Wordpress, the new 500lb Gorilla?

[csabatka1]

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've done it with our own website and blown a vendor's platform out of the water within 1-2 months of going live with a Wordpress site. I have the year over year numbers to prove it. This was taking an already existing website, using very similar and same content, same inventory, but putting into a Wordpress platform and using best SEO practices.

Out of the box results Feb - May. June on were SEO changes - but still very basic. Nov/Dec we ran some paid SEM that detracted from our organic visitor count. Feb 2011 to Jan 2012 we were on a pretty popular vendor's website, Feb 2012 and on we went in-house Wordpress.

Month	Organic Visitor Increase from 2011 to 2012
Feb	2,540
March	3,125
April	3,036
May	2,660
June	4,913
July	5,924
August	5,088
September	3,548
Oct	3,677
Nov	1,663
Dec	1,186
Average	3,396

 

[cmjerry4531]

How's your Non-branded organic look over the same time period?

 

[craigh]

Chad,
That's more or less what I've seen in some of our own experiments with Wordpress and other non-Automotive CMS/platforms.

I'm curious to see how things go as dealers start to move to Wordpress and other small platforms and start to see results based on unique content and being able to directly tie their results to the amount of effort spent on the website.

 

[csabatka1]

How's your Non-branded organic look over the same time period?

Within 3-4 months we saw a decent increase in entrances directly into VLP and VDPs from Google/Bing. Used vehicle keywords searches increased the most.

 

[rcar]

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.

Craig,

No offense but I'm not sure how we can take anything you say seriously.

#1 Your company website Vicimus Dealer Sites used a wordpress template and didn't even customize it. Why should a dealer trust a company with their website, when you couldn't even create a quality custom website for yourself? Just sayin.

#2 You brought up a website earlier, Goodwills Used Cars, that made it seem like you had no connection in creating this website. However a quick look at the source code shows Craig Hooghiem as the author. I just wish you had been forthcoming in your original post and stated that you designed this website. But perhaps you were embarrassed of its 1995ish design? All joking aside I am happy there are companies out there that allow me to make money redesigning old school websites.

rcar

 

[craigh]

Within 3-4 months we saw a decent increase in entrances directly into VLP and VDPs from Google/Bing. Used vehicle keywords searches increased the most.

Did you use a specific inventory plugin, or were your vehicles setup as custom post types?

 

[csabatka1]

Did you use a specific inventory plugin, or were your vehicles setup as custom post types?

Inventory plugin from DealerTrend in which I customized.

 

[joe.pistell]

Back in the day, 5-7 years ago, Google was battling with "all things internet" and was highly dependent on WordPress's architecture, or, should I say, WordPress fit Google's Algos to perfection.

WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) CMS's are all around* & have become far more advanced. BUT, over this same period Googles algos have been growing and improving.

Evidence is around that Google is getting so good its no longer completely dependent on architecture like WordPress.

SEO of old all about SEO techniques. Today's SEO from Matt Cutts down is all about delivering a great UX (User Experience). I'll say it again, Google is telling us what its SEO target is, it's not SEO mechanics, its a killer UX.

Want more validation? Guess who see's the NEW SEO TRAIN COMING? Goodbye SEOmoz. Hello Moz! - Moz ...gulp.


There's a New SEO sheriff out here.

* drupal vs joomla vs wordpress.

 

[craigh]

[/B]

Craig,

No offense but I'm not sure how we can take anything you say seriously.

#1 Your company website Vicimus Dealer Sites used a wordpress template and didn't even customize it. Why should a dealer trust a company with their website, when you couldn't even create a quality custom website for yourself? Just sayin.

#2 You brought up a website earlier, Goodwills Used Cars, that made it seem like you had no connection in creating this website. However a quick look at the source code shows Craig Hooghiem as the author. I just wish you had been forthcoming in your original post and stated that you designed this website. But perhaps you were embarrassed of its 1995ish design? All joking aside I am happy there are companies out there that allow me to make money redesigning old school websites.

rcar

Hello rcar,

Glad you made your first post a good one.

#1 - I'm a developer. I don't do design. I have a team of designers, but they have so much work I wouldn't dare ask them to work on the company site. It's not a Wordpress site, but it is based on a template.

#2 - I'm a developer. I don't do design. I did not design that website, it was designed by a company called SEOCompany.

this thing was built from scratch to hammer the search engines and the results blew my guesstimates out of the water.

I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, but how would I know how it was built or have guesstimates if I wasn't connected to the project? I made an inventory app when I was a kid and they used it. When they showed me the design I said, "That's terrible". Ended up doing better than I expected.

 

[craigh]

Joe,
Do you have a source for:

SEO of old all about SEO techniques. Today's SEO from Matt Cutts down is all about delivering a great UX (User Experience). I'll say it again, Google is telling us what its SEO target is, it's not SEO mechanics, its a killer UX.

For those that are interested in the topic, Avinash was at Digital Dealer and did a fantastic presentation.
He also has a great blog with posts like 7 Incredible Web Design, Branding, Digital Marketing Experiences

<offtopic>
It's of interest to note that while many people are still discovering Wordpress and Drupal (I guess Joomla too...), the "hardcore development" community that I find myself speaking with has started to leave Wordpress behind in favor of some other options.

Just for fun, a very brief breakdown of some of the trends I personally see:

Blogs: While Wordpress still reigns supreme here (and probably will for a long time), Ghost just raised a chunk of change on Kickstarter to bringing the blogging back to a more pure platform. (Ghost: Just a Blogging Platform by John O'Nolan &mdash; Kickstarter)

CMS: Again, Wordpress is going to take the cake, but developers who want more play and updated code are starting to use things like PyroCMS, ExpressionEngine and other platforms. The downside with Wordpress is that the older code is being used on thousands of websites and cannot easily be phased out.

eCommerce: WooCommerce did some great things for Wordpress in this area, but Magento made some serious headway over the past few years in it's effort to replace osCommerce and ZenCart. Worth noting are hosted platforms like Shopify that are constantly increasing in popularity.

Other: A huge contender in this space now is SquareSpace. I've seen everyone form Mom and Pop shops to massive companies move things to SquareSpace. Also worth noting that they are now getting into eCommerce (I believe using Stripe's online payment systems)

My biggest "problem" with Wordpress is that it's so popular that everyone wants to twist it into doing more things and filling more voids. I have personally used Wordpress for things it never should have done, but the end result is a clean dashboard that a customer can use, with just a few extra options for whatever I made it do. I guess it just feels wrong because I knew Wordpress before it could do this?
</offtopic>