Businesses and marketers are always looking for new ways to increase their visibility online. One of the most effective ways to ensure your site is discovered is by choosing a web builder that is SEO (search engine optimization) friendly. Certain options organize your content better for Google to read and rank. This article will compare Wix vs WordPress for SEO to help you in choosing the right platform for your website.
Both Wix and WordPress allow you to create pixel-perfect websites. The simple editors and templates in each solution will make your site look great. There are a wide range of plugins available for each solution that add custom functionality to your site.
The best option for SEO hands-down is WordPress. It gives you the most visibility on search engines.
On-page and off-page SEO
It is essential to note that there are two types of SEO: off-page and on-page SEO (which is also referred to as technical SEO). Listed below are the things that you can do without doing any coding or tweaking to your website.
The following strategies are used for off-page SEO:
- Researching keywords
- Developing a Content Strategy
- A link-building strategy
- A social media marketing strategy
On-page SEO means optimizing the code and function of your site to make it easier for Google to index your pages. These include:
- Improving the data structure speeds up the loading time
- Code optimization like headers, meta tags, and alt tags.
- Having responsive mobile websites
With the right website builder, you can achieve both types of SEO.
How Does Wix’s SEO Stand Up?
What makes Wix one of the easiest drag-and-drop website builders is that it allows you to build a website quickly without any coding experience.
You can literally have a beautiful website up and running in minutes if you have a basic design in mind, content ready to go, and elements where to place.
Wix SEO Pros
With Wix, you have what they call the Wix SEO Wizard (in short for wizard), which is a planning wizard that helps you come up with SEO strategies for your Wix site. The tool helps you choose keywords to write about and integrates with Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
Additional SEO functionality is available in Wix’s dashboard under the ‘Get Found on Google’ option. There you have it.
The on-page SEO of Wix is okay. It covers most of the basics: you can set meta titles, meta descriptions, headings, and custom URLs. You can also configure image alt text, create redirects, and integrate social media sharing options.
Another good SEO feature is SSL encryption. Search engines rank websites with encryption higher, and integration with Google Analytics and Search Console is a good one.
Because search engines prefer mobile-friendly websites, you can use Wix’s drag-and-drop feature to make your website look great on smartphones.
The Wix App Market also features paid and free search engine optimization apps that can be integrated, as well as ‘Site Booster’ that gets your website listed in local directories and on search engines like Google, Yelp, Bing, and Yahoo.
The Downside of SEO Wix
Wix.com utilizes an unusual link structure. In every single URL, you will see a # or “hashtag” which is served through javascript, and consequently cannot be indexed. As a result, Wix sites are very difficult to crawl and they won’t rank highly in Google. It’s a major problem.
Wix has a sitemap creation feature, but you will need to use Google Search Console to manage it. Sitemaps tell search engines how your site is structured (or crawled), making indexing easier.
There is another downside to Wix not allowing users to add custom code or modify existing ones. While Wix has HTML Code element, it may be limiting enough for more advanced users.
Furthermore, Wix sites are slower to load than WordPress counterparts, making them inferior from an SEO perspective. While Wix creates beautiful websites, it has some major shortcomings in terms of SEO, unfortunately.
WordPress SEO
WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS). A CMS provides a way to publish content, usually via a blog.
In the beginning, WordPress was designed for blogging; however, people soon saw its potential, resulting in the creation of plug-ins, add-ons, and themes.
Nowadays, WordPress is not just used for blogs; it can also be used for e-commerce, businesses, and web applications. But what it will always come down to is publishing content that will properly index in Google search.
WordPress SEO Pros
WordPress plugins like Rank Math can help you with off-page SEO since they help you produce, optimize, and propagate content. For example, these are plugins that will check grammar, keyword density, and even suggest an SEO-friendly writing style.
WordPress plugins also allow you to integrate social media, Google Analytics, and Google Search Engine with your site.
On-page WordPress SEO is a major benefit. In addition to allowing you to edit meta titles, headings, and tags, there are so many plugins you can use for page acceleration, image optimizations, and caching. These greatly improve your page loading time, which will help your site rank higher with search engines.
You can use WordPress plugins to maintain your site’s links by checking for broken links continuously (search engines punish sites that have broken links); and plugins to automatically create internal links once you type a keyword. You can easily keep an eye on your site for any changes that could hurt your SEO.
You can also use WordPress plugins to automatically create 301 redirects, manage 404 errors on your site, and organize your URLs to make them more search engine friendly.
Also available in WordPress are mobile-friendly plugins that improve your site’s ranking and make it more mobile-friendly. In general, WordPress is very mobile-friendly.
As opposed to Wix, WordPress has one-click plugins that automatically generate sitemaps and submit them to Google.
It is also important to note that WordPress URLs are very structured – they make sense and are based on categories you choose.
Finally, WordPress allows you to customize your site’s code, making it easy to optimize it to fit your website’s needs.
Wix vs WordPress for SEO: What’s the Verdict?
It’s pretty clear at this point that WordPress beats out Wix when it comes to SEO, since WordPress has a wide array of SEO features and tools.
Wix is a good choice if you want to create a website quickly. It covers some of the basics that casual users and small businesses need to get by. Its SEO tools are also well-suited to novices – complete with wizards, how-to’s, and resources.
If you want to gain the attention of Googlers, however, you should use WordPress for a business with high traffic and where volume matters. The range of SEO services includes simple activities like image optimization and keyword linking, as well as more advanced ones like content structuring and improving mobile responsiveness.
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