Is Wordpress overkill for Google Display Network?

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pizzafari

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Jan 15, 2009
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Consider this: I can create a slick review/presell minisite in static HTML with Dreamweaver or a text editor. And I can create an equally slick one in Wordpress. They look the same.

Problem is, the Wordpress version takes MUCH longer to build. Time is money. Because I can work faster with static HTML (Dreamweaver/text-editor), I can obviously build and test more.

So then why would I use Wordpress? Because my traffic source for these is Google Display Network (formerly called Content Network), and I keep hearing about how much Google rewards Wordpress sites.

But is that really true for their Display Network? I know Wordpress is the darling of the SEO crowd, but this is PPC I'm doing. And the Display Network is not Google's primary focus like the Search Network.

As best I can tell, the Display Network's top three priorities for getting cheap clicks are: 1) CTR 2) Relevance of the ad to it's theme 3) LP quality - so even according to Google, my offer LP may be of least importance.

And lets face it, the person looking at my presell minisite doesn't care if it's Wordpress or Static.

So I ask - do I REALLY need Wordpress for a minisite which will be promoted on Google Display Network, or is static HTML (Dreamweaver) good enough?
 


Use static, and add a contact, privacy, about and login page. If it's banking, add three or five pages of static content and a sitemap. These are trivial expenses of money and time if the page is converting.


Frank
 
Okay, I might be missing something here, but how the fuck is google going to know what your back-end is? You could easily code up a static site that mimics WordPress...
 
fm1234, that's pretty close to what I'm doing with WP now; a slick homepage, about 10 pages of content, and the usual boilerplate pages (privacy, contact, about us, etc) They're not single-page landers. I've done these in WP, but I can do them so much faster (and better looking) in static. I've tried a lot of WP themes, but none of them allow me the flexibility to do what I can on my own with a text editor (or Dreamweaver) and Photoshop.

jz1297, the backend of WP is pretty substantial, the Google spiders know what to look for.



Otherwise AFAIK, QS for the Display/Content Network is always stated as:

A Quality Score is calculated for your ad each time it's eligible to appear on a Display Network placement. The following factors are considered:

* The relevance of the ad and keywords to the placement
* Your ad's performance history on that and similar placements <--- aka CTR
* The quality of your ad's landing page

However, I've seen places where CTR is ranked as #1 over relevance, but either way, LP quality always seems to be ranked in least importance for Display Network QS.


I'm seriously thinking that although WP is great for Google SEO and maybe Adwords Search landers, maybe it's not that important for the Display Network, as long as you have a decent static site with a few pages of content and the usual boilerplate pages. Anyone disagree?
 
You can do everything very easily using free wp themes which are specially design for mini site.

Google love wp and index ur content faster.I know the time when i love static site but by time i release how important wp site is for good ranking/indexing.
 
Hmm, you could also use your static html files as WordPress templates, then create dummy posts/pages in WP and assign the appropriate template to them. At that point, WP would exist, but would just be serving up your static HTML for you. You just have to make sure that your links in the static html point to the appropriate slugs for the WP posts/pages.
 
jz1297, that's a good idea, and I actually did something like that a while back: I made the homepage static, and installed WP in a subdirectory under home. The static homepage pointed to links within the WP. However, at the time I was doing this for design reasons, not "Google QS".


jalpari, I appreciate the response, but think about it: why do I need my minisite to rank, if I'm promoting it on the Display Network? I think this is what got me down the wrong path of using WP -- listening to the SEO crowd for things related to paid traffic, which they aren't really into.

The more I look into the Display network QS, it's really mostly about CTR and ad relevance. "LP quality" is of much lower importance, and IMO, they probably only have "LP quality" in there as a legal catch-all to ban sites they don't like.

I think I'm at the point where I'm just going to ditch WP and just use static minisites (with some php includes) for the Display network.
 
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