SEO is one of the most important factors of any CMS (content management system). Without a good SEO foundation, your website will not rank well in Google and leave a great traffic channel on the table.
But when it comes to content management systems, there are two that are dominating the market currently and that is WordPress and Wix.
They are very different but both provide the ability to easily create online websites. But when it comes to SEO who wins with WordPress vs Wix?
In this guide, we are going to compare the SEO features of WordPress and Wix and look at which platform has better SEO.
What is SEO?
Before we take a look at the SEO for WordPress and Wix, it’s important to understand what we mean by “SEO.”
When we say SEO, we mean search engine optimization. It’s the act of optimizing your site to improve its rank on search engine results pages, like Google or Bing.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is a free CMS (content management system) that allows you to easily create websites, pages, and blog posts.
This open-source software was created in 2003 and has since become one of the most popular web publishing platforms online. Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little initially built the software and now its managed by the WordPress Foundation.
WordPress is 100% free to download and install on a server of your choice.
What is Wix?
Wix is a cloud-based web development platform that was first found in 2006. It has since become one of the most popular website creation tools online and did over 603 million in 2018.
Wix currently has over 150 million users who use their software to create websites, host their website and market their website using Wix’s platform.
With Wix, you can build a website in munites without knowing any code or HTML. They have a simple drag and drop system plus hundreds of templates to make creating and customizing your website simple.
But when it comes to SEO, who is better?
WordPress vs. Wix SEO Features
WordPress and Wix both have some good SEO features, but here is a comparison of each CMS’s feature set:
| SEO Feature | Description | WordPress | Wix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meta title | Meta titles briefly and concisely explain what each website page is about. | Yes | Yes |
| Meta description | Meta Descriptions explain a summary of what each website page is about. | Yes | Yes |
| Custom URLs | Keywords are not only important in your content but your URLs as well. | Yes | Yes |
| Headings | Heading tags are the section titles of your content. They should be structured correctly. | Yes | Yes |
| Image alt text | Alt tags tell search engines what your images are about since they can only read the text. | Yes | Yes |
| Good speed & uptime | Having a fast website has never been more important for SEO and user experience. | Yes | No |
| Mobile friendly | With a mobile responsive website, you will rank better in the mobile index. | Yes | Yes |
| 301 redirects | 301 redirects are a permanent redirect from one URL to another. | Yes | Yes |
| SSL encryption (HTTPS) | Having a secure website can help build trust and will help you rank better. | Yes | Yes |
| XML Sitemap | An XML file that lists all of your website URLs to search engines can more easily find them. | Yes | No |
| Google Analytics | Track your website traffic, usage and load times with Google’s free tracking software. | Yes | Yes |
| Google Search Console | Manage your website in Google eyes with Google Search Console. See rankings, errors and more. | Yes | Yes |
| Social media integration | Social media plays an indirect role to help you rank better in search engines. | Yes | Yes |
| Canonical tags | These tags tell search engines what the correct URL of the page should be. | Yes | Yes |
| Structured data | Small pieces of code that give search engines more information about your website and content. | Yes | No |
WordPress Vs. Wix for SEO
WordPress and Wix are both great tools to create websites easily online. But which one will give you the leg up on SEO and provide your website with the SEO tools it needs to rank high in Google?
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Lets first look at each CMS’s SEO features and abilities:
Wix SEO
As far as SEO, Wix has a bad reputation.
It has been active in trying to optimize its platform to have a better SEO infrastructure (they even have an SEO Guide now), but it still has quite a way to go.
Yes, it allows non-coders to build web pages with ease. But if you right-click and view the source, you will see a bunch of random code, that makes it hard for Google and other Search Engines to read.
Now does this mean that you won’t be able to rank a Wix site?
No, with strong backlinks and good content, you can still rank a Wix website in Google, but its a lot harder.
Wix recently launched the Wix SEO Wiz which can help you choose keywords, and build a personalized SEO plan.
The Wix SEO Wiz gives you a checklist of important SEO tasks to optimize your Wix site better. It will till you if your:
- Site is mobile friendly
- Homepage is indexable
- Homepage has an SEO title
- Homepage has an SEO description
- Homepage has keyword-rich content
Although the SEO Wiz is a good addition to the platform, it’s still not really gonna do much for your overall SEO.
Pros
- Built-in SEO Tools
- Integrates with Google
Cons
- No full customization
- Not much scaleability
- Have to use Wix’s servers
Wix may be a good tool for solopreneurs and bloggers to build their first website affordably, but I wouldn’t recommend Wix for small businesses or larger sites trying to generate massive traffic and revenue online.
WordPress SEO
WordPress powers over 30% of the web because its fast, lightweight and have one of the best SEO foundations of any CMS. Since its open-source and has been available for so long, it has been fully optimized for SEO, even the latest techniques.
Like many CMS’s the choice of theme is important when it comes to on-page SEO with WordPress. Some free themes (and even some paid themes) arent optimized well for SEO.
With just a few plugins, you can fully optimize your WordPress website or ecommerce site.
Yoast SEO is one of the most powerful SEO plugins for WordPress sites. It allows you to do most of the things you will need to do for a completely optimized website including:
- Meta titles
- Meta descriptions
- Schema tags
- XML sitemap
- Canonical URLs
- Open Graph Tags
- Alt Tags
- Cacheing
- Deep Linking
Not to mention that the default WordPress software is already very SEO optimized by default with hundreds of SEO Optimized Themes.
When you use WordPress, you will need to host it on a server, unlike Wix that has its own servers. But this is a good thing because then you are in control of your server and you get get a fast WordPress server instead of only being able to use Wix’s servers (which can get slow with bigger and higher trafficked sites).
Since WordPress is small and fast already, you can have a blazing fast website with a pretty cheap server and a caching plugin.
Pros
- Feature Rich Plugins
- Choice of servers
- SEO Optimized themes
- Free / Open-Source
Cons
- Can get slow with thousands of posts
Which is best for SEO, WordPress vs Wix?
All in all, WordPress is by far the better content management system SEO-wise. It has extensive plugins that allow you to perform any optimization needed to have a 100% optimized website.
Not only that but WordPress allows you to choose your own server (instead of using Wix’s servers) so you can scale your infrastructure with time. A Wix site will become very slow with a lot of traffic.
Lastly, WordPress allows for much more customization to files, pages, and HTML to adhere to the latest SEO trends.
So if you are looking for the most powerful CMS with a strong SEO foundation, then WordPress is a perfect choice.
Tyler Horvath is an SEO Expert with over 15 years of experience in search engine optimization, popular blog author and WordPress SEO expert.