Where WordPress Beats Blogger, One Category You Can’t Dismiss

I go back and forth on whether WordPress.com or Blogger.com is the better place for free blog hosting. Certainly each of them have pros and cons, and it’s true that there are several things I prefer about Blogger. From a recent post I made on this subject: Common opinions are that WordPress doesn’t allow JavaScript or AdSense… Blogger is owned by Google which could boot you if they don’t like the content… WordPress has a better forum… Blogger is easier to use… the arguments go on and on.

The post went on to discuss how Blogger has added statistic monitoring back in July of 2010. This was an area that WordPress used to have entirely on Blogger, but no longer. Although now that I’ve had a few months to really delve into the stats from both blogs, I’ve discovered something of monumental importance.

For my blogs, WordPress is much better with SEO (search engine optimization), and it’s not even close!

Here’s a bit of background. I have two blogs, one with WordPress and one with Blogger. I’ve had the shorter-named, custom domain Blogger one (thebigbangauthor.com) since 2005 but didn’t get into a steady habit until Feb. 2008, so approximately 3 years of regular blogging there and 110 posts. My WordPress blog is a long and non-custom domain (ebooksuccess4free.wordpress.com) that I’ve only had since Feb. 2010 for about 10 months and 55 posts. Some posts I actually repeat on each blog while other posts are markedly different. I try to maintain them equally about once or twice a week, and I always do similar methods of SEO efforts like labels, categories, tags, alt image text, link building and so on. I truly love them both like two great pets.

When I analyze the results of the search engine traffic, which obviously means how absolute strangers found my posts through search engines, it’s amazing how many more visitors arrive at my WordPress blog than at Blogger.

For example, on one of the posts that I repeated at both locations, a Google search for the term “2epub” has led just 8 visitors to Blogger over 5 months, while that same term led 97 visitors to WordPress in just 3 months.

On Blogger, only 10 main search terms have produced 2 or more visitors in the past 5 months. At WordPress, over 50 search terms have sent 2 or more visitors to it. I also check these search terms to see if my blogs really come up on the first page of Google, and they do.

When I analyze individual keywords and phrases that land one of my sites on the Google front page, it’s not even close. My WordPress blog is head and shoulders better in this regard. No wonder it gets consistently better traffic by nearly three times, even though I promote them about the same. And that’s why we blog, isn’t it: to get traffic?

Blogger, I love you, especially for the joy of JavaScript gadgets. But just as some dogs are better at fetching while others are better at guarding the house, WordPress is the kind of dog that’s better at showing up on the Google front page.

You know the strange part? Blogger is owned by Google, but WordPress works better in a search. Weird.
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WordPress or Blogger, Blogger or WordPress? No Longer a Question of Statistics

Article first published as Blogger or WordPress: Do Stats Compare? on Technorati.

Blogger or WordPress, WordPress or Blogger? What’s the best free blogging host? It’s the Coke-Pepsi question that comes up repeatedly in Cyberspace, each with pros and cons. Common opinions are: WordPress doesn’t allow JavaScript or AdSense… Blogger is owned by Google which could boot you if they don’t like the content… WordPress has a better forum… Blogger is easier to use… the arguments go on and on.

When I wrote, How to Make, Market and Sell Ebooks All for Free, a whopping 7 months ago, the deal-clincher was the stat-monitoring with WordPress compared to nothing from Blogger. T’was hard to believe since it’s owned by Google which freely offers Google Analytics. Well, that’s all changed and the debate continues.

Way, way back in July 2010 (man, I’m so out of it sometimes) Blogger introduced this feature and quietly added it to existing blogs. Yes, I didn’t even notice until a few weeks ago. Now I can peruse traffic numbers, which posts are most popular and where people are coming from.

Blogger breaks up the page into four sections: Overview, Posts, Traffic Sources and Audience. WordPress has seven: Visits, Referrers, Top Posts and Pages, Search Engine Terms, Clicks, General and Incoming Links. A comparison of categories:

Overview and Visits- similar for both sites reporting visitor numbers by day, week, month and all-time. Blogger has the extra feature of near-live results for each hour within a day. Not hugely important but kinda fun to see what happens after a post or trying to figure where a burst of recent visitors came from. Advantage barely to Blogger.

Posts and Top Posts/Pages- both report each posting and the number of views by popularity. Advantage neither.

Traffic Sources and Referrers- handled differently as Blogger combines Referring Sites, URLs and Keywords to give a rundown of the ways visitors find your blog. WordPress just lists the referring URLs and puts Search Engine Terms and Incoming Links in a separate category. I find this of marginal value; often they lead me places where I cannot determine a link to my site and even wonder if it’s a spam-bot in action. It’s the Keywords that are most useful, as I get a feel for which search terms direct visitors. Additionally WordPress has an Incoming Links category which only lists four links to my blog (strangely all are from my Blogger blog) which is a tiny fraction of the true total. This mistake could count against WordPress, but really the advantage here is neither.

Audience- Blogger has a feature showing which country, browser and operating system the visitors represent. It seems to be grossly inaccurate since it only lists ten countries for my blog and the least common (Spain) has forty-eight visitors. There must be plenty of foreign visits from Australia, Canada and India to name a few that are suspiciously missing. It’s good to know the browser types and operating software; that Internet Explorer and Firefox are the big players as well as Windows. Also fun to see a few visitors utilized iPhones, iPads and Blackberries to visit. Since WordPress doesn’t offer this, advantage Blogger.

Clicks- WordPress has this category for what links people clicked to go elsewhere. This is smart as the most common clicks tell a blog owner what external sources visitors appreciate. Advantage WordPress.

General- within the WordPress tab of General is a subset for Subscriptions, people who have chosen to follow your blog. Could be a great way to contact others or look into networking possibilities. Advantage WordPress.

Overall, these are fairly equal. If I had to choose, WordPress would have the tiniest advantage in stats though it’s still a toss-up. Because of my love for JavaScript gadgets, I’ll probably remain teetering on Blogger’s side on the fence.
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