You’ve probably been told by some agency that your website “cannot be SEO’d” because it’s not in WordPress – or that WordPress is the superior Content Management System (CMS) for SEO.

So, is it true?

 

What is a CMS?

First, let’s start off with what a CMS is.

CMS stands for Content Management System.

It’s basically what allows people who are not web-developers to easily manage content on the website such as:

  1. Editing the text
  2. Changing/adding images
  3. Creating additional pages/blogs

So, for example, instead of my having to deal with this when I edit the homepage of this website:

I can login to my CMS (Concrete5) which allows me to click on the area that I want to edit quickly, easily and without any of that messy code we just saw above.

It’s all about pleasing Google

At the end of the day, most brochure websites are using the same language (HTML and CSS) and that’s what Google reads. It doesn’t matter if your CMS is in WordPress, Concrete5, Squarespace, etc.

Google really doesn’t take your CMS int account when it crawls/reads your website and starts deciding how relevant that website is in relation to a whole bunch of different seach queries.

It really just looks for:

  1. The quality and length of your written content.
  2. How well organised that content is (like having a page soley about hot water, a page soley about blocked drains, and so on if you’re a plumber).
  3. The website to be reasonably fast and not bogged down with unecessary code, images with large file sizes or inline CSS (which is more often down to the developer rather than the CMS).

As long as your CMS allows you to make Google happy there, your website can be SEO’d.

 

What makes a CMS good for SEO?

There are a few things that you need to be able to edit:

  1. Meta Titles
  2. Meta Descriptions
  3. Heading Titles
  4. Body Content
  5. Image Alt Tags
  6. The URL Structure

That’s pretty much it.

All other things such as robots.txt, .htaccess and structure data are usually things that any competent SEO can implement through your cPanel.

It is quite rare that you come across a CMS that doesn’t allow you to edit these fields.

And the CMS’ that did lack these fields, such as Squarespace, have since rectified these issues.

 

Why do I keep getting told I need WordPress?

Unfortunately, not all SEOs are created equal.

Many of them are only competent in WordPress, relying on a handful of plugins in order to help them perform basic tasks.

To say that a website needs to be in WordPress in order to rank on Google is just untrue and a sign of an SEO’s experience, or lack thereof.

Here are just a few examples of some websites built in Concrete5 that rank extremely well for SEO, in highly competitive fields:

 

Cleanetic Carpet Cleaning

https://cleanetic.com.au/

#1 for “carpet cleaner perth”

Brick and Mortar Restoration

https://www.brickandmortarrestorationperth.com.au/

#1 for “brick repointing perth”

 

ABA Security & Electrical

https://abasecurityandelectrical.com.au/

#2 for “electricians albany”

WA Legal

https://walegal.com.au/

#2 for “lawyers perth”

 

Allure Painting

#2 for “painters perth”

https://www.allurepainting.com.au/

That’s not to say that WordPress is bad

It’s actually a great CMS.

In fact, I’ve built quite a few of my clients’ websites in WordPress as well.

But when you have (for example) a relatively new website in Concrete5 and your digital marketing agency is saying that they have to rebuild it in WordPress in order to do SEO; run. They don’t know what they’re doing.

So…which CMS should I be using for SEO?

It really doesn’t matter.

The more important questions you should be asking when it comes to a Content Management System should be along the lines of:

  • How easy is it to edit the content?
  • How much support for this CMS is available in the market?
  • Does the CMS offer any integration to other apps that are vital to your business?

Content, backlinks, user experience and branded searches in Google are the key metrics for how well you’re going to rank organically – your CMS simply isn’t a factor.

Even Wix, once the laughing stock of the SEO community, is now okay for SEO for the needs of the vast majority of business owners.

So, in short, if an SEO doesn’t think that they can rank your website – it’s not the CMS that’s the problem.