I am somewhat new to the whole seo game but learning quickly partly due to this forum. I am seeing quicker results in the search engines for getting almost immediate exposure with blogging. I recently got booted from wordpress.com because my blog was too "comericalized" - The tool is awesome and yes I was able to get traffic almost immediately using this blogging tool using some of the tips from this chat forum -First question: Do the search engines favor blogs over regular websites?
second question: Do the search engines favor wordpress.com over other blogging softwares?
Lastly, can anyone make a recommendation on other blogging softwares available for good seo results?

I would love to continue to use wordpress. If anyone is using wordpress and hosting it somewhere else please let me know if I can commericialize my site and seo with keywords without them being able to take away the software from me....

Thanks in Advance

I put up these questions on my blog and answered them over there.

If you simply want the WordPress Control Panel, there are other sites which give you a free sub-domain just like WordPress (shameless plug - 66 Blogs).

If you want hosting, you could find a good number of cPanel Hosts out there which have Fantastico and can setup your WordPress blog in 30 seconds like my hosting (shameless plug is located in sig :P)

Wordpress or MovableType. MT is only if you really know your stuff or are willing to learn. If you're a beginner, I'd suggest WP.

Yeah WordPress is much easier to understand. I couldn't get the hang of MT, people said it's pretty powerful and all that though..

MT is very powerful, which is one of the things that sold me on it initially. I'm a power slave though. I want the 3hp blender and the big block chevy leafblower. I spent months learning how to hack the living you-know-what out of MovableType and when all was said and done, I wasn't using any functions that I couldn't have had straight out of the box with WordPress.

That being said, MT is teh sup3r l33t h4x0r CMS. kthx?

Get a hosting provider that offers WordPress out of the box. Go to wordpress.org and click "hosting" to obtain a list of the recommended by WP.
You'll be able to make your blog as "comercialized" as you like this way.

As for the questions: you'll get traffic by applying SEO techniques and making others link to your blog. I suppose Wordpress.com blogs get more traffic as a result of Wordpress.com getting more traffic.

I definitely recommend wordpress. It has seo urls and is very easy to get used to. Just find some cheap hosting and a domain name so you can host your own blog.

Originally Posted by Moelman

I definitely recommend wordpress. It has seo urls and is very easy to get used to. Just find some cheap hosting and a domain name so you can host your own blog.

Make sure you read up on how to optimize a wordpress site, though. And as always, if you're putting contextual advertisements on the site, avoid the word "blog".

Wordpress all the way It's very versatile.

Speaking of wordpress...

Searchengineland and Seomoz report on the hacking of Greywolf's blog , Stuntdubl, and a few other major seo blogs.

As for the current discussion, I haven't used wordpress or any of the other solutions so I don't have any personal opinion. But I do know that a lot of non-newbie bloggers use wordpress these days.

That happened yesterday, but it was quickly fixed and this never happened before with WordPress. It's still decent software.

Hmmm...I'm thinking WordPress, too! :thumbup:

Originally Posted by AndaLE

-First question: Do the search engines favor blogs over regular websites?

In my experience... YES

May be this is due to the nature of blogs... (they are updated more often than regular websites).

Tim

Originally Posted by timtim2500

In my experience... YES

May be this is due to the nature of blogs... (they are updated more often than regular websites).

Tim

This is more important to some search engines than others. I think your top concerns should be

a.) make sure your your blog itself is optimized both for users and search engines (Page titles, SEF urls, duplicate content, comment spam protection, rpc pings, etc.)
b.) start writing and pound the pavement for backlinks.