Is WIX as good as Wordpress for SEO?
The answer is YES.
Wix has all the SEO features needed to optimize your pages, including page Titles, Descriptions, image alt text tags, as well as custom URLs. So yes, Wix is just as capable as Wordpress for SEO.
That said, there is much more to gaining good search engine rankings than just picking a platform. Using the WordPress platform does not automatically mean that your website will rank high in search engines. A Google webmaster trends analyst at Google recently wrote a response to a user asking if Wix would work fine in search – here's what he said.
Becoming a SEO Hero for your website is all about creating fresh, new, original content that is related to the keywords you're looking to rank for and getting lots of outside websites and social media to link to the website. Basically, you want your website to become a resource for topics related to the keywords you want to be found for so that people will link to your pages!
Wordpress is High Maintenance:
While Wordpress has lots of SEO plugins available such as YOAST, that doesn't mean it is better than Wix for SEO. In my experience, Wordpress sites are difficult for my clients to use, so they often-times don't add to their website regularly or at all, while Wix websites are much more likely for them to use due to the ease-of-use editing. Additionally, Wordpress is a problematic platform that costs more to maintain, it needs to be upgraded to the latest version often to keep it secure, which is often a problem for highly customized Wordpress sites as upgrading often "breaks" the theme or plugins due to conflicts.
On top of being hard to edit and maintain, Wordpress websites get HACKED A LOT – just search "hacked Wordpress website" and you'll find thousands of websites talking about how to fixed a hacked Wordpress website. And, it's not easy to fix hacked Wordpress websites, as you need to be familiar with code to manually find and remove all the hacked code – which often times is like finding a needle in a haystack. There are ways to protect your Wordpress site from getting hacked and some hosting companies are offering more secure Wordpress hosting, but it is still an ongoing process to keep the site updated, and it costs a lot in developer time to just to keep it maintained.
By the way, if your website is hacked and Google catches wind of it, they can actually SHUT YOUR WEBSITE DOWN by blacklisting the website, so when visitors visit your website they will see the dreaded red Malware warning instead of your website (see image here). This is NOT GOOD FOR SEO or user experience, quite the opposite, in fact! Wix, on the other hand, is a managed platform – Wix handles all the behind-the-scenes stuff so you don't have to do any updates or regular maintenance, and you can instead focus on generating new content and pages for your website.
When Other Platforms may be Best: Besides SEO – which Wix can handle 100%, if you have a larger website design budget and very custom needs, sometimes Wordpress and other platforms such as Shopify (ecommerce), can be better suited to your needs. Complex online stores, for example, are better done on Shopify than in Wix's current Wix Stores ecommerce platform, which is lacking a lot of functionality currently. We're hoping to see improvements to Wix stores soon, but for now, as a Denver Website Designer, I tell my website design clients that we should design and develop their stores in Shopify or other ecommerce platforms over Wix, due to a few key lacking elements:
You can't customize a receipt page with a full review of order
Wix Stores doesn't have an account system so customers can't have accounts to review orders
Fixed in 2017: Wix Stores doesn't allow import/export of products - now fixed
Fixed in 2017: Wix Stores doesn't allow for selling digital content - now fixed, yay!
Also, Page Cloud, Wordpress and other platforms can be much more infinitely customized if you need a complex blog, or logins to customer accounts, databases, etc.
I find that Wix is great for 90% of small business websites' needs, as most businesses like restaurants, law firms, solar companies, organizations, art clubs, artists, tree companies, garden shops, dentists, etc are well-served by Wix's amazing editor, and they love having a Wix website as it allows them the freedom to update their website with ease.
Conclusion:
So, don't believe the hype that Wordpress is better than Wix for SEO. Remember, it's not the platform that you are using, it's more about building your website to become a resource – which means adding new pages, content, blog posts and images OFTEN and writing original content that is valuable to viewers. Wix allows you to concentrate fully on your content, rather than coding/upgrading/maintaining the base platform, which means that Wix is actually BETTER than Wordpress (and other platforms) for SEO because you can spend your time on SEO instead of maintaining the platform!
You can become your own SEO Hero! Check out my SEO Hero Tips!
