Which Blog Platform is the Best for SEO?
A month ago, I opened accounts at the three major hosted blog platforms (WordPress, Typepad & Blogger), and wrote two equivalent posts (similar titles and keyword densities) on each platform using made-up keywords. I also hosted a WordPress powered blog on a newly registered domain and created similar posts there (I recognize that this isn’t an entirely fair option because I didn’t do the same for all three platforms). I used all of the default options of the blog platforms.
I then monitored the search results for these fictitious keywords to see how quickly the posts would be indexed and how the posts would rank relative to each other.
The two terms I targeted were: patwrxa & qtyuist, and the four blogs I used were: patwrxa.com, patwrxa.wordpress.com, patwrxa.typepad.com, patwrxa.blogspot.com
1. Time to Indexing
The average time that it took for the posts to be first seen in the search engines . I didn’t include Live.com as it had only fully indexed one of the four sites (Typepad). I also tested and excluded Technorati, which never picked up the Typepad blog.
The rank is my qualitative assessment based on the data, my perception of the importance of the various engines, and how I saw the data change over the week. Yeah, I wish it was more scientific too, but you’ll have to deal.
| Rank | Platform | Yahoo | Google Blog Search | |
| 1 | Blogger | 2 days | 10 days | 1.5 days |
| 2 | WordPress | 5.5 | 8 | 3 |
| 3 | WP on Domain | 6 | 8 | 1.5 |
| 4 | Typepad | 3.5 | 21 | Never Indexed |
I had several observations:
- Blogger gets content into Google’s index the quickest (not surprising)
- WordPress.com and Hosted WordPress were indexed similarly quickly
- Some posts jumped in and out of the index.
- I was surprised to find Typepad indexed slowly on Yahoo, and not at all on Google Blog Search.
Also notable: Yahoo is already struggling with spam on the search terms
2. Relative Ranking
Average Position calculated by taking the average of the two positional ranks.
A note on Yahoo’s numbers. The blogs indexed in Yahoo fluctuated a lot, so I have two numbers listed for Yahoo: the first is the present day rank. The second is the average rank when all pages were in the index (about a week ago). N/I means Not Indexed (Currently)
| Rank | Platform | Yahoo | Google Blog Search | |
| 1 | WP on Domain | 1.5 | 1 (1.5) | 3 |
| 2 | WordPress | 2.5 | 2 (4) | 1.5 |
| 3 | Typepad | 2 | N/I (2) | N/I |
| 4 | Blogger | 4 | N/I (2.5) | 1.5 |
OK, these results were a lot less consistent between platforms and between search engines. I did notice several things:
- The blog on the domain patwrxa.com did the best for the keyword ‘patwrxa’.
- I didn’t see any major sandboxing issues with the new domain. Or, the blogs all faced similar sandbox issues.
- There seems to be an inverse relationship between rankings on Google Search and Google Blog Search. This may be coincidence.
- The rankings did bounce around a bit. The numbers I posted above are the current rankings and generally represented the steady state.
Summary - the Best Search Optimized Blog Platform?
WordPress. Although the assessment is more qualitative than quantitative. It is indexed quickly in all engines and ranks well in all engines. If you host your own version of WordPress, you’ll find the search performance to be similar (maybe even better) to a WordPress blog hosted on wordpress.com.
Disclaimer: Although I think it is informative, this is far from a scientific test. To properly conduct a test, you would need to create tens of blogs on each of the platforms and test each with real keywords in addition to the manufactured ones - time/skills that I definitely don’t have.
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Very nice post. It’s great to see someone do the research. It would be very interesting to see how your test changes with an incoming link, or two.
Darren, good point. I did seed the four blogs with links from a post, however I haven’t done any testing to see how they’d perform with differential linking.
Very interesting. I wish we had more data to confirm your conclusions. You may want to post this to some popular SEO forum/blog to get a discussion going (SEOmoz.org?). Who knows, maybe someone else will do a similar test and we will have another set of results to compare to.
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very nice ,great post,thanks
Cool, great research, actually the results are almost what i expected, maybe i will try it too.
Anyway thanks.
Great post, thanks for the information and research.
Nice to go through the post. Dave have done a good job.
Great efforts, but from what we've seen there are entirely too many fluctuations to judge.
Hello……..
This is Very interesting post. I wish we had more data to confirm your conclusions.
Anyway thanks.
Yeah, this post is also a bit old – I'm sure there have been some
changes in the platforms since.
[…] If you are looking for further detailed advice on selecting the right blog technology then I suggest you read Blog Tips excellent series – Selecting a blog platform. Also there are some excellent ‘SEO and blogging’ materials available via Four Elements, SEOMOZ and Dave Naffziger’s Blog. […]
WordPress w/ the right SEO plugins really is probably the best platform…
I want to give you a two thumbs up on a very informative post. I wish I read this 2 hours ago! I just purchased a domain name from blogger (I'm now waiting for my DNS to be set up). :( I guess the decision depended on my goal of monetizing my blog – which is prohibited in WP (according to other blogs that I read.)
it's a nice post with real sample data. I had experience with various blog platform, I prefer WordPress most but it provides less customization for users. With blogger I have more to customize and custom domain also very easy and quick.
It’s now 4 years later..but I still agree with the findings of your post. I have the best results with WordPress blogs
Yes me too, WordPress is def. best for blogging!
For a newbie, Blogger is the best platform because easy to understand but i refer wordpress which has many plugins that SEO friendly to rank it well.
Excellent post here! There are certainly many more details to take into consideration. It’s great to see someone do the research. I prefer WordPress most but it provides less customization for users!
seo sydney
Hey,nice post.I think word press is the best blog platform for SEO.It is indexed quickly in all engines and ranks well in all engines.Thanks for sharing this article with us. I like this.Keep sharing with us.
WordPress is really best, do you know that it is achieved highest page rank in blog list that is 9. I think it is the best platform for SEO.
I am thinking of transfering our blog at http://www.kidsformal.com over to wordpress. Should I?
The subject is really attractive. Congratulations to the
writer of the blog… Thanks for this insightful post. The info I have gained
from your blog is truly encouraging!
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