Google’s John Mueller: WordPress isn’t inherently better for SEO

Google Search Advocate John Mueller argues that WordPress is not inherently better for SEO than coding a website from scratch.

In response to a Reddit thread, Google Search Advocate John Mueller says that there is no SEO advantage to using WordPress over coding a website yourself.

The r/SEO forum thread raises a familiar question that many practitioners face in their careers.

Is WordPress better for SEO than coding your own website?

Other variations on this question are “is WordPress better for SEO than Wix” or “is WordPress better for SEO than [insert CMS here]?”

No matter how you ask it, the answer is always the same.

WordPress is not inherently better for SEO than any other option. This is one of the many ways to build a website that ranks in Google.

Mueller On WordPress For SEO

In response to the question of whether using WordPress is better for SEO than coding your own site, Mueller states:

“Not for SEO, but you can focus more on content if you don’t spend all your time creating a new CMS for yourself. (some people prefer to create a CMS, so YMMV).”

As Mueller says, the most important advantage of WordPress is ease of use compared to writing code by hand.

However, this only benefits the site owner. For Google, it doesn’t matter if your site is built with WordPress.

This question comes up often and is worth revisiting due to the misinformation circulating around WordPress and SEO.

Take, for example, the second most upvoted comment in the Reddit thread directly below Mueller’s comment.

The individual claims that “Google knows WordPress well”, as if Googlebot could crawl WordPress sites more efficiently than other CMS systems.

This is not true, although the myth that WordPress is better for SEO still persists.

Screenshot from reddit.com/r/seo, December 2022.

For more information on the SEO capabilities of WordPress compared to other content management systems, see this article by SEJ founder Loren Baker.

Baker lists the top 25 SEO-friendly WordPress alternatives and the pros and cons of each:

Featured photo Melisa Parlak/Shutterstock

Matt G. Southern

Senior News Writer at Search Engine Journal

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Senior News Writer Matt G. Southern has been with Search Engine Journal since 2013. He holds a bachelor’s degree in communications,…

What is the main type of SEO?

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The three types of SEO are: on-page SEO – everything on your websites – blogs, product copy, website copy. Off-page SEO – Anything that happens outside of your site that helps your SEO strategy – backlinks. Technical SEO – anything technical to improve your search rankings – crawling your site to make it easier for robots to crawl.

  • What are the 5 types of SEO? So, the different types of SEO are:
  • Technical SEO.
  • on-page SEO.
  • Content SEO.
  • Off-page SEO.
  • Local SEO.
  • Mobile positioning.

SEO eCommerce.

What is search engine in 7 class?

What are the two main parts of SEO? SEO is divided into two parts: on-page SEO and off-page SEO. On-page SEO refers to all the techniques that can be implemented on your website to improve its ranking in the SERPs (search engine result pages), while off-page SEO refers to anything that can be done off-site to improve its visibility on the website network.

A search engine is an Internet tool that allows users to find information on the World Wide Web. Popular examples of search engines are Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search. … The information collected by the spiders is used to create a searchable web index.

What is a search engine for grade 3? A search engine is a software system designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. Search engines like google, yahoo, alt vista. We can search/download/save images from the internet using search engines. 1.

Which search engine is it? A search engine is a coordinated set of programs that searches for and identifies items in a database that meet certain criteria. Search engines are used to access information on the World Wide Web.

What is search engine 2 Example?

What is a Class 5 Search Engine? A search engine is an Internet tool that allows users to find information on the World Wide Web. Popular examples of search engines are Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search. …

Popular examples of search engines are Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search. Search engines use automated applications (called robots, bots or spiders) that move around the internet following links from page to page, site to site.

What is search engine number 2? 2. Bing. Bing, Google’s biggest rival, collects 15% of US searches and also powers Yahoo, the third largest search engine in the US.

What are the 3 types of search engines?

What is Search Engine Example 5? Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu and DuckDuckGo are popular search engines. Google is one of the most used search engines in the world that is used with the Chrome browser. So almost everyone knows it.

There are three main types of search engines, crawlers, directories and sponsored links. Search engines usually use multiple methods to collect and retrieve results. These include: Robot databases.

What is a search engine 3 examples? A search engine is an Internet tool that allows users to find information on the World Wide Web. Popular examples of search engines are Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search.

Is YouTube a search engine?

How many types of search engines are there?

With over 500 hours of video uploaded every minute and over a billion hours watched every day, Google YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.