SEO has been an important success factor of any given eCommerce platform for quite a long period of time, and its importance cannot be overestimated. It is one of the most advantageous ways of bringing free traffic into your store, without necessarily having to pay for visitors on a continuous basis. How much SEO impacts your business will vary depending on your overall marketing strategy and what the typical buyer's journey looks like for your target audience, but still generally work out to be one of the most cost-effective means to drive traffic and generate sales. While SEO is commonly the key priority for many eCommerce brands, it takes a backseat to other wide-reaching marketing mixes for some. Regardless, SEO almost always deserves a large section of your attention because of its affordability and potential for long-term benefits. The actual platform on which you host your e-commerce store has much to do with the enormity of SEO implementation. You therefore have to make sure that the platform chosen goes hand in hand with your aim of achieving your SEO goals, and also going with the business needs.
When it comes to finding out which e-commerce platforms are the best for SEO, the answers you'll find can vary wildly, and that's partly because there's surprisingly little hard data on the subject. Despite exhaustive research and scraping the Internet for insight, we found that the performance of different platforms in search rankings is influenced by a range of factors-not just the platform itself. For example, custom-built websites seem to rank higher, but that may be simply because companies that can afford custom-builts also tend to have larger overall budgets for marketing and optimization. Another example: WordPress sites appear to rank higher more often than Shopify stores, but this could be the effect of more WordPress sites altogether (There are 7 times more Wordpress websites than Shopify Sites). Also, a lot of Wordpress websites focus on informational content rather than the hard sale, which is rumored to perform better on Google. Interesting trends, but they don't really show which platform outperforms others from an SEO point of view, so obviously, something else is at play here.
A website that is custom-built is one made to suit particular business needs by designing from scratch. A custom website design and development offer full control over design, functionality, and performance. As such, heavy customization and optimization-which come particularly useful in Search Engine Optimization-can be allowed, but normally translate into a higher cost and longer time in development.
• Optimize Navigation and Usability: Custom sites are often capable of superior navigation and usability, which helps a lot in search engine optimization. A well-structured site architecture makes it much easier for search engines to crawl your site and will yield a better user experience.
• Full Control Over Site Speed: Choosing your own hosting and tweaking server settings guarantee full control over the speed of your website, which is one of the major keys to Google's ranking algorithm.
• SEO Strategy Tailored to a T: The ability for an extremely customized SEO strategy, everything from custom code all the way to maintenance of SEO-specific elements such as meta tags and URL structures, is possible in a custom website.
• Cost: Great investment, from development to continuous maintenance and SEO works, go into building a website from scratch.
• Complexity: Maintenance of custom sites is quite cumbersome, especially if a person does not hail from a technical background or if there isn't any dedicated team.
Shopify is currently one of the most used e-commerce platforms and is, without doubt, one of the favorite platforms among small to medium-sized businesses. Furthermore, it has several very interesting Apps dedicated to SEO you can read here about.
• Inbuilt SEO Tools: Shopify allows you to easily modify title tags, meta descriptions, and URL slugs-all the must-haves of SEO.
• Fast Loading Speed: Hosting by Shopify ensures blazingly fast load times, a big plus both in terms of user experience and search engine rankings.
• Mobile Optimization: Shopify provides responsive themes that automatically adjust to different devices to help capture mobile traffic.
• Limited Customization: Though Shopify's built-in tools are great, this platform does lack some substantial customization without additional investment in third-party apps or a developer.
• Dependency on Apps: Advanced SEO features mostly depend on additional apps, which add to the cost and complicate site management.
Coupled with WooCommerce, WordPress will be a great fit for anyone who needs strong SEO features.
• Full SEO Control: You will be fully in charge with providing your sitemap yourself and optimizing site speed with your hosting provider. Let's not forget the editing of configuration files such as the .htaccess file to help with optimizations.
• Content Management: You will be able to manage your content way easier at WordPress once you would like to have either blogs or landing pages, which are also important parts of SEO.
• Vast Plugin Ecosystem: From meta tags to internal linking structures, with plugins such as Yoast SEO, you can take care of almost everything on your site.
• More Difficult Learning Curve: With WordPress, you have great flexibility, which requires more technical knowledge than if you were working with Shopify.
• Requires Regular Updates and Maintenance: Many updates are released for WordPress sites; these may be time-consuming.
Magento is an enterprise-class system for large enterprises with complex needs
• Advanced SEO Features: Magento comes equipped with deep SEO capabilities, including meta tags, URL structures, and automated site mapping.
• Highly Customizable: Everything on the site can be customized regarding the SEO strategy being implemented. That is why Magento fits into the large enterprise needs.
• Scalability: Magento supports large catalogs and massive volumes of traffic, which means it scales with your company's growth.
• Complexity and Cost: The leading e-commerce framework has a steep learning curve and is rather costly to establish and operate. It needs a team of developers.
• Resource-Intensive: Due to its power-packed features, Magento can be resource-intensive, and powerful hosting solutions are required.
BigCommerce is another growing business-oriented platform, which features a set of SEO-friendly functionalities out of the box, including:
• SEO Tools: BigCommerce features customizable URLs, automatic sitemap generation, and SSL certificates right out of the box, among other SEO-enhancing elements.
• Page Speed: Optimization for page loading speed is very relevant to both SEO and user experience.
• No Transaction Fees: Unlike some other platforms, BigCommerce doesn't charge transaction fees, allowing you to invest more in your SEO efforts.
• High Costs: BigCommerce tends to be more expensive than other options for smaller-scale businesses.
• Less Scope for Customization: While good SEO tools are on offer at BigCommerce, the platform tends to lag behind WordPress or Magento regarding depth in customization.
Shopware also belongs to the leading e-commerce platforms in Europe.
• Customizable SEO Settings: You can optimize your SEO settings down to the last detail in Shopware, be it meta tags and URL structure to sitemaps.
• Content Management: It contains an inbuilt CMS much like WordPress, which allows for Content Marketing - an essential component of SEO.
• Scalability: Shopware is highly scalable; thus, it doesn't have any problem handling big product catalogs and enormous traffic.
• Limited Global Presence: Shopware is mainly used in Europe and thus may provide limited support and community resources when you operate in other regions.
• Complexity: Shopware does require some technical knowledge to be able to fully take advantage of the SEO capabilities.
Ultimately, the final decision among e-commerce platforms for SEO will depend on your business needs, technical capability, and budget. However, if you want to get a feel of the market without wasting any time, Shopify is the way to go. It is exceptionally affordable, user-friendly, and integrates with essential services such as third-party logistics providers out of the box. Furthermore, Shopify has upped its game when it comes to SEO. But if you're already comfortable with WordPress, the most effective use of your time is going to be sticking with it. If you are on a higher budget and want control over literally everything, there's no beating a custom site for flexibility and also potentially for an extremely closely targeted SEO strategy. The best platform will be the one that will match best with your business goals and capabilities.
If you need a free eCommerce consulting session you can book it here
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