For e-commerce, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the most significant factors for transporting your presence to the next level towards your online store. If you are using a specific platform for your e-commerce website, you want to make sure that particular platform will give your website a higher search engine ranking. WordPress and Shopify are two platforms that provide many tools for operating an e-commerce store. In this article, we will be looking at how both favor optimization for SEO and which software comes out on top.

What is SEO?

SEO is improving your website’s exposure in the search engine results pages. The crucial components of two types of SEO are content and backlinks. Content is text, photos, and videos on your website, while backlinks are links from other websites to your website.

1. WordPress and SEO

WordPress is a free content management system (CMS) with a release under the GNU General Public License, enabling it to be used on almost 40% of the websites on the World Wide Web. It is very adaptable and allows developers to implement their functionalities.

WordPress SEO Features:

1. SEO-friendly URL structures: WordPress features a specific post type that automatically writes SEO-friendly URL slugs for your posts and pages. This way, you are allowed to template the URL and make a preferred search engine-friendly URL.

2. Customizable SEO plugins: WordPress’s main strength is that it provides users with many plugins out of the box; numerous SEO plugins are available to optimize your website.

3. Built-in SEO features: SEO is one of the strengths of WordPress, as the platform has integrated features from the ground up. Custom post types, custom taxonomies, and rich snippet markup support and increase your site’s visibility and ranking on the search engines.

4. Flexibility and control: WordPress for developers and owners of websites provides complete control over a website’s design and functions. Such a level of control allows for the development of a website optimized for search engines, and that contains exclusive features.

2. Shopify and SEO

Shopify is hosted e-commerce software that makes it easy for over a million businesses to find success. It is more inclined towards ease for those intending to start their online store, and it is less complicated.

Shopify SEO Features:

1. SEO-friendly URL structures: Each product, blog post, and collection on your store is numbered and gets an SEO-friendly URL that Shopify generates. One can tweak these URLs to make them more SEO-friendly.

2. Built-in SEO tools: Two are related to SEO, and these are directly provided under the Shopify rank tools, where you can optimize your online store for search engines. This involves adding text to the pages, adding title tags for images, and performing keyword searches through the application.

3. Limited flexibility and control: Shopify does provide marketing tools that are specifically SEO-related, but they are nowhere as flexible and varied as those offered by WordPress. Only minor changes to the SEO of your site can be made, while considerable improvements would require third-party applications or custom code, adding to the expense.

Comparing WordPress and Shopify in SEO

Having talked about the SEO features on both sites, let us compare them in terms of other aspects.

1. Technical SEO: WordPress and Shopify have the most straightforward technical SEO tools and functionalities. However, it is easier on WordPress to control other critical SEO standards such as XML maps, 301 redirections, and canonical tags. Shopify, meanwhile, offers these features through third-party apps, which can lead to more expenses in addition to more work.

2. On-page SEO: Unfortunately, WordPress lacks an impressive assortment of on-page SEO tools and features since it now offers countless plugins and templates. What is interesting is that with the help of these SEO plugins, you can easily edit title tags and meta descriptions, headers, tags, and others. On-page SEO within Shopify is also available, although not as extensively as with the WordPress website.

3. Backlink SEO: With WordPress, people can have better control over the backlink profile of their website. The available plugins for WordPress allow you to keep track of your backlinks, manage wrong links, and control your search engine ranking. The Shopify store also contains backlink SEO features, but they are included in additional applications and would cost extra money.

4. Social Media SEO: Social media is integrated with SEO strategy, and both have features that help you enhance social media utilization. A WordPress website can implement social media features using plugins and social sharing buttons. Another feature that Shopify offers is social media integration, which might need third-party apps for other complex functions.

The SEO functionality of both WordPress and Shopify are quite good, but WordPress provides more ways to customize and fine-tune how well your site ranks. WordPress should be the way to go if you are very picky about design in your e-commerce website and would like to have complete control of the SEO side of things. On the other hand, if you are seeking a less complex but effective platform for your e-commerce, then Shopify is a suitable choice. Of course, it is not as flexible as WordPress, but it provides many integrated SEO features and the ability to use external apps that will assist you in your efforts to optimize your store.