The importance of SEO for businesses can’t be understated. Without it, businesses will have a hard time being discovered online and generating traffic to their website. When it comes to SEO, there are a lot of different factors that need to be considered in order to ensure that your website is optimised for search engines.
One of the most important factors is the platform that your website is built on. The platform that your website is built on can have a big impact on your SEO. It can affect things like the structure of your website, the code that your website is built with, and how easy it is for search engines to crawl and index your website.
Currently, two of the main platforms that businesses use to build their websites are WordPress and Squarespace. Both of these platforms have their own pros and cons when it comes to SEO. In this article, we will compare the two platforms and see which one is better for SEO.
An Overview of Squarespace and WordPress
Before delving into how the two platforms perform when it comes to SEO, it helps to understand a little bit about each platform. Let’s take a quick look at each platform and what it has to offer businesses.
What Is Squarespace?
Squarespace is a web development platform that offers users the ability to create and host their own websites. It’s one of the most popular platforms on the web, and for good reason. It’s easy to use, has a ton of features, and is relatively affordable.
Squarespace is ideal for beginners. The platform is drag-and-drop, so you can create a website without any coding experience. You can also choose from a variety of templates to get started. Squarespace also offers a wide range of features, including eCommerce capabilities, SEO tools, and social media integrations.
One downside of Squarespace is that it’s a bit pricier than other web development platforms. However, for the features and ease of use that it offers, it’s well worth the price tag.
What Is WordPress?
WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that enables you to create a website or blog from scratch or to improve an existing website. It is free and open-source software released under the GPL. Currently, 455 million websites use the platform. That’s almost 40 percent of all websites on the internet.
WordPress is popular for many reasons. It is easy to use and install, with endless features and plugins available. The platform is constantly updated with new features and security improvements.
When it comes to SEO tools, few platforms are as versatile. WordPress offers users numerous SEO-related tools to help them with optimizing their website for search engines.
So, What’s the Main Difference?
The main difference between the two platforms is that WordPress is a CMS while Squarespace is a web builder. WordPress gives you more control over your website, including the ability to install plugins and customize your website to a greater degree.
There’s also the matter of pricing. With WordPress, you don’t have to pay anything to use the platform. You will, however, need to pay for hosting, a domain name, and any plugins or themes that you might want to use.
Squarespace, on the other hand, isn’t free. You’ll find that the platform charges several times more than what you would pay for most hosting and domain name providers. That’s a challenge, particularly for small businesses and startups that might have limited budgets.
How Do the Two Platforms Perform When It Comes to SEO?
Now that we’ve looked at each platform, let’s see how they compare when it comes to SEO. There are several factors to consider when trying to determine which platform is better for SEO. These include:
1. Performance
A major factor in SEO is speed. If your website loads slowly, you’ll find that your ranking in search engines will suffer.
The speed of your website will depend on several factors, such as the quality of your hosting, the theme you’re using, and the plugins you have installed. That said, WordPress websites tend to be a bit faster than Squarespace websites.
One reason for this is that WordPress gives you a clean and fast-loading HTML. In addition, you get to choose your preferred web host. This gives you more control over the speed of your website. If you don’t like your current host, you can always switch to a faster one.
With Squarespace, your options are limited when it comes to increasing your website’s speed. For one, you’re stuck with the hosting that they provide. That means that if your website is slow, there’s not much you can do about it.
2. Mobile-Friendliness
Another important factor in SEO is mobile-friendliness. In today’s world, more and more people are using their mobile devices to access the internet. In fact, 63 percent of Google searches are now conducted on mobile devices.
Both WordPress and Squarespace websites can be made to be mobile-friendly. However, WordPress gives you more control over how your website looks on mobile devices. This is because you can choose from a wide variety of themes and plugins that are designed to be responsive.
With Squarespace, you’re somewhat limited in this regard. While Squarespace does offer some mobile-friendly themes, they don’t offer as many options as WordPress.
3. SEO-Friendly Themes and Plugins
As we’ve mentioned, WordPress offers a wide variety of themes and plugins that are designed to be SEO-friendly. This gives you a significant advantage when it comes to optimizing your website for search engines.
There are themes and plugins available for just about everything, from social media integration to sitemaps. This means that you can easily find a plugin or theme that will help you with just about any aspect of SEO.
Squarespace does offer some themes and plugins that are designed to be SEO-friendly. However, they don’t offer nearly as many options as WordPress. This means that you’ll have a harder time finding the right tools to help you optimize your website.
Squarespace vs WordPress SEO: The Bottom Line
Both Squarespace and WordPress are great choices for SEO. However, WordPress has more features specifically designed for SEO. That makes it the better choice if you’re looking to optimize your website for search engines. And with the platform available for free, it’s just what you need if your business is on a budget. Talk to a WordPress professional today to set up an SEO-friendly website and reap the rewards of higher search engine rankings.
