According to Google’s John Mueller, WordPress is “not significantly better” for creating websites that rank highly in Google searches. If this is the case, why use WordPress for your website at all? Mueller offers the answer: WordPress saves a significant amount of time and effort involved in writing code or a CMS for a website, thereby allowing the user to spend more time creating rich, responsive content.
What Is Google Really Looking For?
Creating a CMS or content management system is a task that requires significant skill in coding. While some webmasters prefer to write their own code, creating a bespoke system for handling website content, this process is labor-intensive and time-consuming. In general, businesses that want a website that ranks highly with Google are not going to gain significant SEO functions by having a website built from scratch.
Instead, it is probably better to spend your advertising dollars on generating fresh, relevant content for your website. Ultimately, the CMS is simply the container in which the website’s content sits. Like any container, it may look good on the outside, but it does not affect what is on the inside!
Focusing on content gives you a much better chance at catching the attention of the web crawlers Google uses to rank search engine results. When creating website content, there are a few things you should be looking for:
- Freshness and originality. Website content should never be “boilerplate” or copied from other websites. Instead, your website should feature fresh new content that is regularly updated. Social media use or blogging is a great way to continually update your website with new information.
- One of the most critical metrics Google considers when evaluating a website is how relevant users find the content. Search engines have several ways of measuring this. One way is to see how the user interacts with the website. Websites that are stale or have little value will score much lower than those with highly engaging, useful content.
- How users interact with the website is dependent in some ways on the structure. If a user becomes frustrated with having to click too many times or is unable to find relevant information, the website will usually suffer in search engine rankings. On the other hand, an easy-to-navigate website that engages users with useful information and makes it easy for them to interact will probably rank much more highly.
Ultimately, there is little difference between a custom CMS website and one that uses WordPress in terms of potential for high search engine rankings. Using WordPress can be a quick way to publish relevant, highly-engaging content that will ultimately drive customers to your door and convert them into loyal clients of your business.
At Caldiatech, we have spent many years helping businesses of all sizes create the right websites for their needs. Give us a call today to learn more about how we can help you take your website to the next level and increase your search engine rankings!