Tags on non-wordpress.com hosted WordPress blogs?

  • welshbandsweekly · Member ·

    Hi,

    The company I work for may be offering a blog setup service for some of our customers. My boss would rather do this by hosting these blogs through the hosting services we offer (obviously, because then he could charge for hosting), but I have a funny feeling this will mean our customers will not benefit from the SEO advantages of using tags, which they would get from hosting their blogs at wordpress.com (and with SEO being the point of offering a blog setup service, it seems to me it would defeat the object if we hosted the blogs ourselves).

    Am I right, or is it indeed possible to still benefit from the SEO value of tags if we host WordPress blogs on our own servers?

    Thanks,

    Debs

  • options · Member ·

    hi,

    totally not sure which exactly SEO advantages of using compulsory .com global tags you are talking about.

    if all that global tags malarkey is an advantage, then I’m either a banana, or a spanish pilot even.

  • welshbandsweekly · Member ·

    OK I probably didn’t explain myself very well.

    In my own personal WordPress blog – hosted at wordpress.com – I use tags for each post (for example, “swn festival cardiff”). People searching on Google for “swn festival cardiff” get SERPs that return not only links to sites that mention swn festival cardiff, but also WordPress tag lists for swn festival cardiff. Further, posts on my wordpress.com blog seem to be indexed by Google a zillion times faster than the same stories hosted on my own website (welshbandsweekly.com).

    This is what I mean by the SEO advantages of using tags and using wordpress.com blogs.

    My question, really, is this: will we still get the same advantages if we host a wordpress blog at blog.mycustomerwebsite.com?

    Hope that’s clearer…

    Thanks

    Debs

  • welshbandsweekly · Member ·

    Gah right OK, I see what you mean.

    While I appreciate the politics behind the post you directed me to, it still doesn’t really answer my question :)

    I’m tasked to find an answer, goddammit…

    Anyone know?

    Ta

    Debs

  • myronhoward · Member ·

    There are SEO plugins available for WordPress.org blogs at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=seo

    There are also Tag plugins at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tags/tags

    There is also a forum for WordPress.org blogs at http://wordpress.org/support/

  • welshbandsweekly · Member ·

    Ahh that’s very helpful – thanks very much.

    Debs

  • options · Member ·

    all’s well, if only any of that plugins and forums mentioned, would have something to do with the OP’s original question about alleged SEO advantages of using wordpress.com global tags and its blogs per se.

    not sure how that may help to find an answer, as that’s looking more like it comes to nothing, goddammit…

    well, of course, the OP’s boss might themselves want to establish a peculiar linking practices, similar to the ones that Matt has on .com, but then they need to hire a professional and, before that even, make sure somehow that Goog will as well turn a blind eye to yet another spamdexing link-farm.

    otherwise their entire domain with all its hosted blags may be fired from the goog’s index for the quite a long period of time.

  • welshbandsweekly · Member ·

    @Options:

    I don’t really understand what you’re trying to say… All I can make out is that you have something against someone called Matt and seem to think that my boss wants to set up a link farm (absolutely not!)

    But hey – thanks for trying :)

  • raincoaster · Member ·

    If I may…

    The global tag system here does lend huge googlejuice to WP.com blogs; it is simply not available to blogs that are not WP.com blogs (staff have confirmed this). You can use Technorati tags etc on independently hosted blogs, and you can also set up your own multi-user WordPress install in your own webspace and make your own global tag pages, but with 1.75 million blogs on WP.com, you’ll never approach the SEO advantage that we enjoy here.

    Does that clarify?

  • welshbandsweekly · Member ·

    @raincoaster:

    Perfectly! Thanks very much – exactly the answer I was looking for ;)

    Ta

    Debs

  • options · Member ·

    deb, I’m sorry for the possible confusion, it’s possible I was rather terse (it definitely takes some background to get the pith), but that’s because I’m already rather sick of repeating the obvious trivia.

    so, the short answer to your question: “whether your customers will benefit from the SEO advantages of using .com global tags”, is NO, they won’t, just because there ain’t such advantages for them, in particular, indeed.

    there are persistent tales here, supported by the unsubstantiated, generalized statements only, about alleged SEO advantages, but they are nothing but yet another made up myth, being spun out by the automattic Kool-Aid, targeted at the clueless masses, who are mostly ignorant technically and SEO -wise, but all are big into hit-whoring instead.

    and yes, the global tag system (aka link-farm) here drives traffic to the .com tag pages, however this does not provide any alleged “google-juice” to the individual .com blogs proper.

    real google-juice is all about PageRank. as I repeatedly said here, and no one has refuted it yet, GT, don’t affect it in the least way. and if you want your PR get boosted, then I’m all agree with Andy (one of the .com devs):

    Come on, post something worth linking to and you’ll earn a PageRank.

    Call me a purist but I don’t care for SEO tricks.

    > People searching on Google for “swn festival cardiff” get SERPs that return not only links to sites that mention swn festival cardiff, but also WordPress tag lists for swn festival cardiff.

    yep, those SERP rather return links to .com’s global tags, instead of links to the relevant .com blogs posts itself.

    still can’t get it, where’s the advantage said for you exactly (but honestly)?

    and no, I don’t have anything against ‘someone called Matt’ (btw, a big expert in some really hot ñato special SEO practises), he’s just yet to answer several simple questions:

    1. why can’t I opt-out from the GT?
    2. what’s wrong with a compromise implementation a la Flickr?
    3. why so called Mature .com blogs (which don’t benefit from GT at all) are forced to link into it?

    and yes, you can also set up your own multi-blog WP version (for whatever strange reasons called as “multi-user”) hosting it on your own, but, obviously, you won’t be able to make your own global tag pages yourself, because this proprietary closed-source feature is not included in the core distribution. that’s why I said you’ll need to hire a pro. also, because such linking practises are effectively nothing but link-farms, that are spamming SE indexes, they may get punished — that’s why I also suggested to warrant it beforehand. and that’s all about it.

    “Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don’t add much value for users coming from search engines.”

    don’t beleive me? then just ask another Matt (yet he’s a friend of the former one ;-), comments are still opened.

    so the bottom line is, if you want your customers to bring additional traffic to the Automattic’s tag pages, then, yes, stick with .com;

    but if you want to provide your customers with advantages like blogs with sane navigation and usability, blogs that don’t involved into/rely on SEO gaming etc, i.e. all what .com users are deprived from, then you need something else.

    HTH

    “Reckoners without their host must reckon twice.”

    — Camden

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