wordpress.com vs wordpress.org SEO

Question

I keep reading that the SEO will be much better if you have a self-hosted wordpress.org blog versus a wordpress.com blog.

The main concepts that I know of in SEO are:

1. Relevant keywords in the text of the article
2. sites linking to your sites with the same keywords
3. h1/h2 tags
4. Relevant title
5. Relevant URL
6. meta tags

Now as far as I know 1-5 are catered for with a wordpress.com blog. On top of that its set up for making Google/Bing find you. So a wordpress.com blog will automatically submit all your posts to all the search engines - you have to install all your own plugins for wordpress.org and there's no guarantee you're doing it right.

I realise this question is similar to the one on SEO Implications of blog on site versus offsite?. I think that shows that 2 is no different whether is wordpress.com/.org

[Edit] Further to this I've found the Google statement that they ignore the meta keywords tag, so its only the meta description tag that can be added with a wordpress.org SEO plugin.

So does anyone have some (preferably quantifyable) reasons why the SEO should be so much better on wordpress.org?

Answer 1

WordPress.org (self-hosted) blogs may offer better results purely because they are more customisable than wordpress.com blogs.

Plugins such as Platinum SEO allow blog owners to optimise meta tags, descriptions, and titles on a self-hosted WordPress blog in a way that wordpress.com owners can not.

Plugins such as W3 Total Cache allow self-hosted blog owners to optimise page response times in a way that WordPress.com users can not.

That said, there should be little difference in search engine ranking between a self-hosted WordPress blog and an identical one hosted at wordpress.com.

As ever, it is more down to the person running the site than to the platform. A blogger who publishes a lot of useful, keyword-rich content on a wordpress.com blog will likely outrank someone using a self-hosted WordPress blog who makes no changes beyond the default installation and who does little to publish or promote interesting content.

Indeed, someone who cares little for site maintenance may do better to host at wordpress.com, because it is likely to offer better response times and uptime than a default WordPress installation on a budget hosting provider, and because they are likely to spend more time writing and less time tweaking.

Answer 2

I think wordpress.com might be a winner (esp in short run) but needs further investigation.

I started a blog two days ago and after finishing it, I had no idea, google is goint to touch it even in months. So I just typed my title blog on google and my blog was the first entry in the result! I dont think that is possible with a wordpress.org site.

The great thing I like about wordpress.com is the url of your blog, which is basically the same as the title of the blog that should considerably increase your page rank (I am guessing). Since this would be the same either in wordpress.com or .org site, on the long run the edge might to .org site but .com is not bad at all and it could be even better.

Answer 3

You are better off having your wordpress blog at its own domain. This will allow you more control. You can also add SEO plugin s to optimize the pages.

Sites located at wordpress.com very rarely rank in the search results.