WordPress vs Old Style HTML – an Example

I’ve have a site called “Domain Star” that first went online October 9, 2004. That’s according to the Way Back Machine. It’s at http://domain-star.com. So for years it was an HTML site and it did OK with Google searches but it never ranked anything except a Google PageRank 0. Here is what it looked like for the last few years:

Not too bad really. I build it using Dreamweaver CS3 using one of their built in CSS templates. I got all the graphics from one of my favorite free and public domain spots: the NASA image gallery. So every page was hand tuned for SEO manually where I inserted the tags myself like old school. And I had some text on every page and some links to the site… and I used it thousands of times myself during each year to purchase and maintain way over 1200 domains that I bought through the site. But there was a nagging problem. The fat zero I always got from Google for my PR.

A couple weeks ago I built a new site for it on WordPress using a great Nick Roach Theme called Chameleon and it had an optional “roundabout” slider. Really beautiful to look at. I used the all-in-one-seo plugin to configure my SEO and I only manually configured the homepage. I even added 4 or 5 affiliate links on the sidebar for my favorite themes and hosting partners. (Not that I will ever make a penny from them – lol). Just as an experiment for some laughs. The end result…

I went to Google PageRank 1 within 24 hours.

That’s service for you. That’s one of the many powers of WordPress and that’s why I switched to building WordPress sites commercially in 2008. One of my favorite things to say in the business is that “Google Loves WordPress“. Yeah, so true. One of the biggest reasons I instantly was promoted is that the interlinking on a WP site is so good. It’s got what some in the business call “linky goodness“. Plus the site looks incredibly good. This is a top professional theme right now. Take a look here:

So my point is that WordPress is better than old style HTML for dozens of reasons but this is clearly one of the best. Google rewarded a site that had been online for 7 years with PageRank just because I converted it to WP.

Thanks WordPress !!