‘80-90% of SEO already done for you in Wordpress’ Am I missing something?
-
Hi there, I’m looking for some feedback on a statement made on my Facebook Page re Wordpress and SEO. Please understand I wouldn’t class myself as an expert but I am competent and achieve satisfactory results for clients, more so since becoming a SEOmoz Pro user, I’ve just had some great results for a client using SEOmoz guidelines in ‘On Page SEO Reports’ thank you very much!
A comment however made on my FB page has got my interest….
“as you (kn)no(w) google loves WP and will get listed quicker as 80 to 90% of your SEO is already done”
Does Wordpress (or Joomla for that matter mentioned in the same conversation) have some SEO advantages that Google loves as the poster would have me believe, can I save time and effort working in word press from an SEO point of view?
I use the age old techniques of targeting key phrases and words and distributing them accordingly. Creating internal link structures with ‘key worded anchor text’ etc before embarking on any off page SEO.
Do any of you vastly experienced (in comparison to me) SEO folk have any insight into what this statement refers to?
I did not gather any references to SEO advantages in Wordpress or Joomla in the Enge and Fishkin et al book The Art of SEO, or any of the other books I’ve read, to develop my knowledge on SEO for the benefit of my clients and of course my pocket. J
-
I think that WordPress does just as nicely in the SERPs as a page posted on some other platform. I don't suppose that it has any magic bullets that can't be performed on even a hand-built format which includes Dreamweaver. For more details see it on bikes passion and take some detailed guidance.
-
Do you know, I'm blown away by the answers here, this is great info, many thanks.
-
Wordpress can get very fast once you properly configure a cache plugin. You could even use CloudFlare.com to enjoy some great CDN enhancements for very cheap.
This assumes you have reliable and speedy hosting - a constant of all websites. It also assumes you are careful about optimizing the images and don't load the page with megabytes of JS libraries/plugins.
(edit note: In my experience cloudflare makes a significant impact if you are on a slower, shared hosting plan. On a pro level host, it isn't as beneficial)
-
Thank you, you have all answered my question. I note your comment on light weight and fast load times but hear complaints of very slow loading content managed sites including WP, Joomla and others, is this not the case? Or is like any chosen platform where the inexperienced or those with little care can though error create burdens that may slow the site down?
-
Thank you, the reply above and yours are putting me in the picture, I didn't think there was a magic bullet, 'seo friendly' is a different concept entirely from 80-90% of the work being done for you. Best regards.
-
Thank you, that was my understanding and I am in complete agreement with your second paragraph. Steven Spaldings reply below clarifies for me further, thank you gentlemen.
-
I thought this would be the case, but does Wordpress have built in functions to automatically optimise a page?
-
no .. that statement is lazy. On-page stuff like heading structure, title, semantic tagging, inner links, etc can be made all easier by wordpress + plugins .. the rest will require work depending on what you're trying to rank for and what your goals are.
If you're the only person in the world selling "evil unicorns" then you will rank on search engines for selling evil unicorns with only putting up a page that says "I sell evil unicorns"
If your market is more competitive, you will need a strategy of content, social, links, etc. to be on top.
Wordpress is only "seo-friendly" not instant SEO.
-
Out of the box WP handles on-page optimization fairly well especially for the "SEO unaware". Titles and descriptions are customized from article content and the entire site can be easily index. The pages tend to be light weight thus load very fast. From there, it depends on the theme and plugins.
But that is far from 80-90% of SEO. It isn't even 80-90% of on-page optimization which highly dependent on the content and content category.
As a blanket statement, it is false. If all they are saying is the sites will be easily indexed, sure.
-
I think that wordpress does just as well in the SERPs as a page published on any other platform. I don't think that it has any magic bullets that can't be done on even a hand-built format such as DreamWeaver.
I think that the more important part of SEO is the selection of topics and categories, the composition of title tags, and the linkage structure of the website. The most important part is getting quality content and pitching in a way that will make your visitors respond. Although some might not think that is SEO, it can have a greater impact than a lot of off-page work.
-
Could you explain a little please? I know a little about SEO but Iess about Wordpress. Are you saying that 80-90% of SEO work regardless of site subject and target audience is done by Wordpress already?
-
“as you (kn)no(w) google loves WP and will get listed quicker as 80 to 90% of your SEO is already done”
This is probably true if you don't know much about SEO.
-
that statement should be "....of your **on-page **SEO...." and even that percentage is high for on-page.
no matter what platform you use, you'll still have to do the leg-work of getting quality content, and sufficient natural links ..etc..
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
-
19 Hours Excessive to Code Single Wordpress Page?
My developer says that is will take 19 hours to modify a listing page of the wpcasa London real estate theme because the existing template is difficult to customize. I am attaching an image of the existing page before customization and an image of a final mock up. Is 19 hours a reasonable amount of time to customize this page? Look forward to feedback. New Design is visible at: https://imgur.com/a/42XBqDD Alan IQ1i0kg
Web Design | | Kingalan10 -
How do elements that are displayed when scrolled impact SEO?
Hi, We are wanting to implement Animate.css and Wowjs on our site and were concerned about the SEO impacts. Basically when the page is loaded, if the element is not within the viewport then the HTML tag (i.e. div tag) have a style="visibility: hidden" and once the element is within the viewport it will change to have style="visibility: visible". Would having the style="visibility: hidden" negatively impact SEO?
Web Design | | KendallHershey0 -
Parallax, SEO, and Duplicate Content
We are working on a project that uses parallax to provide a great experience to the end user, and we are also trying to create a best case scenario for SEO. We have multiple keywords we are trying to optimize. We have multiple pages with the parallax function built into it. Basically each member of the primary navigation is it's own page, with all subpages built below it using the parallax function. Our navigation currently uses the hashbang method to provide custom URL's for each subpage. And the user is appropriately directed to the right section based on that hashbang. www.example.com/About < This is its own page www.example.com/about/#/history < This is a subpage that you scroll to on the About page We are trying to decide what the best method will be for trying to optimize each subpage, but my current concern is that because each subpage is really a part of the primary page, will all those URL's be seen as duplicate content? Currently the site can also serve each subpage as it's own page as well, so without the parallax function. Should I include those as part of the sitemap. There's no way to navigate to them unless I include them in the sitemap, but I don't want Google to think I'm disingenuous in providing them links that don't exist, solely for the purpose of SEO, but truthfully all of the content exists and is available to the user. I know that a lot of people are asking these questions, and there really are no right answers yet, but I'm curious about everyone else's experience so far.
Web Design | | PaulRonin2 -
Switching over to wordpress
Hello fellow Mozers! I've searched to see if I find an answer, cant seem to find it. Is there a way to do a blanket 301 redirect? I am moving a site that has all pages end with .html extension over to wordpress. I was wondering if I could set up a rule that says redirect all pages with .html extension to a version of the page with no extension. I will keep the same url with the exception of the .html extension. http://www.website.com/page.html to http://www.website.com/page/
Web Design | | mike_sif
http://www.website.com/page-title.html to http://www.website.com/page-title/ Instead of doing a 301 redirect for about 250 pages, I was wondering if I can just do one rule that will handle all the redirects considering I am keeping the same page url without the .html extension. Thanks 🙂0 -
Wordpress in a subdirectory?
Hi, I've used this method a few times of developing Wordpress websites in a subdirectory and only moving the index.php file to root when the site is ready to launch. (full details of how this is done in the link below) The sites I've used this on all index correctly and rank for their terms, so I haven't seen any negatives at all. However moving forward I would like to know for sure if this is indeed SEO-friendly? note: The site functions as any other at www.domain.com, it's only the Wordpress install & admin etc. resides at: www.domain.com/wordpress/ -the pages are served to root ie. www.domain.com/about) Details.. WordPress from a subdirectory to the root directory: http://askwpgirl.com/how-do-i-move-wordpress-from-a-subdirectory-to-the-root-directory/ thanks in advance.
Web Design | | GregDixson0 -
How do you deal with comment spam: wordpress?
I have akismet installed on my Wordpress blog, and it does a great job of filtering the spam comments, but for some reason my site (and server) gets slammed by the amount of spam comments akismet blocks. If I check my spam folder there will be over 100 spam comments in an hour. (which in turn puts a load on my server.) Does anyone have any thoughts on how to put a stop to this? (Or at least slow it down?) I know I could use a captcha, but I really don't want to put any barriers on people commenting and I don't even like using those captcha's myself. Thoughts? By the way, does anyone know how spam like this works? This has been going on for sometime now. Are spammers just using automated software to do this?
Web Design | | NoahsDad0 -
Ecommerce SEO - product sort order
Hi, I've been trying to find the answer to this in google but having no luck. In the current era, is it damaging to have products ordered randomly in an ecommerce website? Also, how long would you suggest is a good length of time to establish your natural rank? Ive launched and still work on several succesful ecommerce sites, but have recently launched a completely new venture - brand new url, brand new site and it has been live for around 5 weeks now, and although it is being found in search, it isnt doing as well as i'd like using the moz pro tools ive picked up some issues and have in the last few days tweaked page titles, added 'nofollow' to all my filters, added content etc, so I feel as though ive reset the clock. the site (it's an adult site by the way) is www.lovesauce.co.uk - would appreciate some feedback from the pro's
Web Design | | tom.dollar0 -
SEO Considerations for a Platform Change
We are getting ready to move our e-commerce platform from Zencart to Magento as the original Zencart framework is pretty dated. while I'm excited to move to a more modern platform, I'm terrified at the potential SEO risk involved with doing so given that all URLs will likely be different and we're considering updating many product listings. Almost all of the site's traffic is organic, so maintaining rankings is extremely important. I'd love any advice, but especially that related to: Best way to redirect all new URLs sitewide The prudence of heavily editing product listings at the same time of redirecting the URL (i.e. updating product descriptions) Site structure: Should I strive to keep the new site link structure as similar to the old as possible? Resources or guides on transitioning a site from a SEO perspective Other major facets I'm missing I appreciate any help or sights you can offer! Thank you....
Web Design | | AndrewY0