Choosing a blog, shopping cart or website with the best SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Web design can help startups, bloggers and small businesses generate more Web traffic and revenue as quickly as possible.
Web platforms that don’t have the best SEO features built-in can slow down the process of growing long term organic search traffic, because content won’t rank as high in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
This article will compare the SEO performance of some of the leading Web design, CMS, online shopping cart, and website builders to help you decide on the best Web platform for your small business, blog or startup.
Comparing SEO for different Web platforms
Any entrepreneur experienced in Internet based businesses or startups will know that one of the most important requirements for online success is to start generating sustainable revenue as early as possible.
By ensuring that webpages are ranked as high as possible by Google search, small businesses, bloggers and startups can ensure they squeeze the most revenue out of the web as possible.
The comparisons below focus on demo SEO profiles of each Web platform – since these are representative of the SEO of sites on these platforms. Note that while there will be differences in the SEO profiles, every effort has been made to choose simple, lightweight examples to make things as fair as possible.
It’s important to keep two things in mind when deciding which Web platform to use for your blog, startup or business:
- Some platforms have flexible SEO features and can be drastically improved
- The less SEO development required, the more resources can be focused on growing the core business
So, while it may be possible to improve the SEO of the Web platforms discussed below, it is important to understand that SEO can be difficult and time-consuming.
Ask yourself “Where do I want my precious resources focused during the fragile startup phase?”
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eCommerce SEO
Overall, the eCommerce platforms included in this comparison had good SEO features. However, there is a tendency for some of them to focus on visual aspects of the page instead of trying to drive more organic search traffic from great SEO.
Rank | Software | YSlow | Google PageSpeed | Load Time |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Shopify | 84 | 84 | 0.89 |
2 | BigCommerce | 76 | 95 | 1.52 |
3 | Magento | 76 | 67 | 1.32 |
4 | Pinnacle Cart | 79 | 81 | 2.16 |
5 | Volusion | 80 | 65 | 1.87 |
Website builder SEO
As you’d expect, there is quite a range of SEO features and performance for sites using online Website builders. Most website builders do a great job of providing top notch SEO features.
However, don’t get caught up in all the cool extra features and flashy design templates. These work to slow your site and alter your content’s SEO profile so that ranking may suffer – stick to clean, simple interfaces and you’ll be driving traffic in no time.
Rank | Software | YSlow | Google PageSpeed | Load Time |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Yola | 84 | 94 | 0.92 |
2 | GoDaddy! | 79 | 90 | 1.44 |
3 | Wix | 79 | 95 | 2.44 |
4 | Weebly | 80 | 89 | 2.00 |
5 | Webs | 75 | 28 | 0.82 |
6 | Homestead | 79 | 57 | 2.76 |
CMS SEO
CMS’s (Content Management Systems) can be completely overhauled provided you have access to the source code (HTML, CSS, and PHP), and the sEO knowledge and skills to go with the technical requirements.
I’ve included SEO Entrepreneur’s SEO performance to show the huge difference between a basic CMS (in this case, Drupal) website, and one that has world class SEO improvements like SEO Entrepreneur.
Rank | Software | YSlow | Google PageSpeed | Load Time |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | SEO Entrepreneur | 96 | 98 | 1.18 |
2 | WordPress | 77 | 92 | 1.11 |
3 | Drupal | 83 | 67 | 1.14 |
4 | Joomla | 78 | 72 | 1.11 |
If you are interested in creating a blog or website that has the latest SEO enhancements, SEO Entrepreneur’s Web platform is available as an SEO optimized hosted small business or blog solution.
Contact SEO Entrepreneur to find out more about how to purchase a copy of SEO Entrepreneur’s SEO and performance enhanced Drupal platform.
Have you worked on SEO in order to improve organic search traffic and drive business? Has the time and effort invested in SEO paid off? How high do you rate unbeatable SEO for driving business online? Share your SEO Web design and development tips and experiences in the comments or join me on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ to continue the conversation.