Google loves WordPress. WordPress content is a nice, tasty meal for those hungry Google spiders.
In some cases within 45 minutes of posting, content on my blog was ranked #1 for certain keyword combinations. That’s impressive how quickly Google will scan and update it’s SERPs with freshly blogged content. Recent postings on this very blog demonstrate that.
On March 29, 2008, I witnessed a scene of a crash along I-5 in Kelso, Washington- an event that affected thousands of travellers. When I got home, I went ahead and made a blog posting about it. Within 45 minutes, it was picked up by Google and ranking as the top page for all of those people Googling to find more information about it. No official news story was even published until the next day, so all of the search traffic went to this blog. The local newspaper, TDN, made their posting, but they didn’t use WordPress- they use their own system that is not optimized for search engines and probably lacks the auto-pinging functionality WordPress has. So, even though they have a better story, theirs didn’t come up in search rankings as high as my little blog posting did.
These screenshots were captured only today, but these keywords,
car crash longview, were ranked #1 like this within 45 minutes of posting:
Google works fast.
Here is another example, with the keywords: car crash i-5
When you think about it, I-5 is a LONG freeway, extending 1,381 miles from Canada all the way to Mexico. It spans major metro areas, including Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and San Diego. There are multiple wrecks every day on I-5 just in Portland alone. But think of all the wrecks that occur daily on the entire freeway and of the many thousands of people affected! Some of these people will be impacted and will search Google to find more information. So, for this blog to be ranked #2 in Google for car crash i-5 out of 235,000 results is crazy to me. WordPress is an ideal platform for fast, high rankings.
As another example, yesterday, I made a blog posting on the Best Places to Dance in Portland.
Today I checked the results, and it is ranked either #1 or the top 10 for many keyword combos:
In less than 24 hours, the keyword: Oregon Best Dancing ranked #3:
And finally here’s another keyword combo: Portland Best Dances that ranks 10th.
Even 10th is not bad for less then 24 hours and not being an authority site on dancing. This is the only dance-related post. In fact, this blog is really new and doesn’t even have very much content yet. Compare this to the many other dance websites that have been running for years with much content. Isn’t it strange that a single random WordPress posting can outrank many of these established dance websites? It shows the true importance of SEO and specifically WordPress as a web marketing tool.
WordPress also outperforms my custom-made Internet Marketing Articles area. Even though this section also has a similar structure, has good SEO, and has RSS feeds, it does not seem to get as high of rankings as WordPress does. WordPress has the advantage of the auto-pinging feature, along with my unproven hunch that Google favors blogs, especially the spider-friendly WordPress structure.
This WordPress blog is not overly pimped out, but uses a simple open source theme that is SEO friendly and I added a Twitter plug-in. That’s about it.
That should be adequate enough of a posting for you to look into this Google-influencing blog platform. The next time I do a Google search, I’ll be looking for your WordPress blog on the front page.
Nice article Trent. I too have been impressed by how quickly WordPress posts are picked up across the internet. I recently started my first blog. I made a post late last Sunday and by Monday morning I had a comment waiting for my approval from a new visitor.
By the way, how do you change the way the WordPress title shows up in Google Searches? I figured out how to rearrange what shows up in the title by accessing the header.php file. However, I can not figure out how to add or remove the >> symbol that comes with the default wordpress format. Thanks.
Thanks. I used a theme with pretty good SEO functionality already built in, including the titles. If you do a search for SEO and WordPress, you’ll find lots of theme options.
Nice… I guess you capitalized on your five minutes of stardom, and continue to remain on top… congratulations. Hopefully people will realize that Word Press will not do 100% of blogging for them, and that content is still very important.
Take care,
Chimbs
Good piece.
Hi Trent,
I’m using wordpress too, but somehow my blog doesn’t seem to be found easily by google. For example, I search Best pizza vancouver, and my article appear on the 5th page of wordpress. However, the URL that it was found is the wordpress URL: en.wordpress.com/…/ best-pizza-by-slice-downtown-vancouver-bc-canada-goldies-rustic-pizza-west-pender-street/
My blog original url is squintingeyes.wordpress .com but I did a new domain mapping. So, my blog is now known as Cheap Appetite .com
However, I rarely found my site on google as Cheap Appetite .com, normally it will be found in the search result as en.wordpress.com……….
Is there a way to fix this problem? Please let me know.
Cheers,
Tana
It may take time (up to a few weeks?) for Google to index the new domain name, after a domain name change, and to drop the old domain name.
But you have an extra problem- you built your blog on a domain name you can’t control: en.wordpress.com. Normally, the best thing is to do a 301 redirect- to preserve the PageRank you’ve accumulated on those pages. But you don’t have that luxury since you don’t control that domain. You might ask wordpress.com folks if they can do a manual redirect for you. Otherwise, your best bet is to make sure all your content is removed from the wordpress.com, except maybe some links to your real site.
Good luck!