Today 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!