wants to run a similar test is very welcome to join up with us.

 

The three sites launch today. We'll keep you updated every month on how they're doing! 

 

 

Comments  

 
#1 Compass 2007-01-07 11:30
Great idea, but your control is not constent, its very probably that each city will have different competition so the SERP will be easier/harder.

Maybe a better idea is to have IDENTICAL content. Sure, they may get hit with a duplicate content penalty but it will be (probably) equally applied, so its still a valid test.

I would also use identical templates from a layout perspective. Shouldn't be too hard.

Oh yeah, can I help optimize the Joomla one ;-)
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#2 timewarp 2007-02-10 12:38
well still early to tell but so far the Drupal site has a PR0 and the other two are pr4 !
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#3 BOo 2007-06-22 17:45
Amritsar is ten times more well known and popular than the other two cities, so it will be very hard to compete in SERPs.
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