Spoiler alert! As big fans of WordPress, editors of WordPress plugins and generally active members of the WordPress community, we will find it hard not recommend WordPress as your go-to CMS. We think WordPress is great, but we are not alone, it is estimated that 43 % of all websites in the World are built using WordPress.
First of all, let us start by explaining what a CMS is and then look at what the important considerations for SEO are. CMS stands for Content Management System. It is software that you use to create and manage a web site. Using CMS software is an alternative to creating HTML pages manually or coding the site using a language like PHP. Examples of CMS are WordPress, WordPress.com, Joomla, Wix, Squarespace, Magento, Shopify and Webflow.
A good CMS for SEO is a combination of two factors:
- Support for the SEO features you need
- Ease of use
This latter point is important. Even if you have your website built for you by a professional, you should be able to log into your CMS to update information, do SEO optimizations and add content. Ease of use is a personal point of view, so think about testing different CMS to see which you find the easiest to use.
You may also have other factors to take into consideration when choosing a CMS such as the cost and the extra features you need. Bear in mind how your site may develop in years to come. Learning any CMS will take time, you don’t want to make the wrong choice now and have to learn how to use a new CMS next year!
WordPress.org vs WordPress.com, what’s best for SEO?
You may have noticed that there are two WordPress’ in the list above. WordPress.com is a commercially managed WordPress service run by Automattic, the company which has the exclusive commercial usage of the WordPress trademark. It is a cloud-based platform that offers a hosted version of WordPress you can use to create and manage sites. Paid plans, starting at $4 per month, allow you to have your own domain name as well as access to storage and features. From the Business plan ($25 / month) up, you can add plugins.
WordPress.com is not the ideal solution for SEO compared to WordPress.org. As a cloud-based platform, you have no control over hosting, you cannot change the permalink structure and you cannot install plugins in the Free, Personal or Premium versions. Having a SEO plugin like SEOPress is essential to add SEO features to WordPress.
WordPress.org – build the best CMS for SEO
WordPress.org is very different from a cloud-based platform in that you install the full-featured software on your own server (self-hosted) and once you have installed the software you are independent from WordPress. The software is free and Open-Source. The only cost required for using the standard version of WordPress to publish a website online will be the cost of hosting (you can find WordPress hosting solutions for under $10 per month). The software is maintained by a network of volunteers and has been extended by a community of designers and developers who offer themes or plugins for free or for a fee. For example, standard WordPress does not have eCommerce features, but you can add them using the free WooCommerce plugin. And WooCommerce is just an example of the many eCommerce plugins that exist on WordPress.org.
Page builders like Elementor, Divi and Beaver are another example of popular extensions to WordPress. They are essentially a CMS within a CMS, adding editing features to WordPress. They are not compulsory, the default block editor in WordPress (Gutenberg) is easy to use and works with many themes. You can test all these options for free if you want to see what suits you best.
A WordPress theme determines the design and interface of your site. You can change the display and appearance of your website, just by changing the theme. There are thousands of WordPress themes available and you are sure to find one that fits your needs and tastes.
However, standard WordPress.org does not have enough SEO features to make it the best CMS for SEO. To make the WordPress CMS the best CMS for SEO, you need to install a plugin like SEOPress Free to add support for managing TITLE and META tags, XML sitemaps and on-page keyword analysis. You can also add the SEOPress PRO plugin to add features like AI assisted SEO, structured data schema, redirections, video sitemaps, integration with the Google Search Console API.
By installing WordPress, selecting a theme and adding SEOPress you can create CMS that is perfectly optimized for SEO. Unlike other SEO plugins, SEOPress also works with all WordPress page builders.
Wix vs WordPress, which is best for SEO?
As an alternative to WordPress, Wix works more like WordPress.com. It is a cloud platform with both free and premium versions. Like WordPress.com, you have less control over hosting, code and URL structure compared to self-hosted, open-source solution like WordPress.org.
You can test Wix for free and some small businesses may like the setup wizard approach that adds features based on a question and answers session. Historically, Wix has a poor reputation in SEO, but they have made a lot of improvements by adding SEO features to all plans in recent years.
This said, WordPress + SEOPress has more SEO features than Wix and WordPress is better at producing fully accessible pages that will index and rank better on Google.
Joomla vs WordPress for SEO
Joomla works like WordPress.org as an open-source content management system that can be installed on your own server. Like themes and plugins in WordPress, Joomla has extensions that can add features to the core software. Free and paid extensions are available in the Joomla Extensions Directory.
From 2005, when it was launched, to 2010 there was fierce competition between the WordPress and Joomla communities. In 2023, WordPress is installed on 10 times more sites than Joomla and has a far bigger community of developers contributing to the platform, but Joomla remains the second most popular open-source CMS solution when taking into consideration currently working sites.
Version 4 of Joomla released in 2021 has a more modern look than previous versions, has much improved page speed and has added some search engine friendly features. However, you need to buy an extension (like the 4SEO extension by Yannick Gaultier) to get important SEO features like sitemaps and to make editing TITLE and META Description tags more intuitive.
Joomla has a reputation of being more difficult to use than WordPress for novices and this may be a big argument in favor for WordPress, but maybe you should try it and make your own opinion.
Despite the availability of SEO extensions in Joomla, the more intense competition between SEO plugins for WordPress mean that the solutions available on WordPress – even the free ones – have advanced SEO features.
WooCommerce vs Shopify for SEO
Although WordPress was originally created as a blogging platform, custom data types, custom taxonomy and custom fields have allowed developers to build sites, plugins and themes with many other features. The most popular plugin for adding eCommerce features to WordPress is WooCommerce. WooCommerce adds Product and Category to the standard Pages and Posts data types in WordPress as well as shopping cart features.
Shopify on the other hand is a CMS written exclusively for managing online stores. Like WordPress.com it is a subscription-based hosted service, you cannot download and edit the software as you can with WordPress and WooCommerce.
Many companies that run eCommerce sites s love Shopify for its speed and simplicity. The layout of product pages and a fluid shopping cart make it very efficient at converting visitors into customers.
Like Wix, Shopify has been criticized in the past for a lack of SEO features, but this is slowly improving. The Achilles heel of Shopify (and most hosted services) remains the fact that you cannot customize URLs or breadcrumbs to show site structure. This may be fine for a small catalogue, but it is problematic for stores with many products organized into categories and sub-categories. WooCommerce does not have this problem, but you still do need to add the SEOPress plugin to make WooCommerce completely SEO-friendly.
For more information on WooCommerce SEO see our dedicated eBook
You may be convinced by the ease of use of Shopify, but in a competitive eCommerce world, you can gain an advantage in SEO by using WordPress, SEOPress and WooCommerce instead.
In conclusion, chose WordPress and SEOPress
We told you we would have a hard time convincing you not to chose WordPress as the best CMS for SEO, but only on the condition that you also install the SEOPress Free and PRO plugins too. Despite stiff competition from other CMS, the WordPress + SEOPress combination remains the best CMS for SEO.
There are also other strong arguments for choosing WordPress over cloud-based solutions like Wix, Shopify or Squarespace: Cost, freedom and independence.
The business models of cloud-based platforms mean that until you are on the most expensive plan you are missing features and there is pressure to upgrade. You have no alternative to upgrading as only the platform can offer you that feature. Platforms have also been known to increase prices overnight. Shopify (where the most expensive plan is $2000 per month before commissions) increased its prices by 34 % in 2023. Platforms can also close down client sites at their own discretion. Shopwired.)- says it receives complaints every day from Shopify users who have received notice that Shopify has closed their store. Wix’s terms of services also mean that they decide what content can be published on your site, not you.
Always bear in mind that even with the best CMS and SEO plugin, you still need to work on your SEO. This will involve producing original content, doing on-page optimizations and searching for links and citations off-page. There are some tasks that need doing immediately after launching the site and we will deal with these in the last chapter.
