Seo Test - Real Search Engine Tests

What’s best for SERPs, HTML site or Blog?

This is an update from my previous post about Blog vs HTML sites in the search engines. Well I can confirm the results are clear, the blog page leaves the html page blown out of the water by an incredible amount, not just a few places but hundreds of places in the search results.

However.. I may have jumped to conclusions, not about the difference in results but in what I was actually testing.  I have since tested the HTML sites with the W3 validator and it turns out the pages are quite poorly coded. So even though the test is still something very important, I’m still not completely sure what the test is. Is this Blog vs Html or Valid html vs bad html. The tests are back on so I’ll be back as soon as I have some concrete results, shouldn’t be too long.

In the meantime ponder this…

Five test sites, all one page, all url keyworded for a reasonably competetive word.

• One blogspot, one wordpress site. two blogs on own domain and one html site on own domain. Blogspot site =  don’t even make it into the top 1000
• Wordpress site and two blogs on own domian, all around the same spot give or take ten places. Position is within the top 100 results.
• HTML site position just under 600.

Another three test sites, slightly more competetive, two blogs on own domain, one HTML site…

• The two blogs (one page sites with no backlinks) are both close together within the top 300 results.
• The html site, over two hundred pages now indexed, over one hundred back links, still not listed for keyword.

New test sites. Two sites as identical as possible without becoming duplicate. Same url names (keyword), one a .net and the other a .com. Not very competetive. Both set up exactly same time and both indexed the same day.

• Blog - position 11
• HTML - position 114

That’s over one hundred places in the results page for a non competetive term. The only thing I need to figure out now is whether this is blog or valid code. Whichever one it is I am shocked that I can find no one else reporting this. The only reference is SEO’ers saying Google prefers valid code, some say the difference is minimal. I say it’s time the re-checked their tests, or actually done some before giving their opinions.

Posted on January 2nd, 2008