Squarespace vs WordPress: Which CMS is Better for SEO?

WordPress and Squarespace are both popular content management systems. But if you are specifically looking for SEO features to get your website ranked in search engines, which one should you pick?

In this article, we will compare Squarespace and WordPress based on their SEO features which will help you make an informed decision.  

Squarespace vs WordPress SEO Feature Comparison

Now, let’s talk more about WordPress and Squarespace’s SEO features.

Squarespace Has Built-in SEO Features and WordPress Doesn’t

The best thing about Squarespace is its built-in SEO features. You can customize SEO titles and meta descriptions for each page, blog post, and product, which helps search engines understand the content of your site and display relevant information in search results.

Other than the basic on-page SEO features, Squarespace lets you research and input keywords directly from the dashboard. Also, for people who are new to SEO, Squarespace gives you an SEO checklist.

But wait, that’s not all. You also get to integrate your site with Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other webmaster tools.

Now, when it comes to WordPress, it doesn’t offer you any built-in SEO features except for permalink customization. However, WordPress has a huge library of free and paid SEO plugins at your disposal.

SEO Plugins like Yoast SEO and RankMath offer much more than Squarespace’s built-in SEO features. These plugins offer basic to advanced SEO features, covering everything you need to optimize your site for search engines.    

This is why even though WordPress doesn’t have built-in SEO features like Squarespace, it offers more advanced features through its SEO plugin. 

Winner: WordPress

Squarespace Has Built-in Security Features and WordPress Doesn’t

For protecting your website against hackers and malware, Squarespace is pretty solid because it ticks all the boxes for both essential and advanced security. 

When you sign up for a Squarespace website, you get a free SSL automatically. An SSL certificate is super important for your site security as well as SEO.

Other than this, you have other security options such as Two-Factor Authentication, DDoS protection, Web Application Firewall, Transport Layer Security, Regular Penetration Testing, and more. 

These security features are more than enough to protect your site. 

On the other hand, WordPress doesn’t offer any built-in security solution for you. For security, you have to use security plugins. Everything you need for your site’s security, you can find a plugin for it in the WordPress repository.

Also, WordPress is an open-source content management system, which means the WordPress core is open to the public. Because of this reason, WordPress’s code is constantly being reviewed by developers and users which includes plugin and theme developers and contributors.

So, as far as security is concerned both Squarespace and WordPress offer enough advanced security features to keep your website safe. However, the difference is Squarespace’s features are built-in whereas you need security plugins with WordPress.     

Winner: Tie

WordPress Has Advanced SEO Tools While Squarespace Offers Basic Ones

While Squarespace boasts built-in SEO features, the best part of WordPress is its plugins. 

Every problem you face while creating, maintaining, or optimizing your WordPress website, you will find a plugin for it. According to some studies on WordPress, its plugin repository contains 60,000+ plugins and the number is growing every day. 

In comparison, Squarespace only has around a few hundred plugins including SEO and non-SEO plugins. However, having fewer plugins doesn’t make Squarespace bad for SEO, but it really limits your optimization opportunities.

Although WordPress offers a lot of options and features through its plugins, that doesn’t mean you should use lots of plugins. Using a lot of plugins can drag your site down performance-wise.

Still, because of its superior features and options, WordPress wins this round over Squarespace.

Winner: WordPress 

WordPress Websites Are Faster Than Squarespace

The reason why Squarespace is so popular is because of its ease of use. This ease of use comes from its drag-and-drop functionality. 

However, the drag-and-drop website builder takes a toll on your Squarespace website’s performance.

Drag-and-drop builders rely on pre-built elements and sections made with JavaScript. While convenient, these elements contain unnecessary code or extra features you don’t need. This extra code can bloat the website’s overall size, making it load slower.

Also, being a proprietary CMS, Squarespace doesn’t let its users customize their website codes, so you can’t optimize it and you’re stuck with its pre-built elements. 

Now, WordPress doesn’t have this problem because it completely relies on third-party themes for its design. Among thousands of available WordPress themes, there are a huge number of SEO-friendly themes you can choose from. 

These themes will not bloat and keep your site’s speed and performance at the optimal level. 

However, the most important factor for site speed is your website’s hosting. Squarespace gives you built-in hosting options that you get by default after purchasing any of their plans.

The issue with this is it doesn’t let you customize your hosting plan according to your needs, which can also impact your website’s speed. This system is great for new webmasters with small websites, but for large sites or online stores, this option is not scalable. 

On the other hand, you need to choose your own hosting service provider based on the type and size of your site, which is really convenient because of the customizability it offers. You can choose any of the SEO-friendly hosting providers that suit you best.   

Choosing a hosting provider may be a bit difficult for new webmasters, but in the long run, it’s worth it.

Winner: WordPress    

WordPress Offers Advanced Schema Markup Features Than Squarespace

Schema markup or structured data is a very important feature for SEO and the good thing is that Squarespace offers built-in schema markups.

As a Squarespace user, you don’t need any external tools or plugins to implement schema markup, it will be automatically generated for you.

However, the problem with the schema markup of Squarespace is that it’s very basic and only supports a handful of schema types. For instance, Squarespace only generates a schema for blog posts, events, local businesses, organizations, products, and websites.

Moreover, you can’t edit or remove this auto-generated schema, which is a problem.

On the contrary, WordPress doesn’t give you any built-in schema markup features; you have to use a plugin to implement structured data into your website. These plugins offer a variety of schema markups with customization options. 

What’s even better is that most of these plugins are free, so you don’t even have to pay for their extensive features. 

To sum up, because of the variety and customizability, WordPress’s schema markup options are superior to Squarespace’s.

Winner: WordPress  

Squarespace Doesn’t Let You Edit Your Sitemap While WordPress Does

Like structured data, sitemaps are not an SEO feature, but a necessity, and Squarespace does a decent job by generating an automated sitemap for your site. However, the catch is that you cannot manually update or make changes to it. 

When you publish or delete any page, Squarespace will automatically update the changes from 1-24 hours. 

For small websites, this doesn’t pose any problems, but if you have a site with hundreds of pages, not being able to edit or modify your sitemap can cost you by reducing crawlability and indexibility.

From this point of view, WordPress does a better job. Even though you don’t get an automated sitemap with WordPress, you can simply install a plugin for it. You can either go for a comprehensive SEO plugin or a standalone plugin for generating your site’s XML sitemap. 

These plugins will let you customize and configure your sitemap as you wish no matter the size of your website. 

Winner: WordPress 

Final Verdict: WordPress is Better Than Squarespace For SEO

So, considering all the differences, WordPress is the clear winner when it comes to SEO. But here’s the thing: if you are a complete beginner, WordPress may not be the answer for you. 

WordPress is not beginner-friendly for SEO because the main advantage of using WordPress lies in its flexibility. With a huge library of plugins and the unlimited possibilities they offer, it will take some time for you to master. 

However, if you have the basic know-how of CMS platforms and SEO, WordPress will be a revelation for you. 

On the other side, Squarespace is not suitable for those who have a decent knowledge about CMS usage because of it’s done-for-you nature which limits flexibility. But it’s really good for you i you have a smaller site or you are totally new to the world of website building. 

FAQs about Squarespace vs WordPress for SEO

Does Google prefer WordPress or Squarespace?

Google doesn’t prefer WordPress or Squarespace as a platform for ranking websites. Both WordPress and Squarespace offer SEO-friendly features and can rank well if optimized correctly. The key factors are content quality, site structure, load speed, mobile-friendliness, and backlinks, rather than the platform itself.

Do professionals use Squarespace?

Yes, many professionals use Squarespace for creating and managing their and their clients’ websites. That’s because Squarespace offers a user-friendly interface, aesthetically pleasing templates, and a range of tools that make it suitable for various types of businesses, portfolios, and personal websites.

Do professional websites use WordPress?

Yes, WordPress is widely used by professionals and businesses of all sizes for creating professional websites. Its flexibility, scalability, extensive plugin ecosystem, and customizable themes make it a preferred choice for many who want to create robust and feature-rich websites.

Remember, WordPress or Squarespace Doesn’t Guarantee Rankings

It doesn’t matter if you choose WordPress or Squarespace, a CMS platform will not guarantee your search engine ranking. These CMS platforms can only make it easy for you to implement SEO strategies and techniques. 

So, an SEO-friendly CMS platform can only help you a bit but the real work must be done by you. In case you don’t have any idea how to optimize your CMS for SEO, you should hire an SEO expert or an agency.