About every year, Google goes through a bit of an algorithmic change that gives weight to a new aspect of search engine optimization (where the heck you show up in Google).
For example, a few years ago, Google started giving an insane amount of weight towards Web 2.0 properties like Squidoo and Hubpages. It was almost unfair – you could you put up a post on one of these sites, and it would dominate Google in as little as a few hours (I once did this to earn a #3 listing WITH NO LINKS for the search term ‘buy HGH’ – wowza!).
Every once in a while, one of these ‘loopholes’ shows up. In fact, back in 2004, there was a switch to favoring content instead of links; when this happened, spammers CRUSHED it by throwing up crappy content and putting Adsense on it. Read this PDF for the full scoop on these Google loopholes.
Recently, there has been heavy weight given toward sites that are built in WordPress. Because of this, I have personally converted ALL of my sites over to a WordPress platform. Every single one. It’s been clear that Google has preferred the WordPress platform when it comes to ranking sites, which has been very convenient, since it’s a very easy system to use. (In fact, Wealthy Affiliate now has a system that auto-installs WordPress platforms to give you turn-key websites.), but only recently has it become apparent WHY Google prefers this platform. Here’s why:
There is a shift happening in which Google is giving heavy weight towards ACTIVITY on your website, rather than what’s on your site or who links to your site. All these elements are very important, but activity is becoming more and more important.
It makes sense, then, that Google would have started preferring WordPress some time ago, since comments and user activity are easily monitored using that platform.
The folks at Google are really smart, so they are looking at the trends in social media to see how it will ultimately affect SEO. Considering this, it makes sense that they would analyze activity on your site – including comments, Facebook “likes,” and Twitter “re-tweets.” Not only this, but Google is analyzing how long visitors stay on your site, what they do on your website, and if they find what they’re looking for when reading your stuff.
All of this is really exciting news for those of us who create good user experiences on our websites, and it also provides a new “Google Loophole” to exploit to get higher in the search rankings.
Search engine optimization is critical to my business, and I’ll be taking advantage of this loophole in a few ways, including implementing Facebook ‘likes’ on my page, and encouraging comments on the posts of my website. (Previously, I had left comments disabled on a lot of my niche sites.)
Google has a history of giving “too much” weight to changes in its algorithm at first, and then adjusting them for later. (This happened with the Web 2.0 changes and the weight towards content instead of links.) However, if Google is to take advantage of the trends in social media and site activity, it makes sense that this would be a part of their long-term strategy. This is really good news for even the smallest sites that have a decent following – if you couldn’t rank on the search engines because you suck at link building, you’re in luck, because your user activity could be enough to give you the bump that you need.
My recommendation: encourage activity on your sites in the form of social media and comments, build your presence on Twitter or by allowing Facebook “likes,” and BUILD YOUR LIST. I’ve seen great results sending out new posts and information to my lists, and I’ve seen increases in my search engine ranking as a result, because Google sees the new activity. All this really does is give us more opportunity to give our visitors what they’re looking for, which will in turn improve ranking in the search engine. Grab this free report to see how to take advantage of and exploit this Google Loophole.
Very useful Ryan – will certainly be seriously considering setting up new websites on WordPress, due to the ease of interactivity for users
Great Post, I am putting this into high speed action right now! call the batcave to get it started, and we will see how it works.
Interesting post, Ryan. I actually just downloaded the “other” Ryan’s report just a few minutes before your email came through. Since I’m in the process of learning about effective SEO and have several websites that I want to get ranked it’s very timely.
I was also interested to hear the you’ve converted all your sites to WordPress. I’ve been debating that myself – I have three that I’m thinking about converting, for my own convenience in managing them and because of the weight Google is giving to WordPress. Your info is one more reason why I will probably go that route.
Social Media and on page interaction is definitely changing the way we all work with websites as consumers.
Having the search engines take these kind of things into account is only going to help.
Making it easier for anyone to find highly relevant and active material immediately will open up many options for niche marketing as well.
Good post and I look forward to seeing your results.
This has been true to a smaller degree for a very long time. It’ll be interesting to see if my sites get even more google love than they have in the past. Thanks for pointing this out.
I love wordpress and have been using it for a long time now. Just recently I launched a series of Halloween shops in readiness for the upcoming Halloween season. WordPress has allowed me to make my sites very easily and give people the content they are looking for very easily
thanks for the post Ryan
Good stuff Ryan. Thanks
Awesome Ryan you are nothing but the truth. Question I am looking for a plugin opt in for one of my wordpress site. Any suggestings? Thank you
Great share here Ryan! Just so happens I am putting together a couple word press sites now!! Glad to know I’m on the right path!
I had quite a few static html web sites, and just changed them all over to wordpress in the last month.
Much better for maintenance and SEO.
Great post Ryan.
Great Post Ryan,
Many of the Real Estate web companies are moving there site builds to WordPress I will be moving my website, http://www.housesinomaha.com there as soon as possible..
Ryan it is going to be quite interesting to see how this plays out. I have recently added several wordpress blogs to my virtual real estate.
I’m also going to look at having my VA posting useful content to each one of them at least every other week.
Thanks for the post.
Thanks for the great info as always! I’m new to all this and have started my first website and yeah! it’s a wordpress site! It’s a for fun site right now and want to get more content before allowing the crawlers…
This is useful. I’m curious how you find out about this kind of information. Do you have a special line for obtaining this that most people don’t know about?
Great Information as I go about re-structuring my websites!
Very very VERY good point.
It has long been known that blogs outweigh Websites because of their being able to be updated by content and reader involvement. Now it is time for Websites to catch the wave.
Disqus.com is one excellent and free way to do exactly that, Wibiya.com is another.
I always recommend wordpress based sites to my clients, just because it’s so much easier for them to manage when they want to do it themselves. Now I have even more of an incentive – this is great news!
Thanks Ryan,
I have the comments turned off on my sites to, I’ll be changing that right away.
Reading the report now too.
There’s some cool stuff we can do with this.
I’m actually ghostwriting for a couple of e-commerce sites and this will come in very handy. Thanks for the info.
Geez, I’ve just disabled comments on posts and was trying to find where to disable comments on individual pictures because I get much more spam comments than anything else. What plugin are you using to combat this – I notice you’re not using a captcha?
Great post Ryan. I recently put up a new WP site and it was indexed very fast and it’s getting traffic without me doing much to it yet.
There are a few comments on there but not enough to write home about.
Lovin’ WordPress!!
I’m always freaked when Google changes something but I can give some real world data to the direction Google is heading…
After reading Ryan Deiss’ report, I checked two of my websites on the WordPress platform and they BOTH MOVED UP in page rank.
The first moved from position 13 to position 10 (first page!).
The second moved from position 11 to position 9 (first page!).
I have not added anything to these sites in months or made any changes.
So maybe there is some truth to the algorithm change and new weight on blog sites and the WordPress platform!
Whatever it is, I’m stoked.
Brett
Great post Ry,
it looks like google is constanly changing and it is our goal as internet marketer to keep up with this changes.
And i agree, wordpress appears to rank very well. i guess i need to start enabling comments on my posts now instaed of disabling them.
-Much Thanks
Hey Ryan thanks for bringing all this to our attention. I am rethinking my decision to close the comments. I’m was getting a lot of spam. Could you tell us what you use to curb the spam comments?
I agree WordPress is a great platform to build your sites. However, I would recommend hosting your own sites so that you are full control. I have expierenced having sites shut down because the free hosting platform decided to change their rules for playing on their field.
Great stuff as usual.
Thanks for the tip-off, I’ve been meaning to concentrate more on social media.
Much appreciated
HOG WASH!!! DONT BELIEVE THE HYPE! YOu should be ashamed of yourself Ryan. Tell them the whole story bro!!
Hey everybody, thanks for the positive feedback (except for Johnny, who seems to be having a rough day). To answer the question about spam, I’ve been using Akismet, a free plugin that does a really good job at filtering out comment spam. Peace!
This is an excellent post Ryan and very well written. Thanks for sharing. Your one of the few i really listen to because your never hard sell, your down to earth in your advice, and genuine. Thanks mate.
Thanks for the info Ryan! It’s always great to stay in tune with Google and I love the WordPress platform.
You always give great recommendations!
All my sites are WP sites but you have to know how to manage them to get traffic.
Hi Ryan,
Lots of good info. I too was wondering how you keep abreast of all this internet marketing news. I just switched over to WordPress, and happily find that it is screen reader friendly. Definitely a huge relief. While I understand Google’s new approval for comments, I’ve heard that they take away from your niche site content. People read and write comments, but they lose focus on your niche site and buying from you.
Once again, great post!
Hey Ryan, Always read what you have to say with great interest! Thanks for the info about Google!
Hey Ryan what ever happened to the meetup in Ohio?
anyway I just gave you some Search engine comment juice lol
Great info, I too have converted all my sites too WP. I still believe having good keywords in low to medium competition is important for ranking. If Big G changes I need to know, so again thanks.
Thanks, Ryan! Just learning how to build a website and was going to sign up at WordPress and begin the process tomorrow. So glad to know WordPress is the way to go! Your info. is very timely, and thanks for sharing.
Blessings on your business.
God post Ryan!…I’ve been thinking of converting many sites to WP for same basic reasons.
Only concern I’ve had is all the hacking potential. Otherwise WP hosted on your own domain does seem to have an advantage.
Great post.
Do you see comments hurting conversions on our SEO Campaigns by thwarting the sales process?
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This is golden information. First of all, google’s concentration on activity. Then the mention of converting all websites over to WordPress. Third, using Akismet to block spam comments. As marketers we all want to be able to leave relevant, do-follow comments. It’s a pity that spammers spoil this privilege for us. The Akismet plug-in does seem to be effective, and that gives some hope. If we all had to stop comments because of spam it would squelch the sharing of information as well as make it that much more difficult to leave backlinks at relevant sites. Thanks so much as usual, for the useful and timely information
Peggy
Good posts, however there have been quite a few attacks on WordPress sites and all sorts of hacks. I mean just check out what is happening with the Linkdozer blogs and similar, it’s scary.
Btw, I’ve been meaning to check out the Wealthy Affiliate, but I think they’ve rencently raised their prices? That’s why I’ve been a bit put off from joining…
Gina
So the internet is all going to change into wordpress sites. This doesnt encourage webdesign from the basic level. People are being lazy and putting in wordpress.
Activity on a site is another silly thing from Google, Alot of sites on the internet are for information and not for interacting with , with comments etc.. And why should a website that teaches you something have a whole bunch of social media functions..
Ahh maybe Google will buy up wordpress, or develop there own wordpress system!
Low PR backlinks have decreased in value with the recent couple modifications to the Google Search Algorithm. Has the need for creating backlinks to help your SEO campaign ended? I don’t believe so. It is simply time to improve the quality of the sites your linking back from and build better content within the backlinks.
Great recommendation. Updated content is always pleasing to the eyes so google is doing a great work.CMS & Social Media = Great results !
its actually every few months to be precise about changing algos. But one thing i have always noticed that constant updating of website with fresh content and changes to the page ranks it higher (if other things are exactly the similar)
yep definately good content …for sure…. it’s great to see that you’re posting some new stuff here !
ps vita…
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After reading a wealth of infomation about SEO i transformed my site and managed to get ranked top of the maps, and organic listing but now ive vanished! there is one particular pc repair company that is always top of the list no matter what, and i just cant work out why! as for google biasing towards wordpress sites i totallly agree with “Lee Koh Samui” why on earth would you want to control the internet by forcing web developers/designers on making wordpress sites HOW BORING WOULD THE INTERNET BE!!!
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