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In today’s environment. Building a website with solid SEO nearly equals the importance of meeting your customers’ needs. After all, if search engines don’t see your website, it becomes invisible in the pervasive digital marketplace where even local venues must rank on Google Maps for foot traffic. So, when choosing a website builder or CMS on which to base your company’s website, naturally, you want to make the choice that gives you the most robust inherent SEO and access to the best SEO tools to optimize your technical and content ratings.
WordPress and Squarespace are the two leading options and most suggested of the many possible platforms to build your website. Much can be said for the drag-and-drop simplicity of Squarespace, and WordPress is known to be the CMS of choice for over one-third of all websites on the internet. But which provides better inherent SEO and adaptable SEO features? Let’s find out with an in-depth comparison.
The Essentials of SEO in Website Construction
The first step in building a website with a strong SEO ranking is to examine what each website builder offers you regarding technical SEO and adaptive SEO features. Because you are choosing the essential infrastructure of your website, it’s important to consider the primary elements of technical SEO success. Look for these elements in any CMS or website platform you choose.
- Page Title Tags
- The title tag tells web crawlers and browsers what the name of each page is. This contributes to availability when users search for each page on your website.
- Page Meta Description
- Meta description for your website is the small blurb under each page title in your search results. A strong meta description can and does win traffic and customers.
- Headings and Subheadings
- Headings and subheadings are how search engine web crawlers can tell the main content of a page. Deeper headings and better heading tools are essential for shaping strong SEO with every page of content.
- Sitemaps
- A sitemap gives your website a navigable list of locations for web crawlers to follow.
- Custom “Pretty” URLs
- Custom URLs take the random letters and numbers of a new website page and transform them into readable words and extensions of your domain URL. Pretty URLs are a must for any modern website.
- Mobile Responsiveness
- Mobile responsiveness tests how enjoyable and complete the website design experience is when accessed through a mobile browser or matching mobile app.
- SSL Encryption
- To be a trusted website, you need an SSL certificate and SSL encryption – something significant to look for in your website tools.
- Image Alt Tags
- As for your images, alt tags give details and guides for search engine crawlers and visual searches.
Squarespace: SEO Starts Strong with a Tool Plateau
How does Squarespace measure up in terms of technical SEO and content optimization tools?
- Metadata Tags
- When it comes to the title, meta description, and image alt text tags, Squarespace creates extremely shallow websites in technical SEO data. A Squarespace website can only provide title and meta description tags for the main page of your website. All your other pages, including service and blog pages, will go without these easy-to-add SEO boosters and essential click-drawing information.
- Headings and Subheadings
- Squarespace is a website designing platform, so how many levels of headings are available in websites designed in Squarespace? Sadly, only a few. Squarespace only supports H1, H2, and H3 headings. You will not be able to provide more deeply layered subheadings or page flexibility.
- Sitemaps
- Squarespace does a few basic features very well. One of those is a sitemap that is built into every website. Each time you add a page to your website design, Squarespace will add that page to the sitemap below.
- SSL Encryption
- Encryption is essential to modern websites, or browsers won’t even let users click through. This means a complete and active SSL certificate. Not sure what this is? Squarespace can take care of SSL for you as part of providing a ready-to-launch website-building platform.
- Mobile Responsiveness
- Squarespace also provides instant mobile responsive performance by using a snap-grid
How good is SEO for websites built in Squarespace? In website design, Squarespace is known to provide a lightning-fast start for non-web-dev professionals. Part of this is that Squarespace offers a baseline of SEO performance. Each page is unlikely to break and your homepage, at least, has the metadata tags used to optimize a website for search engine findings. Automatic sitemaps, SSL, and mobile performance sound like selling points. But Squarespace SEO plateaus early, and on-site building limitations also limit your ability to optimize for SEO performance.
WordPress: Building Your SEO Tool-Kit
What about WordPress for inherent SEO and versatile SEO tools? While WordPress doesn’t have the same out-of-the-box prepped settings, you can find many of the best SEO tools on the market in the WordPress plugin marketplace. WordPress doesn’t put the breaks on your SEO design, giving you access to the full range of strategies and to tools that can enhance or automate further SEO growth.
- Metadata Tags
- The HTML and tags you use in WordPress are entirely under your control, giving you access to title tags, metadata description tags, and image alt text tabs on any page for honed technical SEO results.
- Headings and Subheadings
- WordPress gives you access to all six standard Heading sizes ranging from H1 to H6 so you can embed sub-sections into any content. These lower subheadings are essential if you are organizing accurate data like writing an e-book,
- Sitemaps
- Sitemaps are not automatically generated in your default WordPress installation. Still, many plugins let you select and customize how your sitemaps are made and how you would like to display your site map to customers and web crawlers.
- SSL Encryption
- WordPress does not automatically register you for SSL encryption. Still, many tools help you register, connect and maintain your SSL certificate through standard WordPress plugins and tips from the vast WP community.
- Mobile Responsiveness
- WordPress websites have the potential to be highly mobile responsive. All you need is to choose a complete theme built to present well on mobile browsers and apps.
WordPress takes a more personalized setup to create an SEO-ready website. Still, even a fraction of effort can quickly outstrip the results of a Squarespace website built almost the same way. Why? Because the best WordPress SEO tools can do infinitely more, from technical SEO to content optimization tools, where Squarespace automates at-launch SEO but limits the user’s ability to expand on their initial SEO results.
Squarespace SEO or WordPress SEO? WordPress SEO has proven to be the better option for any website with an active dev at the helm in this competition. For more great insights on website design best practices or to boost the SEO of your website, contact us today.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is arguably the most crucial factor to consider when choosing a CMS platform or website builder. After all, you are building a website that people can find and interact with; without SEO, this is impossible, even though your website may look stunning.
Some of the most popular CMS and website builders currently include WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace. All of these platforms are extremely popular and equipped with many SEO features and tools that you can use.
But which platform is the best for SEO? Here, we will compare these platforms to determine how they stack up.
SEO Tool Comparison
In this section, we will compare the SEO tools available in Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress.
Squarespace SEO Tools
Squarespace has built-in SEO tools that can help you gain more exposure to your site. You can easily add: meta descriptions and titles and ensure the right keywords are used throughout your site. That being said, Squarespace SEO isn’t very robust. It doesn’t allow you to edit the code of your site or change any of the settings for a more advanced SEO strategy.
If you’re looking for more advanced options that let you edit the code of your website or change even the most miniature settings to optimize it for search engines, then Squarespace might not be suitable for you. In such a case, you would be better positioned with a fully-fledged CMS such as WordPress.
WIX SEO Tools
Wix also has some in-built SEO tools that even allow you to edit the code of your website and optimize it for search engines. It also has a robust content management system that lets you quickly add meta descriptions and titles and ensure the right keywords are used throughout your site.
Wix’s SEO tool is a little more advanced than Squarespace’s because it allows you to edit your website’s code to be more optimized for search engines. However, compared to WordPress SEO tools, Wix’s SEO is much more basic and does not have as many features and options. For example, it does not provide a keyword density tool or a content analysis tool, to mention a few.
WordPress SEO Tools
WordPress is one of the most popular platforms in use today—and with good reason: it offers tons of customization options while still being quick and easy enough for beginners who want to get started quickly.
It comes with tons of in-built SEO tools, such as a keyword density analyzer and a content analysis tool that can help you optimize your website’s content. You can also add plugins to your site to expand its functionality even further; this is where its true power lies.
For instance, the Yoast SEO Plugin comes preinstalled into WordPress and can help you optimize your site’s content for search engines. It’s the most popular SEO plugin in use today, and for a good reason: it offers some of the best features available on any platform.
These include:
-A site analysis tool helps you identify your site’s content problems. This can identify duplicate content, thin content, or missing metadata.
– An advanced sitemap generator can be used to submit your site to search engines like Google and Bing.
-An optimized snippet length tool helps you write the perfect meta description for your site.
– A keyword density checker that allows you to improve the SEO score of your content.
Takeaway
WordPress offers the most robust SEO tools without any plugins, and it gets exponentially more powerful with the application of 3rd-party plugins such as Yoast SEO.
SEO Performance Comparison
How fast your pages load will significantly impact your website’s SEO scores and the general user experience.
Let’s see how these tools stack up against one another in terms of SEO performance.
Squarespace SEO Performance
Squarespace is a fast, modern website builder that offers clean HTML templates that load quickly. They are particularly good at serving up static pages, which can be used to create simple blogs and other non-eCommerce sites easily. Their hosting options are great for beginners who want to get started quickly without worrying about technical issues.
However, when it comes to creating larger websites, Squarespace falls short of the competition. One of the most significant setbacks with Squarespace is that it is a hosted website builder. Therefore, it limits the number of options you have for speeding up your website since you cannot access the backend of your site.
Wix SEO Performance
WIX websites are some of the fastest in the industry regarding speed and performance. Their hosting options are well-designed and optimized for speed, so even beginners can create websites that load quickly and perform well on mobile devices. Wix is also one of the few website builders to offer free SSL certificates for all new domains, so your site will be secure from day one.
Regarding SEO performance, the biggest issue with WIX websites is that they don’t allow for many technical customizations. For instance, WIX does not allow users to access or edit their sitemaps, has limited h-tags for headings, adds extra characters to specific URLs, and doesn’t have canonical tags.
WIX sites may also suffer the occasional code bloat due to a lot of complex JavaScript, which may compromise its performance. Lastly, you cannot upgrade your hosting options for SEO performance purposes as you would with a WordPress website. All this affects SEO performance negatively for Wix sites.
WordPress SEO Performance
When it comes to speed and performance, WordPress websites are often considered the gold standard. WordPress websites are built on a custom coding language that allows users to edit the code behind their site and fully optimize it for speed, performance, and SEO.
Furthermore, WordPress is one of the world’s most popular and widely used content management systems. This means that it’s easy to find plugins and extensions that can be added to your site to optimize various aspects, such as:
- Image compression and conversion to modern formats (e.g., WebP and AVIC)
- Lazy loading
- Text compression
- Deferring JavaScript
- Minifying JavaScript
- Minifying CSS
- Fixing render-blocking CSS
- Caching and more.
Verdict
Squarespace and WIX are formidable website builders, but they cannot handle the advanced SEO required to put your website on the first page of Google.
Therefore, WordPress is the clear winner regarding SEO for various reasons. To recap, it has many options and flexibility; you can easily choose your hosting company and customize every aspect of your site as you see fit. WordPress also has tons of plugins that can be used to add functions from analytics tracking to code.
However, unlike Squarespace and WIX, WordPress is more difficult to use and requires much more technical knowledge to get started. If you’re not sure how to build a website from scratch or need something simple that works out of the box, we can help.
For more information on how you can improve your SEO with a WordPress website, contact us.
