I’ve been recently getting a lot of impressions for the keyword “best cms for seo 2020”, so I figured it’s time someone gave a true answer.
The truth is this – there is no best CMS for SEO.
And I know that’s not what you want to hear, but it’s important an SEO who measures results actually breaks this down and clears up the misconceptions.
Content Management Systems Aren’t A Ranking Factor
Google doesn’t care what your website is built using. As long as your on-site, on-page and off-site SEO is set up correctly – you’ll have the same ability to rank in Joomla, WordPress, Magento, Squarespace and more.
And although there will be statistically more websites built using WordPress that are ranking in Google – that just indicates how much of the internet is built using WordPress.
In fact, as much as 35% of the entire internet is powered by WordPress according to whoishostingthis.com
But just because your competitor is using WordPress, that doesn’t mean you need to use WordPress to rank in Google – Remember, correlation doesn’t always mean causation!
Transactional Keywords Rarely Rank WordPress Websites
When you take a look through Google at various transactional keywords, it’s highly unlikely you’ll see a page ranking that’s built in WordPress.
Do a Google search now and see if you can find any WordPress websites that rank on the first page of results for popular transactional keywords like TV’s, laptops, computer chairs, cars, Nintendo switch etc.
Transactional keyword modifiers include: “buy”, “order”, “purchase”, “free delivery”, “next day delivery”, “on finance”, “cheap”, “deals”, “online” and “sale”.
Did you find any? I highly doubt it (but comment below if you did!)
Does that mean WordPress can’t rank for transactional keywords? Absolutely not. I run SEO campaigns on WordPress websites that rank for transactional keywords.
All it means is most big e-commerce websites aren’t using WooCommerce (WordPress).
The REAL Deciding Factor Is Speed
Now that you know a CMS alone isn’t going to make you rank in Google I’m going to share the most important thing you can take from this article.
What really matters is how fast you get things done.
Because out of the box, WordPress is almost perfectly set up in terms of search engine friendliness. There are a few things you need to change, but it’s not massive amounts of work.
On the other hand, Joomla is far from search engine friendly out of the box and requires a lot of work to get it ready for the search engines (as I explained in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAwJT8ACWs)
Dedicating a day or so to making Joomla SEO friendly takes up valuable time that could be better spent researching new keywords, building out new landing pages etc.
On top of that, most people also find it takes considerably longer to develop in Joomla – adding more time between getting new ideas live on the website.
The CMS Has To Be Right For Your Project
If you’re looking to get a complicated e-commerce website built, you are far better off using something that has advanced built-in functionality like Magento 2 and then spending the time optimising the website after than you are using a more simple e-commerce platform like WooCommerce and then trying to add in complicated functionality after.
If instead, you are a B2B company that’s looking to acquire new customers through content marketing on your blog, you’re far better off using WordPress as adding content is quick and easy.
As a rough guide, we would recommend the following CMS’s for the following types of website:
- Local business = WordPress
- B2B business = WordPress
- Small e-commerce = WooCommerce (WordPress)
- Large e-commerce = Magento
- Blogs = WordPress
As you can see, we mostly recommended WordPress for SEO, but feel it’s important to point out that you can rank in Google using any CMS so companies don’t think they need to rebuild their website to keep up with the latest and greatest content management system.
The Bottom Line Is This
If you’re working with an SEO agency who say you should use a particular CMS, they are probably right. As that’s the one they’re most familiar with.
If they were to use a CMS they don’t have so much experience in, your project could take longer to see any substantial results in – so it’s always worth trusting the SEO agency you’re going to be working with to make a decision on which CMS to use for your project.