Not to sound like old people talking about the “old days,” but we need a moment to talk about how much faster it is to build and maintain websites now than it was in 2011. Back then, 76% of websites were hand-coded. Today, there are tons of website builders, called content management systems (CMS) that provide people with pre-designed templates. Most have drag and drop editors, making them easy for your average person to use.
That said, these CMSs vary in quality. Some of the most popular website builders are Wix, WordPress and Shopify.
In 2023, WordPress was the force behind over 60% of websites. Shopify has 4% and Wix has around 3%. Now there’s a reason WordPress is the leader – they’ve simply been around the longest. WordPress isn’t necessarily the best choice for all companies. Often, when we meet clients without sites, we use WordPress. Other times, we recommend Shopify. And when a customer has a website, we often migrate their sites and business management tools from one to the other.
We usually recommend WordPress when a company has a lot of content and uses the site to promote their services, most of which are paid for in other ways. Shopify is best for eCommerce sites.
Each of these CMSs offer analytics tools to help you better understand customers and your SEO strategies. Insights gained from analytics can drive marketing strategies for better ROI in the future.
In this post, we’re going to look at how each website builder differs in terms of search engine optimization (SEO). Not sure what SEO is? SEO stands for search engine optimization, a series of steps that digital marketers use to improve website visibility in search engine results pages (SERP).
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The Basics of Shopify SEO
Here’s the most important thing to know – Shopify is great because it’s an all-in-one website builder and business management tool. It can do things besides building a website, like managing inventory, creating invoices and more.
The biggest drawback to Shopify is that their templates often have issues that could lower your rank in SERP unless you need to delete or customize them. For example, Shopify has some issues in most templates that Google really doesn’t like, like buttons that say the same thing on every page.
Here’s another thing about Shopify – Some of their pre-designed templates don’t have strong site architecture. That’s a fancy way of saying that pages don’t have the right number of H1 and H2 tags. H tags are the font sizes that are used on each webpage. In web design, you want to limit yourself to a maximum of six H sizes per page. There should only be one word on line that has an H1 tag (the largest font). Then you should have smaller headers (H2) and regular body text. At SEO Design Chicago, we customize each webpage so that there are a correct number of H1, H2 and H3 tags, plus regular body text. Google will then rank your site higher, if you do some other things too.
Shopify has built-in SEO features that help users with the fundamental ways they can improve their e-store’s organic search placement. In other words, you don’t have to open a bunch of other apps to edit title tags, meta descriptions, and shorten URL structures.
The Basics of WordPress SEO
WordPress has a lot of perks, like that it’s cheaper to host a site through it than Shopify or Wix. But WordPress isn’t as user friendly as Shopify or Wix. In fact, some people find it downright a pain in the behind to use.
In order to make a lot of things easier on WordPress, you need to install plugins. They give your website extra functionality, like the ability to sell items on your website, drag and drop pictures and content, and add contact forms. Some of these plugins are free while others cost money.
Yoast is one popular plug-in for SEO on WordPress. There’s also All in One SEO Pack to do on-page optimization if you use WordPress. You can also use the SEMRush plugin if you use Google Chrome for your internet browsing.
All of these tools provide real-time feedback and suggestions to improve the SEO-friendliness of your content. So before you hit publish, you’ll see what could be improved so that you rank higher in SERP.
But plug-ins are an extra step you need to take when using WordPress. It’s an easy step, but for some beginners, it’s a mountain. With Shopify and Wix, the SEO tools are already in your dashboard – you just have to know where to find them.
The Basics of Wix SEO
We bet you’ve seen Wix commercials. They invest a lot of money into marketing, which may explain why use of Wix has skyrocketed over the past year. In 2023, its number of registered users rose 8% to 263 million – 60% of them in North America – while it added 189,000 premium subscriptions to reach 6.3 million, according to Reuters News.
One of the biggest reasons people use Wix is that they are impressed by the ease of customizing their templates. If you can use Word, you can use Wix. While Wix is on the expensive side when it comes to premium plans (anywhere from $16-$59 per month), their SEO tools are easy to find and easy to use. Wix offers a SEO Wizard to guide you through the things you need to do to make each page of your website rank higher in Google. Each step includes instructions, like how long the text should be.
That said, it has some limitations. For example, it’s hard to edit the auto-generated sitemap of your site that Google looks at when figuring out where to rank a page in SERP. And whenever you upload an image to Wix, it gives it a series of weird numbers and letters in the alt tag (e.g., 09bc88~mv1.jpg/). An alt tag is what Google looks for when analyzing an image on a site. It’s what appears when a cursor hovers over an image. You want the alt tag to contain keywords, not weird numbers and letters. In Wix, you have to change these file names.
Our Strategy For SEO Services
One of our first steps with new clients is talking about which CMS is best for them (and just because you started with one CMS doesn’t mean you can’t migrate your content to a new one). Regardless of whether you choose Shopify, WordPress or Wix, we know how to optimize every page and section on your site.
These SEO tactics increase your rank in SERP. We perform deep dives into your competitors online. We also use tons of tools to conduct keyword research. This helps us figure out what keywords you need to use all over your website – on page text, on page tiles, in alt-tags for images and in meta descriptions (the words that appear in SERP under a link). We use Google’s Keyword Planner for research and other paid, more advanced tools.
Some of the best SEO services that we offer include:
- Content creation for your site
- On page optimizations of category, product, landing and product pages
- Restructuring of your website’s sitemap
- Internal linking improvement
- Revision of current content
- Category and product page usability suggestions
- Site loading improvement strategies
- Adding or revising alt tags for images with the correct keywords
- Reformatting text with H1 tags, bullet points and other tricks so Google’s bots can find your site and tell its algorithm, “This is good. Put it on page one.”
- Improving how your site looks on a smartphone and how fast it loads on a mobile phone
If You Choose Shopify, We’ve Got You Covered
We detail how we’ve helped companies with their SEO Shopify strategies in our case studies. For confidentiality reasons, we don’t provide the names of our customers, but in our conversations, we can share tips on how we’ve fixed Shopify specific SEO issues.
We used to be die-hard WordPress users. We still are. But increasingly, we’ve been recommending Shopify for clients who are using a bunch of different tools – from paper to spreadsheets to InTuit – to manage their business needs. Shopify is a game-changer because in addition to creating and managing websites, they offer businesses tools to manage things like inventory, shipping and more – all from one dashboard.
Of course, the more you need, the more you pay Shopify. But for some businesses, Shopify makes more sense than WordPress or Wix.
Reach out to us for a free on page SEO audit if you already have a website. If you’re new to e-commerce, or just starting out, this is the perfect chance to reach out to us and figure out which CMS is best for your needs now, and what may be best for you five years down the road.
Contact Us Today!