Is it a mistake NOT to use Wordpress?
I've started a new side business (repurposing podcasts for content marketing and show growth). I want to put together a business website with case studies and content to attract new clients. I'm drawn to drag-and-drop website solutions like Squarespace or Wix instead of Wordpress, but don't want to take a hit on SEO, especially since I'll be putting an emphasis on content marketing.
I've never found Wordpress super intuitive and would hire someone to make even minor theme customizations. Squarespace or Wix seems to be a more comprehensive DIY option for me.
How much of an SEO advantage does Wordpress have over these other options? Is anyone else using Squarespace or Wix for a business website and how is your inbound traffic?
I'd love to hear from anyone who can offer a perspective on the question of whether it's a mistake not to use Wordpress.
With so many WordPress tutorials, plugins and guides, I would go with it and just keep updating it as you learn.
You're safe using SquareSpace or Wix for a business website. I'd recommend SquareSpace over Wix.
It is not a mistake to not use WordPress. You should use the tool that you are most comfortable with.
You'll have the best outcomes using SquareSpace or Wix and following SEOMoz's recommendations for SEO (https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo)
I think we've both heard the same quote, something to the effect that wordpress has the best out of the box SEO. While this may be true there are some very simple steps that you can take to make those factors irrelevant.
Squarespace and Wix are both fine options. Regardless of what you choose writing high quality, relevant content and getting links from other high quality sites is the only way to get to the top of the SERP.
I'd recommend checking out the Moz blog, they have some good tips!
Really depends on how you use Squarespace or Wix, however with Wordpress you do have more flexibility and more options to explore.
Wordpress is a more powerful platform, but you need to know how to use it in your benefit!
Right! And as a basic user, I feel like I've never tapped into the full power of it... Thanks for your perspective.
It depends on your goals.
If you're looking for a blog, or large content site that's easy to add content to, then WordPress is a good option. If you host it yourself you'll end up paying someone to patch and maintain it weekly though, in addition to hosting fees, because vanilla WordPress is very attractive to hackers.
Don't do this - pay WordPress.com money per month for them to do it, and accept that you won't be able to use custom plugins.
If you want a simpler site, or indeed a full ecommerce solution, then Squarespace, Wix, or Shopify are good options. You'll pay more per month, but you can drag'n'drop to get a good-enough design.
Adding options will inflate your costs though (eg SSL, custom domains)
Or you could look at hosting a "static site" on, say, Netlify. This is inexpensive and works with plain vanilla HTML that any web designer can build or modify (you can use tools like Hugo or Jekyll to manage large numbers of pages, but it still boils down to plain HTML)
This feels less "high tech" but it's the most secure solution as there's no server side code for hackers to break into.
(And in 2018 you still do most things, like ecommerce, this way - see my product, https://trolley.link , for a tool that'll help you sell and take payments using Stripe from a static site)
It depends really. WordPress.org is a more powerful and flexible solution compared to the commercial platforms such as Wix, but it also can take more time or skill to get your site to where you want it to be.
A nice middle ground is to explore the different WordPress themes and see if there's one that fits for your needs. If you find a theme that pretty much has everything you need and if you add one of the page builders to it, you won't need to take too much time fixing the theme or hiring others to do it for you. Page builders pretty much work the same way as drag-and-drop platforms.
In that case you are pretty much ready to go and it also keeps you in a better shape in the long term knowing that WordPress can handle whatever needs you may have in the future.
Thanks Marko. I like your suggestion of trying to find a theme that meets most of my needs and adding a page builder. I'm going to look into how you add a page builder to the theme.
Well, effectively 0. It really depends on the theme and how they present the content, and how you decide to structure/write your content. Wordpress makes that easier and theme authors often take SEO into consideration when designing and developing the theme.
A site that's running on Wordpress will rank the same as a site not running on Wordpress given Wordpress's rendered HTML === site not running on Wordpress's rendered HTML.
You could actually argue against that, since just HTML isn't the only thing that counts towards SEO. For example, load times also affect your ranking, and if your WP installation becomes bloated, you could easily lose a couple of seconds, so that will negatively impact you.
Yes
I think you are not practical with things like git otherwise you could create a static site using something like hugo and host it for free on Netlify. I've written an article about that: https://www.devamountain.com/post/create-and-host-a-static-site-for-free/
Well, you could even avoid using git, just have to deploy manually...