Dear reader, I am going to make a prediction: I feel I know you. I can tell that you are someone who is interested in Joomla, that you are familiar with the Joomla magazine and many of the people involved in this CMS. Am I right?

Well, it doesn't take a psychic connection to play the numbers game and know that most people who will read this or any article in the Joomla magazine are from the Joomla community.

How can I make that assertion? How can I be so sure that the majority are not new guests dropping in from their travels on the internet before they pick on another thread and go on their way?

Well, I have seen the stats, and I want to share with you a plan to use our strengths to make my opening statement less likely to be true, to entice more strangers to the Joomla real estate, to get our voice out into a wider world and not just talk to the locals.

What Authority do we need?

First, a recap from my last article, we touched on Domain Authority, and a synopsis is this. 

“Domain Authority is a search engine ranking score that gives a measure of how successful a site is when it comes to search engine results. It was created by software development company Moz, and gives an overview of likely search engine performance.”

Domain Authority is measured with a 0-100 number, that's a score from 0 (no authority) to 100 (highly authoritative and to be believed). I've yet to see a 0 or 100 but I have seen most scores between the two. 

Joomla.org and the other subdomains in the Joomla estate have a very high Domain Authority, 

At the time of writing, Joomla.org has a Domain Authority of 91.

Joomla:

Let us have a look at some other sites’ Domain Authority (DA)

WordPress:

Drupal:

Wix:

Shopify:

So to summarize:

Learn from those around us

So what does this tell us? Quite a bit. It means that if we write an article in our niche on our real estate then Google will assume we know what we are talking about, and will push our articles to a wide audience by posting it on the front page of the search results for the terms the article covers.

We have the backlinks that have grown organically. It is no surprise that there is a correlation between Domain Authority and backlinks. 

Backlinks from other sites that show we are an answer to questions, and a good source of information, are a key driver of domain authority.

What we don't have is the breadth of keyword terms that these other CSM systems cover in their articles.

We are a community

There's a good reason for this lack of keywords. We are a community, we talk about issues that affect the community, whether it be the sad news that one of our co-founders recently passed away or the latest development in the core. The GSoC students who have come to join us and contribute, or the latest dates for a JUG.

That's what communities share, it's what communities are about. But it's also very inward-looking and parochial. We are not writing the SEO keyword-rich articles, the blog posts pushing Joomla, we are dealing with community interests and not the interests of a wider audience.

This lack of keywords, writing, and blogs focusing on what the world is interested in, and what large volumes are searching for is translating into much lower traffic volumes. We have the authority, we have the sites but what we don't have is the writers focusing on blogs that will pull in traffic, the marketing blogs that will attract the crowds, you know the sort.

• Top 10 CMS that will boost your profits.
• Best website tools to get your business to the top
• The tools I used to make my first million

Catchy clickbait, which pulls in the reader and gets eyes on articles and traffic to sites.

They, in turn, get more backlinks, and the backlinks help the authority, so the virtuous circle continues.

But not all backlinks are of the same value; we want backlinks from sites that also have high DA, and therein lies the problem for new sites, getting the bigger sites with the worthwhile DA to backlink to them.

Simple solution, buy backlinks, right? Wrong, Google and all the analytics tools have enough data to be able to see and act on the sudden changes in backlinks that purchasing creates. If you get a big influx that looks suspicious, then you will be in for big trouble, penalized or even suspended. It will take quite a while for your reputation as a website to return. I have experimented and watched it happen. 

Linking back to the data

Here are the profiles of backlinks for the sites mentioned.

Joomla:

WordPress:

Drupal:

Wix:

Shopify:

From the above, we can see that Joomla and Drupal have a higher proportion of higher DA sites than the other CMS sites. It would be great if we can write more articles that will attract more high DA sites to link to them. For this to happen we need to write articles on all aspects of CMS sites that target the terms people are searching for.

As well as the right keywords and the search intent analysis we also need sites that meet the key objectives that search engines look to, one of the most important is load time. So let us just take a look at the load speeds of the major CMS sites

Joomla:

WordPress:

Drupal:

Wix:

Shopify:

Site Speed, Interactivity and Visual Stability

One thing to note, Joomla.org is a Joomla 3.10 site, not Joomla 4!

But not all the websites listed above are on the very latest version.

I have updated over 15 Joomla sites from Joomla 3 to Joomla 4 and all have become faster and better. So I tested one of my sites on an average server that is Joomla4. The load time dropped from 1.75 seconds to 1.04 seconds and the interactivity score dropped from 2 milliseconds to 0 milliseconds!

We have the Authority; let us use it

It's been a while since I have tested the above and it was a very pleasant surprise.

What's needed to push this message to a wider audience?

It is amazing that Joomla gets such great scores and still manages to have such a good DA with a total volunteer base and without the advertising and money that so many of the above have behind them.

What would greatly help us to get the message out about our fantastic product would be more articles addressing wider held questions, articles that use some of the clickbait tactics but deliver data-rich articles that people will want to link to, and use in their own articles.

We have the product, we have the enthusiasm, let's see what can be delivered.

My next articles will be doing just that, talking not to the core audience but to the world outside Joomla.

It would be awesome if you, dear reader, would also consider helping Joomla by linking to resources and articles from your own sites. Whether it be to the main Joomla site or some of the great articles that others have written in this, the Joomla magazine.

Have you considered joining the magazine team and using that domain authority yourself to help spread the word?

And if writing is not your forte, then why not consider just a few of the ideas unleashed in this article?

How to increase Joomla's market share