How much weight does Google place on the CMS?

[browndog]

My site continues to drop in numbers, it's very slow and gradual 1-2% per month, but it drops despite new content being constantly added, articles updated, original diagrams or photographs used to show what widgets and widgetitis look like etc. I spend a huge amount of time researching and really go out of my way to make the content as good as possible.

The only weak spot I am aware of with the site (from my admittedly bias viewpoint) is that the CMS (Joomla) is a very old version. We are so close to the edge now (my Adsense income is the only income I earn) that I am getting pretty scared. I am thinking of one final effort to save the site from oblivion by finding some money and updating to either the latest version of Joomla or switching to Wordpress.

I am just curious as to how much weight Google places on the actual site. I know everybody says content is king, I'm not convinced of that myself. Is it worth borrowing the money for an upgrade or would it not make that much difference?

[Peter_S]

Your loss of traffic might not be related to the CMS you use. It can simply be because each days tons of new web pages are created worldwide, and certainly covering your niche too. Google also refines its ranking algorithms, which can impact your traffic in a way or another.

About your CMS, the only point which can have a negative impact, is if it makes your site terribly slow to load, or / and not mobile friendly.

[martinibuster]

Several trends are converging. So yes, it's a bit stormy and here's why:

1. Update your Joomla version. There could be performance issues at best and hacking, Trojan, virus problems at worst.

2. Mobile. Very disruptive. Spend a couple days on your site exclusively on mobile. Do you love it? If you don't then fix.

3. HTTPS. Failure to switch WILL result in lost traffic, I 100% assure you of this but I won't explain right now (I'm tired of seeing my original insights show up unattributed on whiteboards and keynotes, serious!).

4. Speed is a factor that's making or breaking websites today.

5. Facebook is disrupting the way people interact with information.

[nomis5]

I don't think that G cares one jot what version of CMS you have and neither does it care what the system is.

If the old version of Joomla has security holes in it which might affect your ranking, then an update is worth thinking about. Performance might well be the primary issue with older versions (any version for that matter because Joomla and Wordpress are notoriously code inflated) so that may be worth weighing up the costs versus the benefits on that basis.

Your site is mobile friendly? If not, then forget the CMS, get mobile friendly first.

HTTPS may well be a factor in the future for information websites, but I can't see it having any affect at the moment. For ecommerce sites you'd be crazy not to have it right now.

As for borrowing money to prop up a failing website, my sincere advice is don't go down that route unless you are 100% clear on the financial implications. Even if you spend the money in an effective manner, and that's a big IF, I doubt you will begin to see any improvement in income for a year or so.

Content is king, but only in conjunction with 50+ other factors.

[martinibuster]

...but I can't see it having any affect at the moment.

It can most definitely have an effect. There's a bug that will cause non-http sites to lose traffic.

Don't ask me to elaborate, I've said too much already.

Good luck,
;)

Roger Montti

[nomis5]

Matinibuster - when will you be able substantiate what you say? If it' a bug, surely the bug will soon be corrected and the effect will only be temporary?

I just can't see it, at this point in time, having any effect on my sites or others I watch. I am information sites and don't monitor eCommerce at all..

Just one tad more, not too specific comment from you, is it all sites, just eCommerce etc.?

Thanks for your

[browndog]

The site is mobile friendly although I'm not entirely happy with it. I use Duda and don't like it.

I don't have https, mainly because it costs money which I have none of.

To upgrade to Joomla, I need to do it in two steps apparently as the current software is too old. Again, not something I can afford.

I spent yesterday tinkering with Wordpress and managed to set up a basic test site and have been figuring out their templates. I spoke to one place who quoted me $700 US to convert to WP. The site has 700 articles, which he said would need 301's? So right now the url would be: www.mysite.com/widget-info/wigititis. I'm assuming that would not be the case with WP.

This is a last ditch attempt to save my site. It isn't the content, so it has to be something else. We are no longer earning enough to pay our bills which obviously is keeping us awake at night trying to fight off debt collectors. This is a site that is worked on 7 days a week, yet it keeps on tanking in favour of other sites, one in particular that gets 3-4 results on the first page of google on a topic. I know that sounds dramatic, but I don't know what else to do.

[martinibuster]

I'm assuming that would not be the case with WP.

Your URLs can be anything you want them to be.

[koan]

I haven't used Joomla in a long time but it had an issue in the past where it sometimes used different URLs to point to the same content, depending on where you created the link to that content (menu, in page content, etc), creating a duplicate content problem with Google. it wasn't always very SEO friendly.

[browndog]

I have been playing with WP all day and I have to say I am very impressed. It is so easy to use compared to Joomla. I just asked my very opinionated daughter which site she prefers and she said the new one. It looks very clean and loads extremely fast.

I have been using a .com.au domain name for 14 years (very long story), but started out with .com, and I still own that domain. If I am going to do this, I am thinking about switching back to .com as it's an information site, so it doesn't really need the .au prefix. I've always wondered if it puts non Australians off. I have set up three pages so far, but I can NOT figure out how to do the 301's, I've changed it in cpanel with no luck, then manually typed it in the hta file, still no luck.

The url's of the new pages I've set up are putting in the date, I don't know if that's normal.

http://widgets.com/2017/05/15/caring-for-widgets/

[edited by: not2easy at 2:39 pm (utc) on May 15, 2017]
[edit reason] readability [/edit]

[glitterball]

I imagine that your declining traffic is down to the fundamental shifts seen in recent years where google sends less organic traffic to smaller specialist websites. It's been repeated here ad infinitum, but you only have to search for any popular (monetisable) phrase and you will see that the organic results are often pushed below the fold and the knowledge graph often gives the answer directly to the searcher. Despite google fanboy comments here, virtually every face-to-face conversation I have had with people involved in SEO has concluded that Google simply sends less organic traffic than it used to.

Regarding your CMS, I concur with others in that you should update Joomla to the current version. Otherwise, you are just waiting to be hacked.

I would advise against switching to another CMS, as that may well kill your site off altogether - I have only ever had negative experiences when making big site-wide changes.

While thinking about this post, I was going to add that really the (Google) tide is against small content websites, and that the only hope is that (a). you wait it out until you are the last man standing and that (b). the EU will finally act to break-up Google once the UK have left.
However, I now realise that, for me, in many cases, I already am the last man standing and that is not even enough anymore.

[martinibuster]

The url's of the new pages I've set up are putting in the date, I don't know if that's normal.

That's the default behavior. You need to find the PERMALINKS setting and adjust how the links appear. Create CATEGORIES with a specific URL (SLUG). Google How To Permalinks and check out any of the posts in WPBeginner, it's a useful site.

Good luck,

Roger

[mack]

When you say the page is mobile friendly but you are not happy with it. Is this something that you suspect your users will also be experiencing. If pages have an unusually high bounce rate, this may well be a factor.

Mack.

[keyplyr]

I don't have https, mainly because it costs money which I have none of

Why does it cost money? I've switched over a dozen sites to HTTPS without any cost at all.

Secure certificates are now free, see:
Lets Encrypt [letsencrypt.org]

Not serving secure pages to your visitors will definitely cause loss of traffic.

If your pages are not HTTPS all browsers now show warnings, both desktop & mobile. This scares people and they won't come back.

Non-secure sites also do not benefit from the boost in ranking given to secure sites.

Non-secure sites do not benefit from the boost in speed given to secure sites over HTTP/2.

Users are now expecting to see the green lock in the URL bar... the list goes on.

What Will Happen if I Don't Switch to HTTPS? [webmasterworld.com]

[masterjoe]

There is ZERO impact for switching to https. I have done it on 2 sites now, and it does cause a drop for a few weeks. However, keywords positions stayed pretty much exactly the same, and likely moved because I obtained some links. The only reason I switched was for the green lock and not the ugly broken one... but either way, Google is BS'ing again when it comes to any "boost". Yes they said it was small, but I was hoping for a little more than nil effect.

[JesterMagic]

Switching to the latest version of Joomla will be your easiest option and you don't have to worry about setting up 301 redirects (which are very important if you do switch to Wordpress). Joomla really has improved a lot in the last few years.

What CMS you use is not important to Google at all. Google does sometimes care about what version of CMS you are using. Some CMS's you can setup to show the CMS and version number. By using this info with the popular CMS's like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, Google can sometimes determine if your site has been hacked or is hackable. If there is a known security hole in the CMS Google will check to see if it has been patched.

ALWAYS, ALWAYS keep your CMS up to date. Hackers are continuously scanning websites for vulnerabilities. If your version is a number of years old I would be surprised if it is not hacked already.

[not2easy]

I agree that the simplest and smartest move would be to update your Joomla. WP is simpler to use, but also the best reason that there are sooo many sites using WP.

WordPress can be hardened, but out of the box it is a target and if you want to switch it should be done in an orderly way, not out of desperation. WP requires a plan before installing so that your permalinks are set up the way you want from day one.

There is a lot of helpful advice for using WP in our WP forum: [webmasterworld.com...] and also at the WP codex: [codex.wordpress.org...]

Before you take on rewrites, visit the Apache forum: [webmasterworld.com...] and you can learn how/why to do it right yourself. I would not want my rewrites handled by CP. As wonderful as it may be for adding free https, it does not always manage rewrites as expected and especially not with WP which generates its own URLs internally. Doing it right saves you so many headaches later that it pays to get a good plan put together before making major changes.

[browndog]

Thanks so much everyone, you talked sense into me :)

I'm having Joomla upgraded to the latest version and a new responsive template made and a more up to date theme (hadn't liked that for quite some time either).

I am still unsure what I will do with the .com, if I should run two sites, eventually look at redirects. I'll do one thing at a time.

In regards to my mobile site, some pages have ads all over them, others don't, I've tried fiddling with the template, but that doesn't seem to fix it. I've never been happy with the responsive site. I can write, but the technical side of things is certainly not a strong point, which is why I prefer to get outside help.

I do still really like Wordpress, and if I had my time again, probably would have gone with that, it is very intuitive compared to Joomla, but having had Joomla for such a long time, I know it fairly well.

Thank you not2easy, I will go and have a look at that. The redirects has me totally stumped.

Oh, I looked into switching to https about a year ago and was under the impression you had to pay, I will re-visit that. I thought it was sites that requested your information (such as login pages)...so wasn't overly concerned because my forums are pretty much dead now, so it's really only the article pages people visit. I'll take a look.

[keyplyr]

I looked into switching to https about a year ago and was under the impression you had to pay, I will re-visit that. I thought it was sites that requested your information (such as login pages)...so wasn't overly concerned because my forums are pretty much dead now, so it's really only the article pages people visit. I'll take a look.

*All* pages must be HTTPS now.

[Paddy Displays]

Its sounds like you have a very old version of joomla if you have to do 2 steps to upgrade and if i were you I would check to see if you have been hacked already. I have seen loads of joomla sites that have been hacked with spam pages put in sub folders about gambling, pron, drugs and linking out (using your link juice). So while your site might not seem like its hacked to you, you have all this crap on the domain which gives bad signals to google. Having said that google is good at picking up on this and warning you in wmts but worth checking, I think you should pick up on it if you google search site:yourdomain.com.au

[tangor]

There is some consideration about moving to the .com in that the .au does geo-localize your site more specifically. On the other hand, if your site is .au centric, there's no pressing need to change---though it might help.

[JesterMagic]

Agree with tanqor. If your website targets just visitors from Australia then stick with your original domain else you may want to make a change but I would wait a while until after upgrading your website to let things sort out on the search engines. The same with https, don't do it at the same time as something else. Make sure you have a Google Search Console account for your website so you can monitor your changes.

With https most webhosts now offer SSL for free to there customers. It's easy to turn on but you will have to make sure redirects are setup correctly to point everything from http to https (among a few other things great topics on WebmasterWorld which talk about this). If you host your own site on your own server things are a little more difficult to setup (as they have to be renewed every few months to a year) but you can get a SSL certificate for free now so there should be no cost.

[browndog]

Thanks everyone. I agree with you, JesterMagic, I'm going to do one thing at a time. Right now, the site is being upgraded and a new responsive template being made. After this, I'll look into https. But to be honest, it hurts my head a little thinking about the redirects and what that involves.

The site is a general information site, it is not Australia specific. It started out as .com but I was registered with a dodgy webhost and they didn't want to give me my site name back. It was a huge deal at the time (2003) with many sites affected. I was 39 weeks pregnant with my first child and it was just easier to cut my losses and move to .com.au. I did eventually get .com back, but the other site was up and running, so I just left it. It's been that way ever since. I do wonder if the .au might put overseas readers off.

[tangor]

Maybe not "off" but could move that potential first click to second or third.... In most cases you really want that FIRST click!