Website builders do not have a good reputation when it comes to SEO.
It’s common to see users and even web developers complaining about the inability to rank well on search engine ranking pages when using a website builder.
Some even claim that it’s impossible. However, the reality is, it’s not easy to get your web pages to rank on page one of Google, regardless of what platform you use to build and host your website.
For someone that doesn’t have the skills to improve the technical aspects required for good SEO, a website builder will be the easiest, and possibly the only way to rank well.
Search engine optimization is a science. It takes time, effort, and skill to outperform your competitors.
It’s true that highly skilled search engine marketers will find limitations with any website builder tool.
However, it’s still possible to rank well and generate organic search traffic for your website builder site if you work hard to implement the right strategy and optimize your website with SEO best practices.
A lot of the time the biggest problem that ‘website builder complainers’ have is a poor SEO strategy.
So, this article is going to walk you through the best practices for website builder SEO so that you can optimize your site for success. We’ll introduce the topic generally, explain how you can improve your SEO, and help you to evaluate if a website builder has the tools you need to optimize your site.
Off-page SEO
On-page SEO is the key to a strong foundation for your SEO strategy, but you can’t make it to the top of the rankings without off-page SEO.
This is because search engine algorithms aren’t intelligent enough to decipher if a page is relevant and engaging just from on-page SEO factors, it needs another signal.
That’s where off-page SEO comes in. Two of our top search engine ranking factors fall into this category, backlinks and social signals.
Backlinks
Backlinks are simply hyperlinks from an external site to your site and will have the biggest impact in regards to off-page SEO.
Search engines decided that web pages with lots of inbound links are more likely to be relevant and engaging than those with fewer inbound links.
The best way to secure backlinks is to create amazing content that other content creators will organically want to link to.
For example, publishing the results of unique research for a popular topic is a great way to gain organic backlinks. However, it’s unlikely that you will be able to publish link-worthy content all the time.
So, other methods like guest posting and submitting press releases to other publications are a great way to gain links.
You can also buy backlinks, however, be wary of this method because search engines look less favorably on this type of backlink and they are becoming more intelligent at figuring out what these types of links look like.
Social signals
It’s difficult to see exactly how social signals affect your SEO, especially as the official word from Google is that they are not a direct ranking factor, even though they do play a role.
The evidence suggests that it’s not something you want to forget about as there is a strong correlation between high ranking web pages and high levels of corresponding social media activity such as likes, shares, and comments.
Therefore, there is no harm in getting busy on your social media channels and working with influencers to spread your content far and wide. You’ll not only be improving your SEO, but you will also be increasing your web traffic and building brand awareness. It’s a win-win…win.
Technical SEO
The third and final part of the SEO triangle is technical SEO. This is where website builders have the biggest limitations, especially the ones that don’t give you access to the HTML scripts.
It’s where the argument that ‘website builders are terrible for SEO’ comes from.
However, if you don’t have any coding skills, the code sitting behind website builder platforms will be much better than trying to go it alone and much cheaper than paying an expert to do it for you.
Four of our top ranking factors come under the bracket of technical SEO. These are page speed, site security, schema markup, and mobile-friendly design.
Even though technical SEO is the Achilles heel of website builder platforms, it’s not as bad as it seems.
Now, here’s where some folks start wringing their hands. You can Google horror stories about someone’s site tanking after switching to a drag-and-drop builder, and yeah, there’s usually some truth hiding behind the drama. But when you dig a little deeper, you see these issues often trace back to neglecting basics—neglecting image compression, slapping up bloated plugins, or just not checking how the mobile version actually looks. You can’t expect miracles if you’re treating the platform like a magic bullet while ignoring the stuff that matters underneath.
There’s also this ongoing debate about how much control you really need for technical SEO. Purists will say if you can’t tweak every line of a theme’s code, you’re out of luck. They aren’t entirely wrong; real customization does have its perks. But for the majority, the “good enough” solutions website builders offer really do most of the heavy lifting. For what it’s worth, even Google’s own John Mueller has suggested that platforms like Wix and Squarespace can perform just fine when set up correctly—so maybe don’t toss your builder out the window just yet.
Site speed
The code developed by WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website builders can be less efficient than what professional developers would write.
Therefore, website builder sites tend to have more code per page which can produce slower loading times. For most of us, that’s out of our control.
However, there are a couple of things website builder users can control to improve their page speed. First up, choose a website builder that has fast loading times.
Making an effort to reduce the file size of all multimedia uploaded onto your site will help to maintain page speed and keep the weight of your pages down.
Finally, limiting the number of apps and plugins you install onto your website will also help to keep the total volume of code to a minimum and your loading times acceptable.
Shopify has recently released a feature that helps you measure the effect that app installs have on your page speed and there are lots of independent page speed checker tools available to measure your loading times.
Site Security – SSL
Having an SSL certificate for your site is essential to protect your web visitor’s data and search engines take it into account when considering where to rank your page.
It won’t have a huge impact on your overall rankings but pages with an SSL certification are much more likely to rank higher than a website without one.
Most website builders now come with SSL certification automatically but make sure you double-check if it’s something that the platform you want to use offers. Once your site is live you want to see HTTPS before your domain name rather than just HTTP.
Schema markup
Schema markup is a form of microdata that search engines use to represent your pages in more interesting ways.
For example, product information such as ratings, price, and stock levels can be added to your search listing. Additionally, implementing the correct schema markup for your articles can help them show up in the ‘top-stories’ section of search results.
Beginner web developers without the skills to adapt any code are at the mercy of the website builder platform.
They either have it or they don’t. Research from Website Builder Ninja’s SEO audits found that Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, Bigcommerce, Shopify, Simvoly, and Ucraft all have schema markup data present.
However, with the exception of Shopify, the schema markup data is incomplete meaning that it’s not possible to utilize all of the possible search result features.
While it’s not a direct ranking factor, it plays a significant role because it improves the user experience on search engines through rich snippets, improves click-through rates, and helps the search engine to understand your content.
All of which play a role in improving your site’s SEO.
Mobile-friendly design
Finally, this last point is important but not one that you will have to think about too much when using a website builder, at least from the technical point of view.
It’s a safe bet that all of the ready-to-go web templates offered by website builders will be mobile-friendly and responsive to different screen sizes. So, using a website builder simplifies the process of making a mobile-friendly site.
What you can do though, is enable Google’s AMP or accelerated mobile pages. This will create lightweight versions of your web pages that load faster on mobiles.
Google will then prioritize AMP results on mobile search engine result pages. The other thing you can do is utilize the mobile preview that’s available on most website builder editors to check that your designs look good and offer a good user experience for mobile visitors as well as desktop visitors.
Which website builders are best for SEO?
So approximately 10 minutes of reading time later and I’m finally ready to tell you which website builder is best for SEO… well kind of.
The thing is, it’s really hard to provide a blanket statement that says is the best for SEO because everyone reading this will have different skill levels and have different requirements for their website.
However, I’ve listed my top five website builders for SEO and explained why they are good and who they are good for.
- Shopify – is great for beginners because a lot is already taken care of. However, it also allows access to the theme code for advanced users to make further optimizations. It’s also the only website builder I know of that has complete schema markup data present.
- Weebly – has fast loading times and has several useful, high-quality SEO apps to boost SEO performance with minimal effort.
- WordPress.com – best for the more advanced user who wants to be heavily involved in the SEO process. Additionally, you will get access to the highly-rated SEO plugin Yoast which is respected among many SEO experts.
- Wix – great for beginner users as the easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor makes on-page optimization simple. The downside is a slow page speed.
- Squarespace – has a solid all-around SEO offering with the ability for advanced optimization via the Squarespace Developer Platform.
Website builder SEO checklist
Finally, I would like to leave you with a checklist that you can use to make sure your website builder has everything you need for SEO.
Cross-reference the list of SEO features offered by your website builder with this list to see how much it offers. If it has everything on this list, you’ll be able to create a very SEO friendly website.
SEO features checklist:
- Title tags & meta descriptions
- Ability to create friendly URLs
- Headings H1-H6
- SSL encryption (HTTPS)
- Mobile responsive designs
- Automatic 301 redirects
- Image optimization (alt-text & filenames)
- Fast loading times
- Automatic sitemaps.xml
- Access to HTML theme code
- SEO plugins and apps
- Mobile & tablet preview
- Schema markup data
- Ability to connect with Google Analytics
This post was written by Jake Hughes, head of content marketing at Website Builder Ninja and co-founder of Liberty Office. His own experience with online marketing has developed into a passion for writing about it. Website Builder Ninja helps you to find the right platform to grow your online business through in-depth reviews and analysis of the world’s leading DIY website builders.
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