Google’s John Mueller: WordPress Not Inherently Better For SEO

Google Search Advocate John Mueller says WordPress isn’t inherently better for SEO than coding a website from scratch.

In response to a thread on Reddit, Google Search Advocate John Mueller says there’s no inherent SEO advantage to using WordPress compared to coding a website yourself.

A thread in the r/SEO forum asks a familiar question many practitioners run into in their careers.

Is WordPress better for SEO than coding your own website?

Other variations of that question include, “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 isn’t inherently better for SEO than any other option. It’s one of many ways to build a website that ranks in Google.

Mueller On WordPress For SEO

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

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

As Mueller says, the most significant advantage WordPress offers is the ease of use compared to manually writing code.

However, that’s only advantageous to the website owner. It makes no difference to Google if a website is built with WordPress.

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

For example, take the second-most upvoted comment in the Reddit thread directly underneath Mueller’s.

An individual claims, “Google knows WordPress well,” as though Googlebot can crawl WordPress sites more efficiently than other CMSs.

That’s false, though the myth of WordPress being better for SEO continues to persist.