WordPress vs Wix for SEO and PPC – Which Platform is Best?

WordPress vs Wix: What’s the Difference?

• WordPress – an open-source content management system (CMS) that is not hosted.
• Wix – a website builder that is hosted.

WordPress is an open-source platform that leaves the hosting and tech support to the user – it means you need a little more know-how to get things set up, but it does offer great customizability and can handle larger websites.

Wix is relatively easy to use as a site builder; it offers hosting and tech support and is ideal for portfolio-style websites. It can be less good for larger websites, as they can become slower with too many pages, but the ease of use and support makes it an appealing option for many businesses looking to build a website.

Pros of WordPress for SEO and PPC

WordPress has a few SEO options, but it is most beneficial to use an SEO plugin to get the most from your site. One of the best for WordPress is Yoast SEO, which is a free tool that can be easily added to any site.

On pages and blogs, you can easily add and change headings, image alt tags, page titles, meta descriptions and customised URLs to make your website SEO friendly.

With the help of plugins, you can really do a lot with WordPress to improve your SEO. You can easily add Google Analytics and Search Console through plugins, also.

WordPress has long been focused on blogging, and it is widely considered the superior of the two for creating blog posts. If you are after a content-led SEO strategy, producing informative and authoritative content on your site to boost rankings in Google, then a WordPress site may be the better option.

Cons of WordPress for SEO and PPC

However, while plugins are one of the most appealing parts of WordPress, they can also occasionally be a downside. If one plugin you use works in conflict with another plugin, this may cause issues.

There are plugins for all sorts, and while some are fantastic, others may not be as well designed and may introduce vulnerabilities to your site. Likewise, updates to a plugin can sometimes cause issues that may break elements of your site.

Pros of Wix for SEO and PPC

Wix allows you to easily change page titles, alt attributes and add a range of headings, making it useful for those who need to update pages for SEO purposes.

Wix is particularly handy for beginners, especially if you don’t have much technical SEO knowledge. There are built-in tools for creating 301 redirects, and the ability to set up rules for auto-generating meta data, which can be particularly useful and save a lot of time.

Cons of Wix for SEO and PPC

One downside of Wix is that the free plan does not let you have a custom domain, which makes ranking in search engines harder. In addition, linking structures can have issues, such as URLs containing ‘#’, which can cause problems with indexation and crawlability.

Another area where Wix falls short is the loading speed – there are sometimes complaints made about how fast a site loads, which can have an impact on the SEO.

An additional issue with Wix comes from the automatic naming of images that are uploaded to a Wix site. They are given a randomly generated name (usually a random string of letters and numbers) rather than the name of the file uploaded. If you are aiming to have an image-led SEO website, such as a portfolio, then this could harm the image search results your site is found for.