Musa Aykac|February 18, 2010|9

WordPress or Joomla?

We all know the saying that content is king when it comes to SEO. The problem lies in updating that content when you’ve got a huge site. I remember trying to update some pages on one of my sites a few years back. I wish I could say that I remember it fondly. CMS applications have made this process a lot easier and that’s why many web developers, especially those running blogs, have turned to them. It much more convenient to make changes and this can help with fine tuning meta tags, title tags, alt tags, etc., which is a big part of SEO.

Anyone reading about CMS applications will undoubtedly come across the debate as to whether they are really useful when it comes to SEO. Most of this is actually centred on WordPress, which typically cannot handle very large sites and has plug-ins that can go either way when it comes to helping or hurting your SEO efforts. Personally, even though WordPress is undoubtedly the easiest CMS application to use, I’m backing Joomla. Why?

•    Joomla features include page caching for improved performance and the use of RSS feeds.
•    Joomla has a lot of plug-ins available which can increase the content of your site by linking to Wikipedia articles etc., thereby improving its importance in the eyes of the search engines.
•    Joomla gives webmasters more freedom in terms of the number of things they can do. It can even create URLs that are more easily read by search engines.
•    Joomla allows the insertion of custom code into its own, making it easy to integrate revenue programs such as Google AdSense or tracking code such as Google Analytics.

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About Musa Aykac

Musa is the founder of SEOTops and has been in the internet marketing industry since a young age.
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  • http://chrishershberger.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/wordpress-or-joomla/ WordPress or Joomla? « Christian Hershberger

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  • http://twitter.com/therichbrooks Rich Brooks

    We develop Web sites in both Joomla and WordPress, and I’d have to say that they both offer SEO tools.

    On your bullet points:

    * I’m not clear that caching improves SEO and WP is all about the RSS feeds. It started out, after all, as a blogging platform.

    * WP also had loads of plugins, including lots of SEO specific plugins. I’m not sure which one has the most, but they both have more than enough in this category.

    * WP offers exactly the same thing. All the posts and pages I create on our WP sites have SEO friendly URLs, and it’s easy enough to change them or go through an upgrade w/o upsetting the apple cart, something that’s not always true in Joomla.

    * WP also allows the insertion of custom code; we do it all the time.

    The bottom line is that both of these are great tools for SEO. What’s really important is doing a keyword analysis, using the words you uncover in your titles, headers, body copy and intrasite links, building up incoming links and updating your site frequently.

    For me, it comes down to the size and complexity of the site. For really big or complex sites I lean towards Joomla, for most business sites, WP is more than enough. You can build successful, search engine friendly sites in either Joomla or WP.

  • http://vanna-dream.ru aleks

    WP or Joomla? – but its really a different engines/

  • aboe hanah

    To make it fair, maybe we should make a camparation between two sites, one by WP and another by Joomla. Which one wil be succeed in SEO. Very interesting.

  • http://www.adwordskeywordtool.org Nash

    I’ve basically used wordpress for all my websites. I was told that I should also look at Joomla, but I think wordpress works just fine.

    Traditionally, wordpress is for blogging. But if you find the right theme, it can be transformed to a mini site.

    The best thing about wordpress is that it’s SEO friendly. But you need to choose the right plugin for this.

    Nash

  • http://getxposed.net Tony

    I agree with Rich, when you have a good understanding of both it’s easy to recommend which on suites your project requirements. Neither is better than the other, although WP auto-update software functions are awesome and would love to see them in joomla.

    Also, From my experience I think it’s easier to get the most speed/cache enhancements on WP (both CMS’s have great plug-ins for this)… I think you need more server knowledge to get the same out of joomla.

  • http://www.squareleaf.net Steve

    I always found Joomla to be too restrictive. It was great for doing simple stuff and it was great as long as you wanted it to work as the developers intended. As soon as you tried to do something a bit different it got messy.

    Maybe I just never gave it enough time.

    I’m a total WP head and so hopelessly biased towards that. It’s wealth of plugins dwarfs Joomla’s. WP has shown itself to be very versatile in being able to build not only blogs, but also CMSs, galleries, forums, and so on.

    In terms of SEO I don’t see that WP has any faults at all – it’s very configurable in that area.

  • http://www.webcodez.net Webcodez.net – Web Development

    Very interesting article, espacialy for me since i have to decide wether to use joomla or WP for a client´s work.

    My own experience is that joomla though it has a user-panel like WP is mroe difficult to master in regards of setting up posts, internal linking and setting up the modules, getting the right “plugins” and addons (most are outdated).

    Thus i would recommend to use WP for smaller blogs and people who don´t know any bit of HTML/PHP and rather use CMSs like Typo3 and Joomla for bigger and more professional projects.

  • Ian G. Lang

    WP and Joomla started at opposite ends of the road. They’re both about the middle now. I wouldn’t run a huge corporate site on WordPress, but I’d run one on Joomla.

    Joomla is my CMS of choice.

    BAD: I’m disappointed with the changes to licensing which forced a lot of good extentions off the Joomla site.

    GOOD: I’m happy with the new shiny features that will be in J!1.6.

    SAME: Extensibility? Both.

    GOOD: I find J! to be more friendly to code customization and theme generation.

    My good friend (and designer) swears by WordPress and that’s his CMS of choice. He could counter every one of my points.

    They’re exactly the same. But different.