9 Reasons Why WordPress is the Best CMS for SEO
Are you a small business owner looking to create a website for your business? With so many website providers out there, it can be overwhelming to choose which one to use.
So how do you know which one is best?
In this article, we will explain the importance of selecting the best CMS for SEO, or search engine optimization, and explain why we believe WordPress is superior.
Importance of SEO
Search engine optimization is crucial to your website’s success. While you can funnel money into pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, organic search is still the best and most cost-efficient way to drive traffic to your site.
Not only does SEO help improve the number of visitors to your site, but it also improves the quality of visitors. By implementing SEO, you improve your website rankings in relevant categories, ensuring that it is being seen by qualified prospects.
The higher you rank, the better your brand visibility will be. Other benefits of SEO include increased credibility, enhanced user experience, and the overall growth of your business.
Now that you understand the importance of SEO, let’s discuss which CMS you should be using.
Wix
Wix is a very basic website builder that is easy for beginners to use. When it comes to choosing the best CMS, simplicity can be both a good and a bad thing.
While it makes it perfect for users who do not know anything about HTML, the fact that Wix is a basic builder means it’s sort of limited. One of the main cons people have come across is that you can not switch your theme after publishing. Others have noted that they find the wide array of choices to be overwhelming.
Squarespace
Squarespace is another simple drag and drop website builder, but it has more professional-looking templates. Many in creative industries enjoy the beautifully built designs for their website.
Squarespace lies in the middle of WordPress and Wix when it comes to difficulty. One of the main cons to Squarespace is that it has limited choices for pricing plans.
WordPress
WordPress is our top pick when it comes to website builders and the best CMS for SEO. It has unlimited customization as well as access to tons of third-party plugins. While it does require some HTML knowledge, most of it can be done without. You also need to set up the web hosting yourself, but with the help of a digital marketing agency, it is seamless.
What is the Best CMS for SEO? Squarespace vs WordPress vs Wix
When comparing website providers, one of the most important factors we recommend looking at is SEO capabilities. This is where some sites fall short and others rise to the occasion.
Both Squarespace and Wix only provide basic SEO features. While they let you update the URL, metadata, and alternative tags for images, that’s pretty much all they do.
WordPress, on the other hand, gives you tons of freedom and features when it comes to SEO. Keep reading to see 9 reasons why WordPress is the best CMS for SEO.
9 Reasons Why WordPress is the Best CMS for SEO
We strongly believe WordPress is the best CMS, but don’t take our word for it. Here are 9 reasons why WordPress is the best CMS for SEO.
1. SEO-Friendly Themes
Unlike other CMS, with WordPress, you do not have to worry about your web team being able to optimize your design for SEO because the themes do it for you.
WordPress contains theme options that have HTML markups that work well with search engine bots. This makes it easy for them to crawl your site, leading to higher rankings.
2. SEO Plugins
With WordPress plugins, optimizing your site has never been easier. WordPress works with a wide range of plugins and add-ons, which is one of the main reasons we believe it is the best CMS for SEO.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO for WordPress is one of the most popular plugins because of its wide variety of features. It has a free version and a premium package to choose from, depending on your business’s budget and needs.
There are two main features to the plugin. The first is the SEO score which analyzes your metadata, keyword usage, links, and images. The second score you get is your readability. This looks at the Flesch reading ease, sentence length, passive voice, and transition words.
More importantly, it connects your site to Google Search Console to help Google understand your site and improve your ranking.
SEMRush SEO Writing Assistant
SEMRush SEO Writing Assistant is a great plugin for checking both your SEO and writing. It is a free plugin but limits the number of usage for certain features.
It gives you a score based on four factors as well as recommendations for improvement. These factors include readability, SEO, originality, and tone of voice. Once it analyzes your content, it can check your consistency in tone, metadata, links, keyword usage, and reading difficulty level.
Google XML SiteMaps
Google XML SiteMaps is one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress. This free plugin generates sitemaps for search engines. This makes it easier for search engine bots to index and crawl your site.
The plugin is easy to use and automatically updates the sitemap if you publish any new content on your site. The best part is that once you have installed it, you do not need to do any more work!
3. MetaData is Easy to Manage
Your metadata like titles and descriptions tell the search engine bots what your pages are about. It is important to include your keywords in all of your metadata to help improve your ranking.
With WordPress plugins like Yoast, you can easily add your metadata and get recommendations for improvements. While we recommend manually inputting your metadata, if you forget, the plugins will get the information from your content.
4. Optimized for Mobile Users
Over half of online searches come from mobile users. If you are not creating mobile-friendly sites, you are losing out on a huge market. If the user experience isn’t as seamless on mobile as it is on desktop, it is likely you will experience high bounce rates.
Not only that, but Google now does mobile-first indexing when ranking your site. Luckily, this is not something you have to worry about when using WordPress because it is automatically optimized for mobile phones.
Still not convinced that WordPress is the best CMS for SEO? Well, keep reading because we have more WordPress benefits.
5. Easy to Optimize Images
One-third of all Google searches are for an image on Google Images. Therefore, having SEO images can increase your search traffic.
Another thing to note is that the search engine bots use images to gain context for your pages. This means that using alternative text for your images is an important factor for your rankings. Optimized images can improve your user experience (UX) and page’s loading time.
WordPress makes it easy to resize images to improve page speed as well as add your alt text. You can also use plugins to easily generate alt text for your images.
6. Quick Load Times
Your page’s speed is one of the biggest factors in Google’s rankings. This is for two main reasons. One is that slow load times often lead to users deciding to leave your page, increasing the bounce rate. The other reason is that it takes longer for the search engine bots to crawl your entire page.
Most of WordPress’s themes are created to be fast-loading, making your job easier. Additionally, you can add a plugin to help improve the speed of your site.
7. Social Media Integration
While social media doesn’t provide direct SEO benefits, you shouldn’t overlook it in your SEO strategy. This is because when your brand gains awareness on social media, it often translates to more traffic to your site.
With WordPress, you are able to use plugins to add social media buttons, embed a feed to your site, and automate campaigns. When you get your visitors to share your site on social media and it gets a lot of engagement, this can improve your SEO.
8. Clean Permalinks
Nobody likes an ugly permalink with random characters. Not only does it look unprofessional, but it doesn’t provide any context. When you use WordPress you are able to edit your website’s permalink easily.
This allows you to add your keyword to your URL to improve your SEO ranking. A clean permalink can also increase your CTR because your viewer can easily decipher what your page is about.
9. Enhanced User Experience (UX)
Google rankings reward businesses that provide user-friendly websites. This is because websites with a good user experience often have a low bounce rate and a high conversion rate.
By using WordPress themes and plugins, you can easily create professional and attractive websites. With a well-designed website, you can keep users on your site longer and engaged.
Factors that influence user experience are web design, content creation, and the images you use.
Get An Express WordPress Website With Chatter Buzz
Now that you know why WordPress is the best CMS for SEO, are you ready to create an SEO-friendly website that drives traffic and converts customers?
Our Express Website Design Service gives you an easy-to-use WordPress template that is designed with the focus of converting site visitors into customers.
Not only do we design our sites to rank highly, but we have a dedicated team of SEO specialists who will implement best practices and help edit copy to ensure that your customers find you and convert.
After your website is created, the next step is implementing strategies to drive traffic to your site.