Which is the better blogging platform

[djbaxter]

I've always wondered if Google blogs aggregate with Google better since they are owned by them.

Doubtful. What platform does Matt Cutts use?

 

[orlandosharessat]

In a attempt to provide what I consider my best answer to this question I would like to first provide just a little upfront info.

The key to which blogging platform is the best depends on several factors but none as important in my opinion than the domains authority status in Alexa. If you write post on blog platforms that do not rank high in Alexa it will be much harder to get traffic to your site and even rank your pages on the major search engines. I am not saying it is impossible but just harder.

That being said I like to use the Empower Network Blogging System. It comes with everything you would need to be successful... Their domain ranks in the top 1000 domains on the planet and gets millions of hits per month plus they use the ever valuable wordpress as the underlying platform with the SEO plugin in place

 

[djbaxter]

Alexa scores are pretty much meaningless for anything.

 

[orlandosharessat]

Please explain... I am not sure I understand your statement...meaningless in what way? I am trying to learn so please enlighten me.

 

[djbaxter]

Alexa ratings are based on visits to web pages/sites by browsers who have installed the Alexa toolbar. That is a very small percentage of people. Additionally, if you install the Alexa toolbar yourself and repeatedly click on or refreshing your own pages, you can actually watch your Alexa score increase.

Thus, the score really doesn't mean anything at all meaningful except possibly for very large and very popular websites.

See:

Wow My Alexa Ranking is Great! Should I Trust It? | SEO Book.com

Alexa is widely tooted as a must use tool by many marketing gurus. The problems with Alexa are:

• Alexa does not get much direct traffic and has a limited reach with it?€™s toolbar
• a small change in site visitors can represent a huge change in Alexa rating
• Alexa is biased toward webmaster traffic
• many times new webmasters are only tracking themselves visiting their own site

Why do many marketing hucksters heavily promote Alexa? Usually one of the following reasons:

• ignorance
• if you install the Alexa toolbar and then watch your own Alexa rating quickly rise as you surf your own site it is easy for me to tell you that you are learning quickly and seeing great results, thus it is easy to sell my customers results as being some of the best on the market
• if many people who visit my site about marketing install the Alexa toolbar then my Alexa rating would go exceptionally high
• the marketers may associate their own rise in success with their increasing Alexa ranking although it happens to be more of a coincidence than a direct correlation

A lower Alexa number means a greater level of traffic, and the traffic drops off logarithmically. You can fake a good Alexa score using various techniques, but if it shows your rankings in the millions then your site likely has next to no traffic.

Accuracy of ranking by the Alexa Toolbar

Alexa ranks sites based on tracking information of users of its Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox and from their extension for Chrome.[SUP][16][/SUP][SUP][17][/SUP] Therefore, the webpages viewed are only ranked amongst users who have these sidebars installed, and may be biased if a specific audience subgroup is reluctant to do this. Also, the ranking is based on three-month data,[SUP][18][/SUP] and thus takes a long time to reflect changes in content that may happen after the domain has been sold. Furthermore, low rankings cannot be accurate, not merely due to the paucity of data but also because of statistical laws related to the long tail distribution.

 

[orlandosharessat]

Minstrel,

Thank you for the insightful information. I honestly was not aware of the fact that your site's Alexa ranking could go up by your own site activity. So I understand fully what you are saying.

So may I ask how you would be able to truly identify if a site is an authority site? I want to ensure what I am saying is true or not true about the Empower Network Blogging platform.

Thanks again for all of the information it is very helpful and insightful...

 

[djbaxter]

So may I ask how you would be able to truly identify if a site is an authority site? I want to ensure what I am saying is true or not true about the Empower Network Blogging platform.

There is no easy way to do this, probably because "authority" is defined according to a complex mix of Google algorithms.

See:

How to Find Authority Websites & Get Links From Them - Search Engine Watch (#SEW)

Some people still rely on metrics such as Google's Toolbar PageRank or MozRank to determine a site's authority, but it's simply too easy to employ methods that mean most metrics are about as reliable as Alexa...

Today, as much as I hate to say it, you simply can't rely on any metrics to identify an authority site. You have to do the hard work and dig into it.

You can't use a tool to accurately find these sites all the time. If you spend some time on the site and trust it, it's probably the type of authority you're looking for.

Domain Authority - Best Practices for SEO | SEOmoz

What Is Search Engine Ranking Authority?

[video=youtube;ALzSUeekQ2Q]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALzSUeekQ2Q[/video]

[video=youtube_share;Mha9q2aAfdM]http://youtu.be/Mha9q2aAfdM[/video]

 

[orlandosharessat]

Awesome information thanks a ton for the follow up messages this was very insightful and valuable. I look forward to more correspondence with you on this and other topics in the future...

 

[Tigayo]

The best blogging platform for me is WordPress . It's very easy specially for beginners .

 

[queenbearn]

I use blogger but im not quite a "Blogger". hahah Im still trying to master the art of affiliate marketing and getting my website out there. Blogger hasn't been bad though. It does what i need it too.

 

[djbaxter]

But as far as I know, Blogger cannot be hosted independently on your own domain and therefore you are subject to any restrictions on content of your blogs that Blogger (i.e., Google) chooses to impose. And we already know Google isn't crazy about affiliate marketers.

Not a strategy I'd recommend.

 

[Hamiltonlog]

I still prefer WordPress. Blogger is very limited. For example, the templates are very few. WP has a ton of them. And more are added from time to time.