Webflow vs WordPress: Which CMS is Better for SEO?

Between Webflow and WordPress’s SEO features, Webflow is “done for you” and WordPress is “do it yourself.” That means, Webflow is a managed CMS platform where you will get built-in SEO features, whereas WordPress is an open-source platform that lets you choose your own hosting, theme, page builders, and plugins.

But which one is better for you? In this article, we will compare Webflow vs WordPress’s SEO features and capabilities. 

Webflow vs WordPress SEO Features Comparison

Now, let’s compare WordPress and Webflow’s SEO features in detail. 

Webflow Offers Built-in SEO Tools While WordPress Offers SEO Plugins

To make search engine optimization easier for you, Webflow offers a lot of built-in SEO features. You get all the essential features such as meta tag optimization, custom URL settings, and more.

The best thing is, that you can set the meta tags individually for single pages and also set dynamic SEO settings for collective pages such as blogs, products, and others. When enabled, all the collection items will automatically generate meta tags based on your post’s title. 

However, you can still edit this from Webflow’s SEO settings.

Webflow also automatically generates a sitemap for you and lets you customize it. You can also include or exclude a static page from being indexed with a simple toggle.  

Moreover, Webflow offers a specific toolset for local SEO optimization. You can localize your page’s URL, page-level SEO, and more.

On the other hand, WordPress doesn’t offer any built-in SEO tools or features except for URL customization and discouraging search engines from indexing your site.

So, out of the box, Webflow wins because of its built-in SEO features.

However, WordPress has many helpful plugins that make websites better for search engines. These plugins do all sorts of things to help your website rank higher from on-page SEO to technical SEO.

The most popular WordPress plugins are Yoast SEO, RankMath, AIOSEO, etc. These plugins can do almost everything you need to improve your website for search engines. 

The unfortunate thing is, that you can’t use top-notch plugins like Yoast or Rankmath in Webflow for more customized search engine optimization. 

That’s why, we believe, overall WordPress has better SEO features through its plugins than Webflow.

Winner: WordPress

WordPress Offers Better Schema Markup Integration Than Webflow

Schema markup is very important when it comes to SEO and an SEO-friendly CMS can make it easier or harder for you to implement it properly. 

Being a plugin-based open-source CMS, WordPress makes it super easy for you to apply structured data to your website. In WordPress’s plugin repository, you can find a decent number of schema plugins; all you need to do is install and activate them and the rest is done by the plugin.

Now, these schema plugins won’t just do everything for you, it also lets you customize different aspects of your website’s structured data with the options they provide.

Moreover, because WordPress is an open-source platform, you can even add your own customized schema markup by editing your site’s code.

As for Webflow, it allows you to implement structured data to your website but since it doesn’t have any plugins, you have to do it manually by copy-pasting codes. For beginners, we feel this may be a hassle and not user-friendly.

So, in comparison, WordPress does a better job of implementing structured data for your site.

Winner: WordPress 

WordPress and Webflow Both Generate Clean Code For Improved Ranking

Having a clean code structure means well-organized coding snippets that help your site load faster and make it easy for search engine bots to understand your site’s content. That’s why using a CMS that produces clean code is important.

Now, when it comes to generating clean code, Webflow is really efficient. Webflow generates semantic HTML5 and CSS3 code automatically. It also generates standards-compliant code without messy inline classes often associated with drag-and-drop site builders.

Moreover, Webflow doesn’t rely on excessive plugins or add-ons that can slow down a site.

Avoids long CSS stylesheets or render-blocking JavaScript.

Still, being a drag-and-drop builder Webflow uses JS libraries which can slow down a site. To tackle this, it uses top-tier content delivery networks like Amazon CloudFront and Fastly for hosting

On the other hand, WordPress, as an open-source platform, allows anyone to view and improve its code. This open approach means the code is constantly checked and refined by a large community. 

Also, WordPress has strict rules for how code should be written, which ensures consistency and quality throughout the platform.

However, the code your WordPress website will generate actually depends on the theme, page builders, and the plugins you use. These tools produce their own codes, which can impact your website’s overall performance.

That’s why, using a well-optimized and SEO-friendly WordPress theme and page builder is crucial for having an SEO-optimized website.

Winner: Tie

WordPress Offers More Control For Speed and Performance Than Webflow

Webflow generates clean, semantic HTML5 and CSS3 code automatically as you design. As a result, your site’s code doesn’t bloat.

Other than this, Webflow has some built-in features for speed optimization that make your site even faster. For example, automatic image lazy loading, code minification, link preloading, font loading optimization, etc.

Because of all these features, you don’t have to manually optimize your Webflow site for speed. These features are also why Webflow is faster than WordPress out of the box because WordPress does not have any built-in speed optimization features. 

Even though WordPress doesn’t offer any optimization features out of the box, you can still make your WordPress sites super fast with plugins.

Apart from countless SEO plugins, WordPress has different types of plugins to optimize performance. There are caching plugins, image optimization plugins, and more. 

Apart from built-in features from your CMS and third-party plugins, your website’s speed and performance depend a lot on your hosting provider.

With Webflow, you can’t really choose your hosting provider because it’s done for you. Even though it’s decent, it lacks flexibility.

On the other hand, you get to choose your hosting provider with WordPress. So, you can get exactly the features you want, which gives you more control over your site’s speed and performance.  

So, with the flexibility of plugins and hosting solutions, you get better speed and performance through WordPress.

Winner: WordPress

Webflow Offers Built-in Advanced Security Features Which WordPress Offers With Plugins

As a managed CMS platform Webflow takes care of your website security for you. You don’t need to worry about about your and your users’ data, privacy, and protection. 

To start with, every Webflow website comes with SSL encryption, which is essential for SEO. Search engines like Google prioritize sites with SSL certifications for ranking, so you want an SSL certificate no matter what CMS you go for.

Also, Webflow offers other important features such as regular backups, DDoS, WAF, and 2FA for malware and hacking protection. 

Moreover, Webflow is SOC 2 Type II certified, ensuring that its security controls have been attested and validated by an independent third-party auditor.

Considering all this, Webflow is pretty solid when it comes to security. But it still lacks flexibility and control.

As for WordPress, the security is totally plugin and hosting-based. The security mainly depends on the hosting provider you choose. You get all the essential security features through your hosting provider.

So, choosing SEO-friendly hosting is important for security with WordPress.   

Also, for advanced-level security, you have countless plugins to choose from. If you choose a proper security plugin, you can turn your website into a fortress. 

To sum up, WordPress allows you more in terms of security through hosting and plugins than Webflow.

Winner: WordPress

WordPress Offers Huge Library of Plugins Which Webflow Doesn’t

The strength of WordPress mainly relies on its huge library of plugins. With WordPress, you get access to 60,000+ plugins. Basically, there is a plugin for every possible problem you might face with your WordPress website.

In comparison, Webflow doesn’t support plugins like WordPress; it has all the essential features built into Webflow’s system. Still, you get around 58 apps as integrations in their app store.

Having built-in features is better for beginners because it makes Webflow easy to use. However, it lacks flexibility and customizability, which WordPress plugins offer.

On the other hand, randomly using plugins can have negative impacts too. Using too many plugins can slow down your website and pose security risks. 

That’s why, even though WordPress plugins make it better than Webflow, you should be careful while using plugins.

Winner: WordPress  

Final Verdict: WordPress is Better Than Webflow for SEO

After a detailed discussion, we can safely say that WordPress is a better CMS for SEO than Webflow. 

Even though WordPress provides nothing out of the box compared to Webflow, you can choose what you get and what you don’t through a hosting, theme, page builder, and plugins of your choice. This flexibility and customizability is the reason why we choose WordPress over Webflow.

However, this flexibility can pose a problem if you are completely new to SEO and website creation. Meaning that you have to know your way around with WordPress. Still, with a huge worldwide community of users and developers, it’s not that hard to get started with WordPress.

Keeping that in mind, if you want everything done for you, Webflow can be a great option over WordPress. Also, if SEO is not your priority, rather you want easy site creation and design, Webflow would be the better choice.

FAQs About Webflow Vs WordPress

Is Webflow replacing WordPress?

No, Webflow is not replacing WordPress, because WordPress is still the most popular CMS platform in the world that holds more than 60% of the total CMS market share. 

Can I transfer WordPress to Webflow?

No, you cannot transfer your WordPress website to Webflow. If you want to transfer your WordPress site to Webflow, you have to rebuild your site in Webflow.

WordPress or Webflow Won’t Mean Much If…

A CMS can only take you so far without proper SEO strategies. An SEO-friendly CMS will make it easy to implement tactics and the latest SEO trends, but if the techniques are not implemented, a CMS will not help you rank.

To that end, you must have a competent SEO agency or a professional who can devise the right strategy for your WordPress or Webflow website.