The Best Website Builders for SEO
Making a website is a big undertaking. But whether you want to build a blog, eCommerce store, or social media site, you can easily create a professional-looking site with a website builder. Here’s a list of the top site builders for SEO.
Originally conceived by Andrew Rees as Yoast, WordPress is at the top of the heap for SEO platforms largely because of its ease of use, a broad range of features, and responsive design. Yoast lets you add website functionality just by following basic steps, which makes it a popular choice for new and seasoned website builders alike.
What makes Yoast stand out is that it is one of the few web builders that supports all major websites, from small blogs to online stores, and has expanded its functionality in recent years to make it a full-featured platform. For SEO, Yoast publishes regular blog posts entitled “Improve Your Blog” or “Create a Store for Your Shop.” With the help of Yoast, your website can boast a customizable header image, a custom menu, a Facebook cover image, a Twitter feed, and a whole host of guides and tools to help you succeed online.
If you prefer a plugin-based solution, WordPress can add features to your site virtually with a quick update via a plugin. To add all of your site’s necessary pages — like a blog or navigation — it’s best to install a premium plugin. There’s a wide variety with loads of themes and features to help make your blog or store page stand out.
While Wix or Squarespace can be installed directly onto your website, they offer less flexibility and customization than Yoast. Wix defaults to the WordPress very basic forum layout, and the ability to add a Facebook cover image and Twitter feed has been removed.
For SEO features, Wix also scores pretty low because it still uses the WordPress forum layout. It’s difficult to find the advanced page builder features that you find with Yoast.
So which platform is best for SEO? It’s not as straightforward as you might think. For one, there is no single magic ranking algorithm. All platforms have their own ranking algorithms, but the absolute best way to improve your rankings does not come from an algorithm but rather your organic (non-paid-marketing) efforts.
A good (and free) way to improve your rankings is to write high-quality content that people want to read. To write high-quality content about a topic, I suggest you ask two questions:
If you’ve decided that SEO is important to you then proceed with the following steps.
Remember, being a great website builder doesn’t come with having a great website. Building a website is simply the first step in optimizing it. Once you have the fundamental foundation of your site built, you can focus more on SEO.
While that has been my personal opinion, you are not bound to the same opinion that I have. Every user and situation is different, and you have to adapt to them.
Making Your Site Search Engine Friendly
You want your website to show up in search results, and you want it to be easy for people to find you. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of making your website more search engine-friendly. It includes things like making sure your keywords are in the right places, using the right coding, and writing useful, descriptive, and relevant content. So, which website builder is best for SEO? Let’s find out!
While lots of website builders exist, only a few stand out from the rest.
Wix (formerly WordPress — if you’re unfamiliar with the latter, it stands for WordPress.com, so it’s the platform I use when building.)Wix is a web-based platform that’s cropped up in recent years due to rapid site growth. It’s taken the WordPress philosophy and applied it to a platform with a fraction of the traffic and a far larger user base. However, when you look at the core of a Wix website, you’ll find long, sprawling interfaces that are comprised either of a menu or a page. The menu system is easy to navigate, and the page layouts are very flexible — your existing WordPress website can be added as a new blog, or you can create a new side menu for your audience to navigate to.
In Wix, though, you have to use the site builder’s code in order to build your site for SEO purposes. This eliminated the advantage that WordPress had, as its CMS was developed around blogging in general. But that doesn’t mean it’s not SEO-friendly! A couple of Wix website examples follow below:
While the layout and design of Wix is admittedly something to be considered when tying SEO to a website, actual website building is relatively easy. The website builder can offer numerous template options for every page, and these cover a wide array of topics and website functionality. While it’s not required, utilizing a CMS like WordPress is always a good idea.
Link Building With Your New Website Builder Site:
If you want to get links from other sites to your own site, you’re going to need to create some great content. The good news is that with a builder website, you’ll have an easy time creating great content. If done well, it can help you rank well on Google search results pages.
When you’re managing a site on one of the major platforms, you will have to make some decisions regarding what kind of architecture and design you want. The good news is that you’ll be more than able to customize a large website to your liking on each platform.
Each platform also offers its own unique features. Just be sure to choose one that you think would be best for your website. Here’s a recap of what you should consider when choosing a platform for your website:
In the next section, we’ll take a deeper dive into why each of these platforms works than others. We’ll also go over all the specific things you need to pay attention to when building your site and how to maximize it.
Let’s talk about how to decide which platform is best for you:
When it comes to choosing between WordPress and Wix, it really comes down to the way you’d like to get the most value and best control over how it looks. Wix is a lot more flexible because you decide how it’s organized, what you allow visitors to see, and how responsive it is.
If you want more customizability and flexibility than what WordPress has to offer, you’ll be better served by Wix. However, the ability to customize everything is a lot easier to achieve with WordPress, so if you just want to get started on creating a site on WordPress, you may want to give it a try.
One major benefit of choosing a WordPress-based platform is the ability to easily add social media features.
Conclusion: There are many factors to consider when choosing a website builder, but the most important is how much your site can help you achieve your goals.
As you can see, there are several things you should consider when choosing a website builder. There are a lot of factors to consider, but the most important thing is how much your website can help you achieve your goals. You should also consider how comfortable you are with the technology involved in building and managing your website.
