Wix Vs WordPress: Which one is better for SEO?

We are sure you must have heard of WordPress even if you are not tech-savvy. That is because WordPress is one of the most popular names for website development. Two years ago if someone would have asked the best platform to build a website, the quick response would have been WordPress.

Now, WordPress has got competition too! Wix! Since this name has popped up in the industry, the debate of Wix Vs WordPress has been doing the rounds.

Are you a part of this debate too? Or are you completely confused about choosing between Wix versus WordPress? Until you hire a WordPress web development company for your project, we hope this blog will be of some guidance!

A brief outline of what this blog has in store for you is listed below

• WordPress & Wix basic explanation
• Advantages of WordPress & Wix
• A detailed comparison between them
• Wix Vs WordPress in terms of SEO
• Declaration of the clear winner between WordPress and Wix

Let’s begin the journey to find the best website platform for SEO!

WHAT IS WORDPRESS?

WordPress is the simplest and most popular way to create your own website/blog. It is an open-source content management system which means anyone can use and modify this software for free.

It can be rightly said that WordPress has made website building accessible to everyone including non-technical people. A great degree of customization is possible with WordPress. Furthermore, if given in the right hands, you can create an outstanding website.

Some types of websites that you can create with WordPress are a blog/personal website, eCommerce, portfolio, online communities, multilingual, podcasting, photography and school/college websites. Thus, it has got the whole package for you!

ADVANTAGES OF WORDPRESS:

• Easy Usage
• No HTML Editing or FTP software required
• Complete control of your site
• Completely customizable
• In-built blogging capabilities
• Scalable
• SEO friendly

WHAT IS WIX?

Wix is a cloud-based service that enables you to build your own website without any knowledge of coding.

On the contrary to WordPress, Wix gives you everything you need to build and maintain your website. For instance, domain name, hosting, e-commerce functionality, CMS, templates, and support, etc.

There are two ways to start creating a website with Wix.

1. Wix Editor – It allows you to choose a template, create a website structure and add content.
2. Wix ADI mode – This mode will automatically create a customizable website for you including images, videos, and text. This is implemented by asking you a few questions about what you want to achieve. After that, your site is filled with content found on the web about you or your business.

You might be wondering what’s so interesting about this? Well, both these ways are designed to be used by people without any web development skills.

ADVANTAGES OF WIX:

• Free to use
• Easy drag & drop functionality
• Pre-designed high-quality templates
• Responsive design & optimized templates
• Tools & guidance for SEO
• The easy website building process
• 24/7 support services

Now, that you are probably clear with the basics, let’s dive into the Wix Vs WordPress debate!

LEARNING CURVE

The learning curve of WordPress is definitely steeper. There’s no doubt that WordPress provides a lot of flexibility, but with it comes complexity. If you have some coding knowledge, WordPress will open up a lot of opportunities. But you will also need advanced technical knowledge to make adjustments.

Of course, you can hire a WordPress Developer for the project but that might prove to be a costly option.

On the other hand, Wix is designed to be a user-friendly platform for even the non-developers. All you have to do is drag and drop pictures, paragraphs, shopping cart buttons and more anywhere on the web page.

The disadvantage with WordPress here is that you cannot see the changes in content unless you publish the page. Moreover, you need to buy hosting and domain names separately with WordPress.

In the case of Wix, hosting and domain names are in-built, saving time and effort from your end.

VERDICT: LEARNING CURVE

When it comes to a learning curve, Wix is an absolute winner in Wix Vs WordPress debate. The only reason is its user-friendly drag and drops editor.

DESIGN & CUSTOMIZATION

Design and customization are WordPress’s forte. There is no limit to customization options with WordPress but it’s not that easy to do either. If you are comfortable with coding, you can make an ample amount of changes to the theme. The website will entirely reflect your brand values.

Moreover, WordPress provides a wide selection of themes and templates. But if you want a more aesthetically appealing website, you can always go for premium options. It is always recommended to go for themes developed by WordPress itself.

Wix also has a wide range of over 500 templates. Each template has built-in features relevant to the industry. It will save you a lot of time and effort to find something relevant to your business.

If you don’t want to get into design and customization simply use Wix ADI. It is a design assisted tool that will create a website on the basis of a few questions about your site’s purpose and design choices.

VERDICT: DESIGN & CUSTOMIZATION

WordPress is clearly more powerful than Wix due to its high customization options and a wide range of themes to choose from.

BLOGGING

Many people want an easy platform to start blogging. Both Wix and WordPress can be used to create blogs.

You can easily add a blog section to your website with Wix. It has all the basic features you need. For example, photos, videos, categories, tags, and archives, etc. But it does not have a native commenting system like WordPress. Wix uses Facebook comments which are not portable. Moreover, other features such as featured images and creating private posts are also missing.

It uses a plain text editor as a writing interface for blog posts which has very limited options of formatting.

WordPress was started as a blogging platform and slowly it became a complete website builder. Due to this, it has all the basic as well as advanced blogging features you need.

Want a beautiful layout for your blog posts? WordPress has got you covered with the Gutenberg block editor! Last but not least – you can extend blog plugins and add any feature you want.

VERDICT: BLOGGING

When it comes to blogging in the Wix Vs WordPress battle, WordPress definitely has the upper hand.

ECOMMERCE PLATFORM

Wix offers eCommerce with only paid plans. The users with a free plan cannot run their eCommerce store on Wix. You can only accept payments using PayPal or Authorize.Net with WixStores.

On the other hand, WordPress makes it very easy for you to create an online store using WooCommerce. You might be thinking why WooCommerce? Well, it powers more than 42% of eCommerce sites worldwide.

There are many other plugins available for WordPress that you can use to sell your products online. Interestingly, most of these plugins have their dedicated themes and add-on plugins.

VERDICT: ECOMMERCE PLATFORM

If you want a scalable online store then WordPress + WooCommerce will provide you more flexibility as compared to Wix.

We are sure that by now you know the answer to your question – should I use Wix or WordPress for my dream website. However, we are yet to compare them to one of the most important parameters. Here you go!

WIX VS WORDPRESS SEO:

Before we begin the eternal discussion of Wix SEO vs WordPress SEO, let’s tell you what is all the fuss around SEO!

Search Engine Optimization is the process of making changes in your website to get high rankings in the search engine results page. Today, SEO matters and so everyone wants to have an SEO optimized website. The two types of SEO are On-page and off-page.

Both are similar when it comes to on-page activities, so there is no WordPress vs Wix SEO debate in this case. The similar on-page activities of WordPress and Wix are:

• Ability to change the page title, meta description & H1 – H6 tags
• Sitemaps generation for easier and faster crawling
• Add alt tags to images
• Friendly and short URLs
• Mobile friendly
• Connection to Google Search Console, Google Analytics, etc.

When it comes to off-page SEO, a backlink or social sign doesn’t care about your platform. However, one part where WordPress is better is the ability to have more control. It includes the speed of your site and advanced options for indexing/crawling/blocking. These things have a direct impact on SEO & rankings.

In the Ahrefs study on Wix Vs WordPress SEO, 6.4 million domains were analyzed. And the results? 46.1% of WordPress sites got some organic traffic. Whereas only 1.4% of Wix sites got some organic traffic.

We would also like to add that when it comes to the SEO quality of content, promotion on social media and backlinks are more important than the platform.

WIX VS WORDPRESS – WHICH ONE TO CHOOSE?

After all the above discussion, it is pretty clear that WordPress is unarguably the best website builder for SEO 2020. Except for its complexity, there is nothing missing in WordPress to build a beautiful website. For most users it is the best option due to its huge community, level of flexibility and full control of the data. Thus, it will help you achieve a lot more in the long run.

Even though Wix is comparatively new in the market, they are taking steps to solve Wix website SEO problems. If you want just a basic website and don’t care about the flexibility to customize your site, then Wix is the perfect choice for you! But remember, if you want flexibility later, it will be a pain to convert WordPress to Wix.

So, it all really comes down to your personal choices about building your website.

If neither of these options workouts for you, then there is always custom WordPress development to fulfill all your project requirements.

Planning your next project in WordPress? Discuss your requirements with us at info@21twelveinteractive.com !

This article is originally published on 21Twelve Interactive’s Blog Page.