Just my luck
God knows, I’m a bore on the subject, but it bears repeating: WordPress.com is the best platform I have ever seen, in pure SEO terms. This naturally pisses off a great number of webbies who make their living setting up sites on other platforms, including WordPress.org, but it is incontrovertible. You can set up a blog for free and test it yourself.
The latest proof is this (bear with me, it’s a convoluted tale, as are most tales which deal with my personal blog, raincoaster.com):
I’ve been celebrity blogging at Ayyyy.com, a three-year-old WordPress.org celebrity blog; it’s been part of the daily gossip link roundup conspiracy since the very beginning, and has had links from every major gossip site except TMZ and Perez Hilton. Meaning: every day, or at least three times a week, gossip blogs make posts consisting of nothing other than a bunch of links to stories on other sites; in return, those sites include those sites in their link roundups. It’s a Google-gaming device which, up until earlier this year, worked pretty well. It still works somewhat well, as you will see.
And last year, I started Lolebrity.net, a WP.org site completely focused on making fun of celebrities. It, too, has been a part of the link roundups ever since I got my hands on Ayyyy, so 92 times so far.
And about August, when I realized that Google had thrown my precious raincoaster.com (a WordPress.com blog) down a well and shot Lassie, I started including raincoaster in the link roundups, too, and running them on raincoaster so as to boost the rankings of my other sites. And what happened?
In those two short months, raincoaster.com became the 58th most important celebrity blog in the world.
Lolebrity: 39th most important celebrity blog
Ayyyy: 245th most important celebrity blog
The same blogger. The same content. A very different timeline. If you don’t think that’s a WP.com vs WP.org advantage, I invite you to go on and explain it to me, then.
raincoaster media 
Lost Weekinght
October 29, 2010
Amazing story & congratulations! I think your diligence and hard work had a little bit to do with it too, but you sold me. Where do I sign? (What was Raincoaster.com’s ranking before you started linking it, or did it not have one?)
raincoaster
October 29, 2010
It didn’t have a ranking at all before I started linking. And it’s certainly not as if I use the Celebrity tag very often; maybe five times a week. It’s bizarre.
Jennifer
October 30, 2010
During WCJeru I kept telling people, you want over the top SEO benefits, don’t look any further than WordPress.com. They kept giving me the “oh, sure, whatever drugs you’re on…” look. Next time I’m pointing them to this post!
Lost Weekinght
October 30, 2010
Are you aware that when YOU (Raincoaster) leave a comment/reply, it doesn’t notify us by email the way others’ do? It would definitely help bring people back quicker if we knew you replied.
And…the “hosting” thing keeps tripping me up. Who hosts Raincoaster.com and does that affect the SEO/ranking? User-experience? Anything?
raincoaster
October 31, 2010
Jennifer, I always invite people to test it themselves. There’s a whole industry dedicated to convincing you that you need WP.org, but the fact is most people don’t.
LW, you’re just supposed to keep refreshing the page, waiting for my eager words, I guess.
raincoaster.com is hosted by WordPress.com. And yes, that gives it a huge SEO boost and means I don’t have to deal with the technical questions or pay someone else to do it. THey have a staff to do that.
Lost Weekinght
October 31, 2010
Well, this time I got notified, but I SWEAR I wasn’t before, only on YOUR replies. I’d get everybody else’s. But just like when something goes wrong on a Mac, as soon as you complain to tech support, the problem miraculously albeit momentarily goes away.
In the meantime you are always refreshing! ;)
raincoaster
November 1, 2010
Ah, thank you!
Lindsay
November 1, 2010
That is quite amazing. If you had to advance a theory on this, what would it be? Has anyone else analyzed this? As you know I was just about to convert two sits to wordpress.org sites, but now maybe not…
raincoaster
November 1, 2010
It’s pretty straightforward:
one, WP.com is a huge site and sub-sites on a larger framework have a residual SEO bonus
two, the global tag pages are a HUGE deal. HUGE. I’ve talked about them many, many times
three, there is a very clever staff working very, very hard to make sure the backbones of the blogs are fully optimized for SEO, with all the code bits in the places Google likes to see them.
I’m sure some full-time SEO could give you more details, but those are the main reasons. Google has actually been trying to compensate for WP.com’s advantages by downgrading our blogs, but we still come out ahead of everything else.
There are good reasons to convert to .org sites, but SEO? Ain’t one of them.
atlantadings
December 21, 2010
Raincoaster,
Can you point me to a spot where I will get an overview (or maybe more) about using my wordpress.com site correctly so that it will rank well in search engines? I run a small service
business, and i want my site found for the services I provide in my geographic area. From what
I’ve read, I think Ive totally abused my tags etcetera. my site is dentrepairatlanta.com
thanks
raincoaster
January 7, 2011
Well, now that I’m back from two months of medical leave, I can help you. WordPress.com is my specialty. But I expect you’ve gotten in touch with someone else in the meantime.