Episode 505 SEO With Warren Laine Naida SEO and CMS
Show Summary
This podcast episode features a discussion with Warren Laine-Naida about the impact of website platforms, such as WordPress, Wix, and Drupal, on search engine optimization (SEO). Laine-Naida argues that while the platform itself is a factor, technical aspects, like website speed and accessibility, are paramount for successful SEO. He emphasizes the importance of core SEO principles, such as relevant content and backlinks, regardless of the chosen platform. Ultimately, the best platform depends on a business’s specific needs and resources. The discussion also touches upon the broader aspects of website building and maintenance, including hosting and long-term stability.
Show Transcript
ey there, and uh welcome to another SEO uh talk uh For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Warren Laine-Naida. You can still find me on Twitter X. You will always find me on Twitter X, but you can also find me on Blue Sky and everywhere else. It’s Warren Laine-Naida. And um I come in once a month with Rob uh to talk about my favorite subject and probably yours, SEO. And it’s interesting because um uh last week um on the same day in the morning and then later in the evening, I was talking uh with two different people and they both started the conversation with Hio, you know, um this whole WordPress uh drama and uh Wix and and Drupal that um seem to be taking up some of that um space now. Um does this affect SEO? I mean, does the platform impact our SEO? And you know, immediately I am um you know, knee-jerk reaction is that uh yes Um but then no, you know, like it’s it’s SEO. So that depends is going to be your answer. But um uh that’s the topic that I want to talk about today. And um I think it’s you know, it’s it’s pretty interesting. Um so uh yeah, I’m going to do this a little differently. I’m going to wrap up uh because if you don’t have time, then you can just listen to the first few minutes and then take away. And uh so we’re going to do this a little differently. I’m going to wrap up at the beginning and then um I’m going to go a little deeper. So um you know I think if we’re talking about the impact of of of our website platform on SEO you know it’s this going to come down to some basic um technical questions um you know SEO is much more than keywords and uh so you know basically if we’re if we’re even thinking of of Google as um and measuring speed and there’s a lot of talk about page builders um slowing down our websites and our static websites a lot faster and does Google and Bing do they um uh do they give a CMS uh of any standing a little more ranking um value? Um so a lot of discussion about that. I mean generally if you’ve got a codeheavy website um it’s going to load slower and um you know it’s not really interesting perhaps for your uh for your audience. Uh they don’t really care if your website is is WordPress or or static that your that your kid made. Um they just want to find answers to their questions. Um so you know our code our build is is the foundation. We can definitely you know compare um apples with oranges you know perhaps our CMS with our static sites. Um you know you’ve got WordPress you’ve got Wix you’ve got Shopify as perhaps you know larger names for the you know B2C you know we talk enterprise we’re looking at Drupal and co um these make our websites much easier to create and uh a lot of free um uh functionality there. Um so it really I hate this term, it democratizes um uh the web. So um great if you need a website, you can you can get in there and um you know from static sites, HTML and CSS. I mean these are fun to learn learn these um you know you can put together a website very simply and you can you can still optimize for for SEO. Sure you don’t have a plugin. Sure you got to put your own schema markup in there. But that’s all part of the fun part of of website building. Anyway, um you know, WordPress highly customizable. Um Drupal is great for for a larger site, a steeper learning curve, but still super open for open-source uh system. Um Shopify and Woo Commerce for your shops if we’re looking at um you know um e-commerce, SEO, uh SEA. Uh and then we’ve got like up and cominging Wix, which again because of the whole WordPress drama, Wix is much more noticeable now. Um it costs. WordPress doesn’t cost anything. Wix costs things and um you know WordPress is portable uh whereas Wix isn’t. But Wix is really doing a lot when it comes to SEO and so it’s an upandcomer uh there was a time before WordPress you know so um yeah I think outside of the foundation um you know your considerations have got to be um which uh platform um uh integrates easily with you know Google search console um Bing web master tools um Google tag manager any of your your your shop um peripherals um you know that’s got to be a question it’s got to be consideration and obviously uh your developer ecosystem um this you know can speed up or slow down any SEO uh implementation um And uh you know going back to the first part if we’re talking analytics, security, compliance, um how easy can you um optimize your website for accessibility? Um for uh sustainability, you know, is this a uh an easier or a harder task? I think these are very important considerations when it comes to um to SEO. Um you know, so It’s it’s not just about the platform. Uh it’s not just about the keywords. It really is about how well whatever you’re doing, your words or your tools are optimized. So, you know, you’re going to choose uh based on your business needs um whatever your resources are, whatever your goals are, I think will make the difference. As far as Google and Bing say, I mean, whatever you’re going to believe that they say, you know, John Mueller has said a few times that they don’t really care what sort of CMS you have. Um they don’t look or give preference to any one CMS. Um, and that static uh created websites are just as fine as those created by WordPress. Um, so you know that would be uh you know like the sum up. If you got to go then go and hey but come back later uh maybe uh so um yeah I think when it comes to the platform you know to your CMS um you know I think that we’ve got to talk about the technical technical considerations. We have to talk about the ease of content management. We have to talk about the the user experience. Um we’ve got to talk about um you know international capabilities. Um there’s there’s a lot that goes into our SEO. And so you know again the the ideal platform is going to be whatever one makes it easier for you to use. Uh we always like to laugh and say SEO oh well it depends but It really is true. SEO and your website build, it really depends. Okay. Um, every month it’s SEO is dead or SEO remains the same. Regardless, um, if you if you’re using a CMS or static, um, I think the basic the fundamental core principles of SEO, um, they’re ever changing, sure, but they basically are the same. You know, the relevance of your content um keyword optimization, your back links, user experience, these are pretty much consistent. So um you know if you build in Wix or you build in HTML, one is not going to give you the benefit over the other if your fundament uh fundamental SEO is is wrong. Um now there’s certainly advantages and disadvantages to each of the systems. Um you know like CS C the CMS, you know, WordPress or or Wix or or whatever we have, Drupal, Yuma. Um, certainly we’ve got ease of use. It gives us the ability for really dynamic on the-ly content management, which that’s going to improve our SEO because our visibility is going to be um more consistent. Um, gives us the support and the community that we need, which means that we have access to plugins, to extensions, to modules, however you want to name it. Um, and I think Out of the box, you’ve got um you’ve got a built-in responsive design, which means you are accessible over mobile, which I mean, hello, it’s 2025. We’ve got what 70% of our web traffic coming over mobile. If your phone is not, and I don’t want to say mobile friendly, it shouldn’t be more than it should be more than mobile friendly. It should be, you know, mobile um uh exciting. You know, we’ve gone beyond, you know, friendly and and satisfaction um with our customers and now we are looking for delight. So if this isn’t really enjoyable to use on a mobile phone then I think this is a this is a bit of a problem. Um certainly the there’s disadvantages to CMS. It could be a cost could be cost function a cost um and technical resource uh question. Um code bloat there’s a lot of fat websites out there. Um and uh you know everyone everyone likes fat but uh you know maybe the loading time doesn’t um you got a lot of dependency on plugins. You’ve got a lot of dependency on perhaps themes and page builders which which are just not necessarily as uh you know they don’t need to be so necessarily big. Um and some offer customization challenges. I mean this is quite clear. So um uh there’s there’s that to think about. Static websites on the other hand I mean you’ve got much faster performance um got fewer vulnerabilities and um you’ve got full control over your customization which in many respects you have more or less in your in CMS but a lot of times you hit a block and and that’s it. Um disadvantages of course you can’t scale as easily and you you’re limited perhaps in the functionality that um that you have um uh with with plugins. I mean anyone who’s who’s um you know uh coded responsive forms um knows how much easier it is just to click on a uh form plug-in. Um so both have advantages and disadvantages uh you know before you start thinking about um any of the SEO uh content. Um so I think you know when it when it when it comes down to deciding if you’re going with a CMS or if you’re going with a static um you know from the technical side I think it’s you know the the load speed is really important obviously um the ability to to to index and and be indexed and and offer uh schema markup and you know structured data um that is useful to search engines um is obviously really important. It has to be completely accessible which means mobile which means in the entire the entire book of accessibility and barrierfree and um it really can be sustainable. There’s really no reason to have your website take um 9 seconds to load and um exude, you know, I don’t know how many tons of CO2. It’s a website for goodness sake. It’s it’s not it’s not a Ford. Um so um yeah, so I I think these are obvious considerations and um for many people that means uh a CMS um but I don’t think it rules it out completely. Um you know, we’ve talked about I’ve mentioned Wix a lot and um you know WordPress you would you can say say is the overall best CMS um for SEO but you know when it comes to you know a lot of the a lot of the new things that are coming out for SEO for um uh for learning for um for community for I don’t know some of the changes that are happening Wix is being talked about a lot. I’m only saying this to I think to remind us that nothing is set in stone and we should be aware if we want to impact positively our SEO then I think we need to keep our eyes and ears open um along with our options. Uh every platform offers something special and good. Um so let’s keep uh keep our options open. All right. Um certainly I mean WordPress is still the best platform um especially for small business um uh and um and co. So um you know but if you’ve got a shop then Shopify for uh for SEO um is certainly um uh of of great use. Um you know I’ve I mentioned our platforms our CMS are static and I I I mentioned the basic SEO, but there’s also to consider um our our back end. So, our hosting um do we have a good hosting platform? Um is it delivering speed? Is it delivering support? I think this is also um uh a an SEO consideration. We need to make sure that our websites, they’re not just accessible, but they’re also future proof. Um anti-fragile, I believe, is the word. So that any failures that we have, we learn from, we build. on those um and we’re building on a solid core because if we’ve got a good core then we have stability and system stability is crucial for business. Uh Anna Bole Anamika Bole you know she’s got this well she probably doesn’t have this tattooed on her but she has this tattooed in my head that you know when I think of SEO stability when I think about stability in anything to do with web I have to remember what she says and uh you know I’ll say it again you build on a solid core of best practice and that core is going to give you uh stability in your systems and system stability is crucial for your business going forward. So um maybe less of the trending SEO um tweaks and a little more focusing on longterm uh this has got to uh be an important consideration. Um, and uh, I think it trumps general SEO. Okay. So, um, yeah, I think take a look at your system. Um, make sure that whatever platform you’re using, it fits your business requirements. It uh, matches your technical resources and your uh, marketing goals, which will include then obviously um, uh, your SEO. Uh, we’re dealing with a this army knife here. Everything is connected. This isn’t a toolbox where the tools are separate. All right? So, um, keep it consistent. Keep your effort good. Um, keep your SEO and your websites clean. And, um, yeah, we’ll we’ll see you again. Bye-bye.