If you’re just starting your business or creating a business website, you might feel a little overwhelmed about all the choices. Just typing in website services on Google gives you hundreds of options to choose from. Most digital marketing agencies will offer to build or host your website for you. Even Boostability can do it for you! (and we can do it at an affordable price!)

But every single website out there is built on a website platform. Even those digital marketing agencies will build the site and host it on a platform. WordPress and Wix are probably the most popular or have the greatest name recognition. And they’re popular for a reason. They work, and allow you to have a good looking website, that you can also optimize for SEO.

This article breaks down our take on the best website platforms out there specifically for SEO.

 

WordPress

WordPress is probably the most common, and oldest website creation platform. It’s been around for a long time and it’s come a long way. And it has several tools and plugins you can implement to improve your SEO. It’s one of the best out there for content management. So if you have a blog or a lot of written content, WordPress might be your best bet.

WordPress has earned its popularity. The platform has highly customizable and can be used to build huge multinational corporate websites, or just a small blog for someone just starting out. There’s free and paid versions of it. And it’s estimated that 20% of websites on the internet are created and hosted on a WordPress platform. WordPress has features that can let you click and drag and create your own site from scratch. Or if you custom build your website, you can manage it using the WordPress platform. So it really depends on your skill level. And with millions of plugins that you can add in order to accomplish your business and traffic goals. 

One of the most common plugins we recommend for SEO is the Yoast plugin. We use it on our own Boostability site. And it’s easy to use and highlights some areas where you can improve SEO on every page. It prompts you to enter your keyword, create a meta description, discourages the use of passive voice, and helps you to make your content more readable for those who visit your site. 

Wix

Wix is also an incredibly popular and user-friendly platform that really helps out the beginners out there who might just be starting to figure out this whole online presence thing. Wix is extremely easy to use. You just click and drag and pick from different templates until you have a website you’re happy with. Most of these templates have best practices in mind, so you don’t need to worry that you’re building something unusable or outdated. 

Where WordPress has plugins, Wix has an app store that essentially works in the same way. There’s all kinds of apps you can add in like an e-commerce feature, or a live chat with one of your sales reps. Essentially, if you can think of it, essentially you can build it with Wix.

As far as SEO is concerned, Wix has improved greatly in the past few years. It has places to add Alt and Meta descriptions, select your keywords, and so much more. It’s a tool called SEO Wiz that you need to add on to your website that then helps you to work on your SEO on each page. While Wix is great for some simple SEO improvements, more in depth campaigns take some SEO know-how and aren’t suggested by the platform itself. 

Weebly

Weebly is another highly popular platform that prides itself on ease of use. Weebly makes it easy for beginners with a drag and drop interface that has SEO recommendations built right into the building of a website. You don’t need to install any extra plugins or add-ons if you want the extra SEO help because it’s built right in. 

Weebly also has a free and a paid version of its platform. But the free version does not allow you to be discovered by search engines. So we don’t recommend that as you start to build your business website. It’s a very simple platform if you don’t need a lot of features or extras. But it’s a great way to get started with your website and SEO efforts. And you can migrate it to another platform later if your business starts to grow. 

Shopify

Shopify is a perfect platform if you plan to sell anything online. It’s designed specifically for those who want to sell their products over the internet. And given the current world economic outlook, those businesses that have pivoted their business model to adapt for an increased online consumer focus and demand, are seeing greater success.

Shopify allows you to set up advanced product pages, take payments, ship, and keep track of everything under the same platform. That’s part of the popularity of it, it makes things very easy for the user. 

As far as SEO, it comes down to a lot of your own work. You want to make sure each of your product pages are keyword optimized with good descriptions and content that also includes meta and alt tags. It does have some SEO features built in. But the Shopify platform focuses more on helping you build your website to work for ecommerce demands. However, you can apply additional advanced SEO apps that you can install once you have your website up and running. 

Squarespace

Squarespace has also been in the website building business for a long time. It’s very popular among the more creative fields because it can help you showcase your work. Squarespace is also a drag and drop platform that emphasizes quality at every single step. Unlike Wix and Weebly, it has a few features that can help you grow your website and improve on it. But it does these features very well and in ways that really count. So you don’t need to feel overwhelmed by all your options.

Squarespace is for those who are a little more familiar with SEO and the code. It emphasizes style, but allows you to customize things to really make it your own. However, every feature you add on Squarespace is an extra charge, so keep that in mind as you build. 

SEO features are built right into the back end of the Squarespace platform. You can add your Headings, Meta & alt descriptions, pick your keywords, among other things. But sometimes they call it a different name, so the SEO can be a little harder to pick up for beginners. 

Duda

Duda is pretty new to the website builder world, which is why it might not be as well known. The creators of the platform foresaw the popularity of mobile devices and built it with that in mind. Duda can help you build a very strong website quickly, and lets you pick out from a variety of templates that you can lean on as you build the site. And one of the perks is that it automatically makes your website mobile friendly.

Duda doesn’t emphasize SEO as strongly as some other sites, but it does have some features built in as you build the site. You can add your alt & meta descriptions to images and pages. But the SEO platform isn’t as robust as others if you’re just starting out in the SEO game. 

 

Essential ranking factors

And don’t forget, there are still essential ranking factors that you’ll need to monitor for on every single website in order to have good SEO. Those things include:

  • Sitespeed – How fast your site loads
  • Internal links – The links internally that point back to other pages on your website. This could be product pages or links between blogs.
  • Backlinks – Links that point back to your website from other places on the internet.
  • Mobile friendliness – More than half of all search traffic comes from a mobile device. Google takes that into account and now requires all sites to be mobile friendly in order to rank high. 
  • Keywords – The bread and butter of SEO. You need to have strong and optimized keywords that customers search for in order to attract traffic to your website.
  • Sitemap – When you launch a new website, you need to submit your sitemap to Google. That’s how Google knows to crawl for new content. 

 

Bonus features

Once you decide on a website platform and you’re happy with your website, there’s other factors you can install in order to help your website live it’s best life. Google Analytics is a primary factor that most will recommend. It is compatible with all the platforms we’ve listed above. It gives you content analysis, traffic patterns, demographic data, and so much more. This is crucial to helping you understand your website traffic and make optimizations accordingly.

And of course if all of this feels like a lot to do yourself, give Boostability a call! We can build you a custom website in less than 15 business days, host it for you, and prepare you for an SEO campaign, all at a price that’s right for your business. If that sounds like you, reach out today!

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Jen works on Boostability's website product team.