Wordpress vs hand built pages

[jonpoh]

I have about 10 sites all hand built, mostly html pages. My highest earning site is a collection of videos we produced about a particular sport. Again, all html pages hand coded. A while back I tried using a "youtube style" site platform for my videos, it looked great but earnings dropped by 90% the next day. (clicks value dropped from .23 to about .03 each) So I removed it and went back to the static pages, all is back to normal with earnings.

Now I am trying out wordpress on a review site I am developing. Does anyone have any experience using wordpress with adsense that they care to share? Do you feel that you are on equal footing with hand coded HTML sites or do you see wordpress earning less?

Also does anyone have any idea why my click value dropped so badly when i switched to the Video Content Management Software?

[netmeg]

I have both static sites and WP sites, they all perform well, but if you're changing platforms, you have to give it time. If the layout is different, AdSense may have to figure out what your site is about again. If your ad layout is different, people don't know what to click. But shutting it down in one day doesn't tell you a thing about what might have gone wrong.

[CenSin]

My static pages website perform very well, compare with the combination of all my cms and blogging sites.

And because of curiosity, I've just make my wp site leaner by stripped all unnecessary meta tags, comments in html, turn off feed, etc.
The site load faster now, and the html source looks more simple.

My static site has no feed, and only get human created backlinks. My dynamic sites get tons of useless backlinks thru rss, not to mention tons of duplicate content (at least the title and excerpt).

Maybe comparing the quality of static and dynamic site is like comparing Rolex with Casio. :)

[jonpoh]

I did wait a few weeks but it never went up. I was afraid that these type of CMS sites were "marked" by google in some way.

[CenSin]

@ jonpoh
Maybe you are right. :)
I have a blog with almost the same pageviews with my static site, and yet the revenue is about 1/20 of the static one. Yes, there are lots of factors to consider, but the difference is huge.

[netmeg]

I did wait a few weeks but it never went up. I was afraid that these type of CMS sites were "marked" by google in some way.

That would be pretty ridiculous in that it would deprive Google of some significant revenue from some pretty high quality (and high profile) sites.

[explorador]

This is not new, several webmasters have reported changes in traffic and specially income when changing of CMS from hand made pages. Causes? not sure. I can comment on two diff scenarios.

First, I changed CMS on one site of mine, but it was about between two CMS created by me. Things went well but I think is related to the final code, the html was 95% the same with a slightly new design, mostly based on CSS instead of the old table+css design. I think the bots saw very little difference. Sure, I kept my link structure.

Second, I did the same with another site but used a CMS you can download, install and use. Things went ugly. This time traffic went slightly down, income went almost to zero and speed was compromised. WHY? because the CMS sucks? NO. Even as I adapted the same design, the output was heavier with unnecesary tags. I tweaked the CMS and got away with a better output but it was not as fast as the original. That's why I ended up switching back to my old system and everything went normal again. In both cases kept my link structure.

I'm not saying that by my first case I state my CMS is better, NO. I'm telling you as others webmasters state, the output (what bots see) is different, usually heavier, mixed up, not as clean and certainly NOT AS FAST. So if you change something, consider html output, layout and speed for a clean code.

I also read opinions on webmasters stating that older pages (untouched) get some sort of trust and when you change it, they might enter some kind of sandbox to revalidate. Take per example great websites bought by spammy webmasters, the first thing they do is inject stuff on trusted pages. It makes sense.

I also read here about an user who installed a template (no content yet) and saw the same kind of ads he was seeing on one of his sites using that template. I'm not sure at all about this, it's been said before among wordpress-people that X or Y template performs better than the others, but I would think is more related to code and layout (besides content).

[leadegroot]

I agree - if moving from a static html page to a cms generated page causes a drop in adsense, it has to be because the page loads slower or other technical issues.
There is no way I will believe that Adsense is penalising use of CMSes - that would just be silly!

[jinxed]

This has nothing to do with CMS's. This is to do with the output created from them.

If you switch to a CMS that creates twice as much unnecessary code and extra 'stuff' - you will notice a difference.

This is why I am creating my own CMS for my main site, which will produce pretty much the same code as the previous static pages.

But, staying static is not an option, as going dynamic will open up a whole new world of opportunities and enable many new features for my users.

[alika]

I have moved a site from static HTML (Frontpage!) to Wordpress more than a year ago, and I never saw an adverse impact from the move. I did not see any decline in Adsense revenues from the site.

I, however, made sure that I retained the same exact URL for all pages.