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Wordpress, the new 500lb Gorilla?

anthonycapital

Hanging Paper
Apr 24, 2013
65
17
First Name
Anthony
The level of search engine optimization that WordPress brings to the table is rather crazy IMO.

For example, there is a dealer in our area that has recently switched to using it as their primary site. They are ranking very well for generic dealership search terms. Even outperforming some highly refined industry specific platforms.

Is Wordpress's article based system the key? Does Google have a bias towards the platform?
Or something else perhaps?
 
Hey Anthony,

The way I understand it is this:


  1. They're in a standard format that Google is very capable of reading. Blogs on Wordpress tend to get great traction due to having all the right elements, being consistent, having proper RSS feeds, etc
  2. Wordpress has a plugin system as vast as the sea. Some of the better SEO plugins will automate page descriptions, adjust page titles, generate your sitemap for you and submit your sitemap for you when anything is updated.

In addition to that, there are going to be numerous things like clean source code that some claim helps with SEO. Wordpress has spent years refining their content, meeting the demands of search engines and developing a CMS that can handle everything from blogs to products.

I wouldn't use it for my primary dealership website without an amazing inventory plugin (plus, the CMS portion of Wordpress is fairly restricted when stock), but it would be fantastic for secondary websites.
 
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Anthony,

WP is a great platform. I have over 5000 sites built on it but the platform (only for supporting sites: micrositites, blogs, etc) is not what makes that website great.

DDC, Cobalt, etc have great platforms too and some of their sites are no good. Why? The effort the dealer puts in managing and working the platform.

Look beyond the platform and analyze what those people are doing. Perhaps you can share the link and we can all check it out.
 
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I think it's worth noting that on the CMS side, Wordpress is dead simple for end users to use.
They can login, post/update content very easily, so it removes the training roadblock that does exist with some CMS.

ie: Most of the dealers I work with refuse to login to the Dealer.com CMS and change the text on a page, but they'll login to our Wordpress site to post internal social stuff any day.
 
Is this the site?
http://www.crestviewchrysler.ca


Wordpress is a great user-friendly platform that make SEO extremely easy to use for everyone. Out of the box Wordpress is built for search engines. The permalinks structure is extremely SEO friendly and there are several SEO plugins that make it a great platform.

Like everything else it's not a set it and forget it platform, but it's better than most.
 
I totally agree with Yago. It's less about the content management system, and more about how you use it. When I build websites on the side I always use Wordpress because it's stupid easy, and I can train a client how to use it in a matter of hours.

As for them ranking well, that has only a little to do with the CMS. Ranking well is about relevancy and trust. Is your website relevant to the search; does it actually talk about what is being searched? Is your website trusted; does it have trustworthy/relevant links and co-citations? A poorly designed website, regardless of CMS, will be hindered a bit when it comes to ranking, but the auto industry typically gets some passes and overcoming it would be pretty easy.

If you want to do a quick comparison on link profiles use opensiteexplorer.org from SEOMoz. The Page Authority and Domain Authority will give you a sense of how your sites compare based on link profiles. This isn't the be all - end all, but it gives you a sense of things.
 
I agree with what is being said, but I also believe (based on the results of the 200+ Wordpress sites I have launched and track - not nearly as many as Yago) that Wordpress has an advantage out of the box. Chad is right though - Wordpress permalinks and various other features they have are just engineered for success.

If you consider that all Dealer.com sites are competing with each other with very similar sitemaps, homepages and source code, it's understandable that two Dealer.com sites without additional content would perform similarly. At the same time, two Wordpress dealer sites with the same theme would perform similarly without extra work. All of that makes sense.
However, I strongly believe that a stock Wordpress site without content, with a decent theme, would work better than most Automotive CMS platforms. The difference is everything from load times, asset usage, clean source code, content duplication, etc.

That said, SEO always has it's mysteries. One of the higher ranking sites for used cars in our area is For Sale Used Cars & Trucks London Woodstock St Thomas Tillsonburg Aylmer Delhi Simcoe Ingersoll - this thing was built from scratch to hammer the search engines and the results blew my guesstimates out of the water. The point being that no matter what platform you use, it is always going to come down to content. I stand by the fact that Wordpress makes SEO easier and encourages content.
 
However, I strongly believe that a stock Wordpress site without content, with a decent theme, would work better than most Automotive CMS platforms. The difference is everything from load times, asset usage, clean source code, content duplication, etc.

I wonder if any vendors would be willing to put themselves to the test! We could create a fake City, State and Manufacturer combo, and each of them create a website to try rank well for specific search terms.
 
I wonder if any vendors would be willing to put themselves to the test! We could create a fake City, State and Manufacturer combo, and each of them create a website to try rank well for specific search terms.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend I don't love the idea.
That's a fantastic idea and would be a great experiment - would require that they all have specific content they are allowed to post and the domains would have to be equal. Would really be interesting.