For most businesses transitioning into ecommerce, the choice of platforms boils down to Shopify vs WooCommerce. Both have clear advantages and disadvantages, but which one is better for SEO?
It’s not an easy question. The short answer is: it depends. Each one is a robust and reliable ecommerce platform, used by millions to handle online sales of products and services. There’s a great comparison article that can help you to decide, which solution fits your needs perfectly. And the thing is they’re pretty evenly matched, which can make it difficult to crown one vs the other as being the superior option.
Having said that, there are some significant SEO differences between them. That’s why it’s critical that you examine both Shopfiy and WooCommerce’s SEO capabilities before choosing the platform that suits your needs.
Shopify vs WooCommerce – which one is better for SEO?
Shopify
With over a 4 millions of users worldwide, Shopify has positioned itself as an ecommerce platform powerhouse. Shopify is aimed primarily at a less-technically inclined clientele, offering an easy to use and configure SaaS online portal designed to work out of the box, with minimal configuration.
Shopify Pros:
WooCommerce Cons:
- More manual SEO configurations required
- Not automatically optimized for CSS and theme coding
- Slower average site speed
WooCommerce pros for SEO
Customizable, SEO-optimized code
WooCommerce is designed from the ground up with SEO in mind. Unlike Shopify, the various plugins let you quickly and easily access your site’s architecture, allowing a greater amount of SEO optimization than Shopify’s limited access.
Search engine-friendly URLs
With WordPress, you can easily change your URL permalink structure to conform to Google’s requirements. For example, where Shopify requires all second-level pages to fall under a sitename/pages linking structure, WooCommerce stores can take advantage of clean, top-level domain structures.
Wide range of SEO plugins
Running an ecommerce store on the WordPress platform brings you the powerful Yoast SEO plugin. Yoast is by far the most popular SEO optimization tool on the planet, and for good reason. With the ability to customize everything from META information, titles, and images Yoast is simply unrivaled when compared to other SEO plugins.
Rich snippet support
WordPress is well-known for its ability to offer structured data support, essential for being able to optimize your online store’s content to appear as rich snippets in Google search results.
Robust blogging support
WordPress got its start as a blogging platform, and the platform has only gotten better with age. Running a WooCommerce-based online store gives you the ability to own the content SEO game, with blogging capabilities that Shopify users can only dream of.
WooCommerce cons for SEO
More manual SEO configurations required
If you’re not technically inclined, you’ll find the learning curve much higher with WooCommerce vs Shopify. Since the latter’s model is to make starting an online store as easy as possible, you’ll quickly find yourself overwhelmed if you don’t have at least a basic understanding of working with self-hosted WordPress sites.
Not automatically optimized for CSS and theme coding
While the underlying architecture is extremely SEO friendly, the vast array of WooCommerce-compatible themes aren’t necessarily optimized themselves. You’ll either have to find a highly-optimized theme (usually for a higher licence fee), or roll up your sleeves and optimize the theme yourself — which may not be possible if the theme doesn’t allow it.
Slower site speed
Shopify’s key advantage is the faster site speed, which owes to both streamlined code and a highly-optimized server architecture. Conversely, a self-hosted WooCommerce store is at the mercy of hosting server issues, site plugins, database optimization, image compression, and a host of other factors which may adversely affect loading speed. So in a Shopify vs WooCommerce site speed matchup, the advantage goes to the former.
WooCommerce SEO vs Shopify SEO: which one should you choose?
There’s no easy answer. The WooCommerce vs Shopify for ecommerce debate has been raging for years, and it all boils down to what your needs are. Both platforms offer key advantages and disadvantages when it comes to SEO, and the one you choose will be determined by your level of technical skill.
Go with Shopify if you want an easy-to-use platform with baked-in SEO factors. Your store will perform well with a minimal amount of customization. However, you won’t be able to dig under the hood with more granular SEO optimizations. If this article has convinced you to move your online store to Shopify, you can follow any Woocommerce to Shopify migration guide you can find online.
Go with WooCommerce if you want a high degree of flexibility and customization, backed by the powerful WordPress CMS. It’ll take more work, with a higher learning curve, but at the end of the day you’ll have much more SEO power at your fingertips.
If you’re looking to gain traffic and boost your conversions, Miromind’s team of ecommerce SEO experts can help you take your online business to the next level. Contact us to learn how we can help you reach your business goals.