Best Website Builder for SEO : Top 7 Search Friendly Blogging Platforms
Whether you have a business, a monetized blog, or a website for any business purpose, you need to find ways to reach the top of Google's and Bing's search engine results pages (SERPs). However, search engine optimization is a difficult skill to master, even without the never-ending changes in the search engines' algorithms.
What can you do?
If you're a small business owner, you may not have the money to pay a web designer and SEO expert on an ongoing basis. Even if you can, you should know some basics yourself, so you know how to find a reliable designer and SEO expert.
The easiest thing you can do is find an excellent website builder to help you develop the right SEO strategies and maintain your site in a way that keeps you at the top of the SERPs.
We've done a lot of research and have compiled a list of the seven best website builders for SEO.
What Is the Best Website Builder for SEO?
- WordPress – Best overall
- Wix – Best for SEO beginners
- Weebly – Best for those who prefer to use SEO applications
- Squarespace – Best for people already confident with SEO
- GoDaddy – Best for people who prefer outside help with SEO
- Ghost – Best for those who have no time or tolerance for frills
- Shopify – Best for people just getting into eCommerce
Builder Summaries
- WordPress takes some learning but is so versatile that it's excellent for small business owners, writers, and bloggers. You can choose from dozens of themes, and hundreds of WordPress-compatible plug-ins will help you with everything from SEO to social sharing to your shopping cart.
- Wix works well for a variety of users as well. It's great if you're new to website-building and SEO with hundreds of industry-specific themes and an easy setup process to give you a customized website without much hassle.
- Weebly, like WordPress, takes some learning, but you can do it on your own. You get an excellent value with Weebly, too. One of the things you'll find easy to do in Weebly is place ads, affiliate or otherwise, exactly where you want them.
- Squarespace gives you a professional-looking website with enterprise-grade infrastructure. If you're past the beginner stage and want to take your website to the next level, you can do that best with Squarespace.
- GoDaddy will often call you to see how you're doing, and they have some excellent support for people of all experience levels. One particular feature of GoDaddy that stands out is that they're WordPress-compatible. If you like GoDaddy for hosting but want WordPress for your site builder, GoDaddy will let you do that.
- Ghost is a basic, no-frills website builder. You might take a glance at it and think it's too basic, but then you find all the features that allow you to tweak your website until it's perfect. It also comes with built-in SEO and social sharing features so you don't have to worry about finding plug-ins for that.
- Shopify is great for people who want to sell their products online. If you're looking to build an eCommerce site, you get both payment-integration features and SEO functions. Many small business owners want to sell their products online, and Shopify is the easiest and best builder to use for that purpose.
1: WordPress – Best Overall
WordPress is the most popular website builder out there, so you get many customizable themes, features, and plug-ins. Beware, though. WordPress has two versions: WordPress.com and WordPress.org. WordPress.com is free, but it's only suitable for bloggers. If you want a business site, you need to go with WordPress.org.
WordPress is scalable, easy to learn, and has some powerful features, including eCommerce features that are great for online sellers.
Pros:
- Great value for your money
- Massive variety of themes and plug-ins
- Suitable for most businesses
Cons:
- Takes some learning
- Requires SEO plug-ins
- Help and support is only available through tutorials and discussion forums
Ease of Use
You can learn WordPress reasonably quickly and easily, especially if you start with its basic themes. After that, you can do pretty much anything with a WordPress site with ease. You'll also find SEO plug-ins that do keyword research for you and teach you how to optimize every page of your site.
However, as mentioned earlier, WordPress takes some learning. If you don't have any website-building experience, you learn as you go, which you might find frustrating. Besides that, you also have to teach yourself how to use some of the plug-ins you want.
Help and Support
WordPress has an entire section of its website dedicated to tutorials on everything you'll ever need to know about having a WordPress site. They have tutorials for beginners, intermediate users, and advanced users, along with help in design and layout, plug-in management, and multiple articles for troubleshooting.
The only major drawback to their help and support system is there's no way to call them. They have all their tutorials and troubleshooting articles, and they have support forums for questions their articles don't answer, but you can't call them and speak to tech support directly.
Pricing
- Personal: $4 per month
- Premium: $8 per month
- Business: $25 per month
- eCommerce: $45 per month
WordPress bills you annually regardless of which plan you choose.
2: Wix – Best for SEO Beginners
You may have heard that Wix is terrible for SEO. However, that's changed in recent years. If you're new to website building and SEO, you might find that Wix is best. It requires no coding or plug-ins for SEO because they build their SEO functions right into their platform.
Pros:
- Drag-and-drop site editor naturally includes SEO functions
- Everything is included on your dashboard
- SEO function teaches you as you go along
Cons:
- Not suitable for advanced SEO
- It takes a long time for the search engines to index your entire site
- Limited hands-on editing ability
Ease of Use
Because Wix has a simple drag-and-drop feature, you can quickly and easily build your website without having to learn much. In fact, Wix walks you through everything as you go, which minimizes confusion and frustration.
You'll find a large variety of plug-ins that work with Wix as well, making it easier to customize your site. As you gain experience and decide to upgrade your site past a certain point, you may begin feeling that Wix holds you back.
Help and Support
Like WordPress, Wix has an entire section of its site dedicated to help and support. In addition to having articles for everything you can think of, they have a section on trending topics with articles on things that directly affect your site.
You have to go through their help section for support, but you can talk to someone live if you need to. Many people prefer speaking with someone to searching through tutorials.
Pricing
- Combo: $13 per month
- Unlimited bandwidth: $17 per month
- Pro: $22 per month
- VIP: $39 per month
Wix does offer a free plan, but you get an assigned URL instead of the ability to create your own, and it places limits on your storage, bandwidth, and overall use.
3: Weebly – Best for Those Who Prefer to Use SEO Applications
Weebly makes both website-building and SEO easy, even for beginners. Like Wix, it has drag-and-drop functions that allow you to build fantastic pages quickly and with minimal problems.
Everything from meta descriptions to page titles to alt text all come with the editor itself. Additionally, Weebly has dozens of SEO apps from which to choose, giving you extreme flexibility when it comes to optimizing your site.
Pros:
- Most of its features are built into its editor
- Custom URLs for every page
- Fully hosted, requiring no installation
Cons:
- Can't create alt tags for product images
- Three percent charge on all transactions for their cheapest plan
- URLs aren't clean or modern
Ease of Use
Weebly lets you create a basic site with some of its tools for free. You will have to pay if you want to upgrade, but since many platforms don't let you use any of their tools without a paid plan, you can start with Weebly's free plan and go from there.
They build things like contact forms, sliders, and photo galleries into their editor, making it easier for you to create these things. However, since their focus is SEO, you'll probably get more use from their SEO tools and apps.
Help and Support
Weebly has a comprehensive help center with a prominent search bar where you can look for articles on your particular question or problem. Their articles cover everything from your first steps to custom tracking codes, and help for things like email marketing and eCommerce.
They also have inspiration centers, a blog, and discussion forums to learn how best to refine and update your site. If you need personalized help, you can contact them directly, and they'll get back to you as soon as possible.
Pricing
- Basic: Free
- Personal: $6 per month
- Professional: $12 per month
- Performance: $26 per month
Weebly is cheaper than many other website builders out there, especially given their focus on SEO.
4: Squarespace – Best for People Already Confident with SEO
Another easy-to-use platform, Squarespace works well for people who already have some understanding of SEO principles. With its pre-existing templates and simple editor, Squarespace gives you the ability to create a fantastic website with a minimum of hassle.
Overall, Squarespace can save you some time and money over other platforms as long as you're comfortable with basic SEO since it comes with SEO tools, but not a built-in function.
Pros:
- Lots of flexibility since you can choose to do some of the coding yourself
- Supports XML sitemaps and robots.txt tags for added SEO function
- Customized access to the backend of your site
Cons:
- More expensive than other platforms for beginners
- Indexing problems can lead to severe delays
- No automatically-generated HTML sitemaps
Ease of Use
For simple websites, Squarespace is quite easy to use. However, if you're looking for an enterprise-grade website, you have some learning to do. As stated above, Squarespace is for people who already have some understanding of SEO.
You can experiment with its options and teach yourself how to use its tools, though. You can also rest assured that Squarespace provides a quality platform since major companies like Target use it.
Help and Support
Unlike platforms like WordPress and Wix, Squarespace's help center is simple and easy to navigate. It has written guides, discussion forums, video tutorials, and even webinars. Those last two might work better for you than anything else.
If you can't find the help you're looking for, they make it easy for you to contact them directly or have a professional build your site for you. You might find these things especially useful if you're building a complex business website.
Pricing
- Personal: $12 per month
- Business: $18 per month
- Basic commerce: $26 per month
- Advanced commerce: $40 per month
Squarespace gives you a free trial, plus, if you go with their annual payment plans, you can save some money on your monthly costs.
5: GoDaddy – Best for People Who Prefer Outside Help with SEO
GoDaddy doesn't have the greatest reputation as a hosting platform, but as a website builder, they're among the best for professionals who want strong SEO. Their SEO team gives you help with targeted keywords and the ability to track your progress over time right on your account dashboard.
Their best feature is the SEO wizard. You answer a few questions about your site and receive your targeted keywords to help optimize your pages.
Pros:
- You only have to answer a few simple questions to use their SEO wizard
- Paid service team gives you personalized help with your SEO strategy
- Free phone consultations
Cons:
- Your access to their SEO wizard is extremely limited on their cheapest plan
- The best features are limited to the most expensive plans
- GoDaddy's nature limits your creativity
Ease of Use
Depending on what you want, you'll discover that GoDaddy does a lot of work for you. As one of the most well-known domain registrars, they know how to provide an excellent experience without a lot of complications.
The best part is that their personalized SEO services take all of the guesswork out of SEO. Whether you use their wizard, their outside personal support, or a combination of the two, they pretty much do all the work for you. Building a website is a little harder than with other builders, but SEO is quite simple.
Help and Support
GoDaddy's online help center lets you browse articles by topic or by product. One particular section they have that others don't deals with SSL certificates. If you're a business or any kind of website where people can contact you, you need an SSL certificate.
Also, they call you regularly to see how you're doing, at least with SEO. They also allow you to contact them 24/7 for help.
Pricing
- Basic: $10 per month
- Standard: $15 per month
- Premium: $20 per month
- eCommerce: $25 per month
For its features, GoDaddy's prices are pretty good. However, each of these prices requires annual billing.
6: Ghost – Best for Those Who Have No Time or Tolerance for Frills
If you've never heard of Ghost, you're not alone. But just because you don't know who they are doesn't mean you shouldn't consider them. Ghost might appear too basic for your needs upfront, and you might want to dismiss them out of hand because of that.
If you take a closer look, you'll find a lot of great features, like built-in social sharing and SEO functions. While other website builders, like WordPress, require plug-ins for those things, Ghost does not.
Pros:
- Easy to edit your metadata inside the site editor
- SEO that works immediately – no need to install a plug-in
- No-obligation free trial
Cons:
- Far more expensive than other builders
- No third-party plug-ins, making additional customization difficult
- Targets bloggers more than businesses
Ease of Use
For people who don't like an ocean of features through which to navigate, Ghost is perfect. It's simple, straightforward, and gives you a great website. You can lose all the hassle of many other website builders, and you shouldn't have to worry about hiring a developer.
Ghost is so easy to use that it works for anyone regardless of their level of experience in SEO and website building.
Help and Support
Ghost's help center mostly consists of an extensive FAQ section. However, you can find answers to your questions under several topics, including for errors, self-hosting, and even just using the builder. You can also email them if you can't find an answer to your question in their FAQs.
Besides that, they have their own comparisons to other website builders, although you'll have to take them with a grain of salt since they have a vested interest in explaining why they're better.
Pricing
- Basic: $29 per month
- Standard: $79 per month
- Business: $199 per month
Ghost's pricing plans include custom domain support and automation. Things like SSL certificates will cost you extra under some plans.
7: Shopify – Best for People Just Getting into eCommerce
Shopify is probably the most popular eCommerce builder in existence right now. Besides making a website simple to build, they specifically gear themselves towards eCommerce. If you're looking to sell your products online or run your store entirely online, then Shopify may well be your best bet.
With Shopify, you get built-in SEO features that allow you to add keywords for products and services instead of having to work your keywords into your website's text and blog and hope that's enough.
Pros:
- Wide variety of SEO plug-ins available
- Large community for support with SEO
- Plans include site hosting
Cons:
- You'll pay extra for external payment gateways
- Theme customization is difficult
- Shopify charges transaction fees under many circumstances
Ease of Use
Shopify specifically targets the eCommerce world, so it works very well for shop owners, whether you have a brick-and-mortar store and need a website, or are looking to sell your products exclusively online.
One of the things that makes Shopify so easy to use is its payment gateway integration. That's one of the most challenging things when it comes to building an eCommerce site, and you'll have a lot less hassle with that on Shopify than with anything else.
Help and Support
Like most other builders, Shopify has a comprehensive help center with several categories under which you'll find articles and tutorials to help you out. You can browse by topic, and then individual subjects when searching for answers.
If you can't find what you're looking for, you can contact Shopify directly online. You don't have to log in, but if you don't, they redirect you back to their articles and tutorials. For better help, you need an account to log into.
Pricing
- Basic: $29 per month
- Shopify: $79 per month
- Advanced Shopify: $299 per month
Shopify's prices include staff accounts and storage locations or brick-and-mortar stores. However, they charge extra for many other things.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, the website builder you want depends entirely on what you're looking for. Some people may love WordPress, while others look at them and think, “WordPress? Are you nuts? Try Shopify if you want to sell things online.”
Each of these builders costs money, too, but they'll cost you a lot less than hiring a developer to build your site from scratch (and they may use a builder, anyway). However, you have great options for SEO with each of these so you can rank highly in search engine results no matter what you're doing. That, in turn, brings in more customers, which means more revenue.
Of course, there are dozens of website builders out there, and many have SEO features you can use. However, we believe you'll do best with one of these seven builders.
