5 Best Website Builders For SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential for the success of any website, as it helps improve your page’s search engine result rankings. In other words, with efficient SEO, the chances are that your website, brand, products, or other items on your website will appear among the top results after a potential customer, partner, or subscriber performs an online search for keywords specific to your site.

So, without SEO, even the most beautifully and professionally designed website risks being overridden by others due to lower ranking and traffic.

With efficient SEO, your site will improve its visibility and its ranking and will gain organic (non-paid) clicks and traffic.

This is why SEO should be one of the main features to look for when looking for the best website builder for your website, apart from other essential features like ease of use, design, customization, pricing, and more.

Our top picks for the best website builders for SEO for 2023 are:

1. Wix – The best option for SEO newbies
2. Weebly – With a wide variety of built-in SEO solutions and tools
3. Squarespace – One of the best choices for people with some SEO experience
4. GoDaddy – The best pick for users who want assistance with the SEO of their site
5. WordPress.com – The top choice for website owners who want to have complete control over the SEO of their sites

How did we create this list?

Since we are aware of the importance of SEO for the success of any online business, store, blog, or website, we took matters of determining the best website builders for SEO very seriously.

We performed in-depth research, read through thousands of reviews, and tested numerous website builders to find the top picks for this category.

Our research included in-depth reviews of some of the most essential features for any website builder, including ease of use, customization and design, the best value for money, available customer help and support, and overall customer satisfaction.

Read on to find out which our top choices for the top-rated site builders for SEO are, as well as more about their features, pros, cons, prices, and more.

Hopefully, this review will help you find the best website-building platform for SEO for your specific needs, website type, and skill levels.

Related: The Best Website Builders in 2023

What Is the Best Website Builder for SEO?

The chances are that you are already familiar with SEO if you have stumbled upon this article. Still, we would like to summarize the basics of SEO in order to help users with no or little experience in search engine optimization to know what to look for and what to expect from the best website builders for SEO.

SEO is key for how a website ranks in internet search engine results. With search engines like Google or Bing, you can expect the website with better quality and more relevant information to appear in the top search results for the keywords relevant for those websites.

Some of the main factors that affect SEO include:

• Meta titles and meta descriptions – these are the brief titles and summaries that appear in the search result pages themselves
• URL structure – the URL should be short with precise wording, possible with keywords included
• Image Alt Text – this is when text explaining what a photo or image includes can be added so that the image itself can be included in the search engines results
• Backlinks – These are external links from reputable websites that add credibility to the content on your website
• Site speed and mobility – whether your website loads fast and is mobile responsive are two factors that are key for the successful rating and increased traffic to your site
• Structured data – this is code formatting that makes the search engine crawlers understand the content easier and better

For better SEO, your website should address the above-mentioned factors and more. Without proper SEO, even the best-looking and best-built sites will likely be flop.

The leading site builders offer SEO features, tools, guides, and assistance to help you improve the SEO of your site by yourself.

Of course, you will need to do some work and perform some keyword research using Google Keyword Planner in order to determine which main keywords should be. Then you should add the keywords to your body text, URL, images, and follow an SEO-friendly website and webpage text structure.

Also, for better SEO, you should ensure your website has useful information, videos, and more.

To find out how successful your SEO is, you will need to use measuring and analytics tools like Web Analytics or others.

Here are the top best website builders for SEO, and everything to look forward to from each one of them.

1. Wix

Perfect for absolute SEO beginners

Starts at $13 per month

Interested in Wix pricing? Check our analysis, for a better understanding of which plan to pick and which to avoid.

Wix Pros:

• Designed to be easy to use, with a drag and drop editor and SEO features, and an Artificial Design Interface, for absolute beginners in SEO and website building
• No coding is required
• It has a nifty SEO Wiz, which will automatically create the best SEO plan for you
• The SEO tools and features are built-in, so you don’t have to add apps from the app store, and figure out which features you will need to improve the SEO
• Various other added tools and features for ecommerce, analytics, and more for running a successful website of any type

Wix Cons:

• Although the most essential SEO features are integrated into the platform, you will need to add more advanced SEO features such as structured data additionally
• With its easy SEO features, Wix doesn’t allow easy manual SEO customization and editing like other website builders do

Ease of Use

Wix is among the easiest-to-use website builders in the world, and the same can be said about its built-in SEO features and customization.

Read our in-depth review for Wix pros and cons

Wix is among the top preferred website builders for SEO on the market, especially for beginners and users with little experience in improving SEO. The beginner-friendly platform will allow you to build a website in minutes, and make it as SEO-friendly as possible with no tech skills.

The plans include free hosting, a custom domain name and SSL.

Thanks to the Wix SEO Wiz technology, the website builder will efficiently create the perfect SEO plan for your site or online store, just based on your answers to a few questions about your website.

With the drag and drop Wix editor and dashboard, you will have easy access to all SEO settings and features, from 301 redirects to meta titles. This makes it the top choice for people with zero coding and tech skills.

Wix offers ADI and drag and drop for building and customizing any website with zero previous experience and skills.

You will gain access to 500+ gorgeous and professional templates to choose from, and if you want to sell online – to one of the most comprehensive sets of built-in ecommerce tools on the market.

Features

With the Wix site builder, you can build an SEO-friendly eCommerce website or another website in a matter of minutes, thanks to the intuitive drag and drop style editor.

Each page on your website has separate SEO settings you can customize, and so does each image you upload to your website. You can customize each page title, meta description, URL the headings from H1 to H6, 301 redirects, add text to image alt attributes, and will receive nifty SEO instructions as you customize your website and each web page.

Wix can easily be integrated with Google Analytics and add a Google Search Console to your website. This is a huge plus for improving your rankings in the world’s most popular internet search engine.

Along with the guidelines which Wix will offer each user during the setup and customization of their website, the platform will alert users about shortcomings and will point out areas for improving the SEO as well. Thus you will receive continuous SEO support for the best upkeep of your website on Wix.

Apart from the built-in SEO tools and settings, Wix offers a useful SEO guide and a comprehensive Help Center for all its users and for anyone interested.

The downside of the SEO aspect of Wix is that if you want to utilize more advanced SEO options, you will need to do so manually by coding or adding apps from the app market. One advanced SEO feature that is missing is Structured Data, which is becoming increasingly important for SEO in recent years.

Another problem with the Wix SEO is that it is almost automatized and thus limits the customizability and control over the SEO settings of the website. This is perfect for beginners but can be frustrating for fast learners and users experienced in SEO.

Otherwise, if you are looking for a website builder that will not only make the SEO of your website easier than ever but will teach you along the way, too, then Wix could be the most appropriate solution for you.

If you want to create a website and make your first steps in SEO as easy as possible, you can get started with Wix now.

2. Weebly

Has dozens of high quality, helpful SEO apps

It has an entirely free plan, and paid plans start from $6 per month

 

Check our Weebly pricing review for a better understanding of all plans this builder can offer.

Weebly Pros:

• There is built-in SEO tracking
• The URL, title, and description of each page can be optimized for better Internet search results
• The Header code can be personalized and optimized with keywords for better results in Google Search
• A 301 redirects feature to maintain the ranking of the site even if you are moving from another host
• You can customize the alt attributes of photos so that they appear in internet search results
• Included SSL encryption and domain name
• Access to a wide range of in-house and third-party apps in the app store
• Built-in search engine instructions
• Automatically generated sitemap
• Mobile friendly and high-speed websites
• Easy integration with Google Analytics and Google Search Console
• Weebly has a 100% free plan

Weebly Cons:

• The heading code cannot be optimized beyond H2 without an additional app
• The entire website address is automatically included in the URL strings

Ease of Use

Weebly takes pride in its easy-to-use website builder interface and editor. The same goes for the SEO features and tools which are built-in.

Most of the basic SEO tools you will need to set up and optimize your website are already pre-integrated into the website builder platform.

The URL customization and the titles and descriptions of each page can be done via the tool built in the web page editor.

In order to integrate the Google Search Console, all you need to do is fill in your track ID.

Weebly also ensures that websites load fast and are mobile-friendly, essential features for better rankings and performance.

You can easily build an online store or other sites on this beginner-friendly website platform.

Related: Best Weebly Alternatives: Other Wondrous Website Builders

Features

Apart from the useful integrated SEO tools and features, Weebly has a very comprehensive app center that includes over 40 SEO apps, many of which are free. You can add the in-house and third-party apps if you want to expand heading tags to H6, improve your blog’s SEO, find the top keywords, add languages, ecommerce features, and many more.

It has a useful blog and help center, which can help you improve your search ranking, with detailed and easy-to-follow guides and tips, making building a website and improving its ranking easier than ever.

Since Square purchased Weebly recently, the website builder is heading toward becoming more ecommerce oriented. This means that it will be the perfect option for small and new online merchants looking for an easy-to-use ecommerce website builder with built-in SEO features.

If you want to find out more excellent built-in SEO features and tools, you can check our comprehensive Weebly guide.

3. Squarespace

A great choice for those more confident with SEO

The prices start at $16 per month, or $12 per month if paid annually

Want to know more about Squarespace pricing plans? They are 5 key ways to save money!

Squarespace Pros:

• A wide variety of built-in SEO tools
• Free SSL certificate and custom domain name
• Clean URLs and HTML markup
• Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for faster loading on mobile devices
• Automatic meta tags and customizable page descriptions
• Built-in Search Keyword panel
• Structured data
• Rich search results on Google
• Easy to understand and use SEO editor interface

Squarespace Cons:

• It is not the top-recommended choice for complete beginners in SEO and those who prefer more guidance
• There are no dedicated SEO apps

Ease of Use

Squarespace is one of the most impressive website builders with stunningly beautiful and artsy themes. With Squarespace, any website will look like it has been designed by a professional.

As for SEO, Squarespace offers an abundance of built-in SEO features, but unlike Weebly and Wix, they are not as intuitive and are not suitable for beginners. The search engine result ranking optimization tools are more advanced and will ensure users with experience in SEO with more backend customization and control.

The backend of the Squarespace website builder has a well-organized structure, much like a CMS. This means that you will have full control of the SEO of the website, but it does require that you have some knowledge and experience with SEO best practices.

Still, you won’t be left all alone when working on optimizing your website’s SEO, as there are useful prompts that will remind you of optimization tips and features as you go. But the process is not as guided as that offered by the abovementioned Wix and Weebly.

But, the Squarespace builder platform offers a very useful and detailed SEO checklist, which beginners and people with some SEO skills and knowledge will no doubt find useful as well.

Overall, Squarespace is among the best website builders for people who want to have beautifully designed websites and more control over the different SEO features and options.

Still, it is relatively easier to use than other platforms and allows for a casual website building and optimization experience.

Find out the best Squarespace alternatives, and find the right builder for your site.

Features

While adding and editing meta titles and the alt text of images are essential for SEO, there are many other additional optimizations required to ensure that your website gets better search engine rankings and more visits.

Adding links to your website is also important, and Squarespace offers excellent opportunities to add them. The website builder offers social media integration, which is better than most other platforms, which will ensure that you expand your online presence to all leading social media networks. This will help enhance the SEO because Google and other search engines prefer websites that are trusted by other reputable sites.

One possible downside of Squarespace is that it is not as easy to use as Wix or Weebly. You will probably need to spend more time toggling the settings and customizing them when setting up your website or working on its SEO. This goes for some of the templates, which are more complicated to edit.

Related: 25 Beautiful Examples of Squarespace Websites

Squarespace allows for performing code injections manually to improve the SEO, with structured data being an SEO feature that some website builders still do not offer pre-integrated in their plans.

As a whole, Squarespace is among the most popular website builders for SEO, especially if you have basic or more advanced SEO skills and knowledge. It is not the most suitable option for newbies. If you want an SEO-friendly website builder for complete beginners, you should probably opt for Wix or Weebly.

Squarespace is a more sophisticated option, and it has some of the most stunning templates of all website builders on the market.

If you want to have a beautifully designed website and have complete control over its SEO, then Squarespace is one of the best solutions for you.

Check our Squarespace Review, for an in-depth analysis of this website builder.

4. GoDaddy

Great for those who want outside help with SEO

The prices start at $6.99 per month for the SEO plan and $9.99 for the website builder plan 

Want to know which plan works best for you? Check our GoDaddy pricing review!

GoDaddy Pros:

• GoDaddy has a Search Engine Optimization plan which includes real SEO experts analyzing your website, guiding you through the keyword search and editing, helping you publish the optimized content, and then allowing you to monitor and track the performance of your site
• Thanks to the SEO Wizard of the GoDaddy site builder, even absolute beginners in SEO will be able to optimize their websites and improve their rankings
• Built-in integration with Google My Business, which adds your website on Google and on Google Maps

GoDaddy Cons:

• The GoDaddy website building plans themselves have limited SEO features and tools, especially the cheapest one
• Most of the best features require that you sign up for the more expensive plans, which are not as affordable as those offered by most other platforms

Features and Ease of Use

GoDaddy’s cheapest website builder plan lacks any built-in SEO tools and features whatsoever, so you may want to sign up for the Standard ($14.99 per month when billed annually), Premium ($19.99 per month when billed per year), or the Ecommerce plan ($24.99 per month when billed for a year) if you want to have access to integrated SEO options.

With the more expensive plans offered by the GoDaddy builder, you will receive assistance with the best keyword suggestions, tracking the website’s SERP (search engine results pages) in real-time, and more.

Related: Best GoDaddy Websites Examples of 2022

With the GoDaddy Premium and Ecommerce plans, you will gain access to the nifty SEO Wizard, which will guide you step by step towards improving the SEO and ranking of your site. The SEO Wizard will help you with the top suggestions for keywords and phrases for your website and will allow you to improve your rankings and boost your traffic, even if you have zero experience with SEO.

You can also subscribe to the dedicated GoDaddy SEO plan, which costs $6.99 per month and will ensure that your site is analyzed by SEO experts and that guidelines are given on ways to improve the SEO, find the most suitable keywords, and improve your website rankings. In addition, the SEO plan offers tracking of the website performance so that you can monitor how well the SEO is working and where it can do with some improvements.

The GoDaddy SEO expert team will be available via phone for consultations and assistance.

Overall, with the $6.99 SEO plan, you will be handing over the SEO of your site to a team of experts, which is perfect if you want to save effort and time and leave the SEO to the experts while you run your online business or your website.

Read further: GoDaddy Hosting Review

5. WordPress.com

Great for those who want a hands-on experience

The hosting prices start at $4 per month when paid for a year

WordPress.com Pros:

• The themes available for WordPress com are all designed with search engine result ranking and optimization in mind
• It is the top-rated website builder that offers endless customization options, and complete control over your SEO
• Some of the WP built-in SEO tools include FrontPage meta description, Custom post meta description, Custom title formats, social and search previews, and more.

WordPress Cons:

• If you want to gain access to most SEO features and tools, you will have to upgrade to the Business plan ($25 per month when paid annually) or to the ecommerce plan ($45 per month when paid once a year)
• WordPress has the most complex interface of all our top picks in this list and is suitable for people with coding experience and WordPress knowledge and skills

Ease of Use

WordPress com is different from WordPress org as it is a commercial platform that offers the open-source WordPress website builder and content management system preinstalled on its hosting plans.

Unlike it, WordPress org is self-hosting, and you can download it on any web hosting service.

With WordPress com, you will have access to the endless customization options, flexibility, templates, and scalability of the popular open-source website builder, but you will also have most of the SEO features taken care of for you automatically.

Since the WordPress themes are designed with SEO mechanics in mind, most of the HTML is already pre-formatted to make the website preferred by search engines.

Still, you will have the opportunity to tweak and edit the settings, allowing for a hands-on SEO experience with WordPress.

Features

 

WordPress com offers several different hosting and website building plans, including Personal for $4 per month, Premium for $8 per month, Business for $25 per month, and Ecommerce for $45 per month – all prices are with the included discounts for 1-year plans.

Each WordPress plan comes with its own set of features and tools, and as you can expect, you will get only the basic SEO tools with the cheapest Personal plan. If you want more SEO tools for your big or small business website, then you should opt for the Premium or Business plans offered by WordPress

The Premium WordPress plan comes with easy integration with Google Analytics, but with the Business plan, you will get all of the advanced SEO tools offered by WordPress com, including:

• Frontpage meta-description – which allows you to edit the site’s summary and make it viewable among the Google search results
• Customizable post-meta-descriptions – with this option, you can edit the descriptions of each of the pages of your website, so it is visible when people are searching for keywords essential for your site
• Customizable title formats – you can edit and customize how the titles of your content and pages look on the SERPs
• Search and social previews – you can view and edit how your website appears and looks on social media and on the different search engines

In conclusion, we recommend WordPress com for users who are familiar with the leading SEO practices and who want to have 100% control over all of the essential details which can improve the page rankings.

Then again, WordPress is the most complex website builder for SEO on our list, so it is suitable for people with experience in website building, coding, and who have tech skills.

If you want a quick and easy website builder with search engine ranking and optimization features, then Wix and Weebly are your better options.

If you can’t wait to get started building your perfectly SEO-optimized website at WordPress com, you can take a look here. There is also a free plan, which you can sign up for and try the WordPress website builder by creating a free website.

Best Website Builders for SEO: Final Thoughts

As you probably know, search engine optimization is a vital factor for creating and running a successful website of any kind.

You should choose a website builder that offers basic and more advanced SEO tools that are easy to use if you want to be able to improve the rankings of your website and thus grow your traffic.

We have picked the top website builders for SEO for the year. They are:

1. Wix – a perfect choice for complete newbies in optimization for search engines
2. Weebly – offers some of the most comprehensive SEO tools and features
3. Squarespace – one of the best website builders for professional-looking design and for people with some SEO skills
4. GoDaddy – the best website builder if you want affordable expert guidance for the SEO of your site
5. WordPress.com – an excellent choice for SEO specialists looking for a hands-on experience

Each of these website builders has superb features worth noting. Weebly and Wix have the easiest-to-use interface and will explain every step of the SEO process for you as you go. They are the recommended choice for people with little or no experience in internet search optimization.

If you much more prefer that a team of experts handles the SEO of your website for you, then GoDaddy is the most suitable option for you.

WordPress.com and Squarespace are perfect for people with advanced or some SEO knowledge and skills, as they will allow you to control which aspects of your site will be optimized and how.

Each of these builders offers hosting, a custom domain name, an editor and templates to build a website, and the most important SEO tools and features and are constantly being updated to meet the latest algorithms and search engine trends for ranking web pages and sites.

Weebly, Wix, and WordPress.com all have free website plans, which you can sign up for and test for as long as you want to. Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial, which you can use to get a feel of the website builder and search engine optimization experience.

GoDaddy has a 30-day trial period, which will give you a month to decide whether it is the most suitable option for you.

In other words, you can test each of these five platforms and make an informed decision about which one is the most suitable for your type of website, your needs, your goals, your budget, and your skills.

So, good luck with finding the most suitable SEO website builder, and we hope we have helped you choose the right one for your new website, which will make it a raving success among all major internet search engines!

FAQs

Why is SEO important?

In today’s world, with thousands of new websites appearing on the Internet every minute, you will need SEO for your website if you want it to be noticed, found easily, and visited by your target audience.

A good SEO builder for SEO will increase your site’s search result page ranking, making it more likely for people looking for your essential keywords to land on your website. With the proper SEO and high ranking, you can build your website traffic every day.

So, SEO is essential if you want traffic to your website.

Which SEO website builder is the easiest to use?

Weebly is the easiest website builder to use, even by people who are not tech-savvy and those with no previous website building experience. Another beginner-friendly website builder suitable for newbies and for people who want a quick and easy way to build a site is Wix. It is also a much cheaper option than hiring a professional web developer.

On the other hand, some users swear that they find Squarespace very intuitive and easy to use, so it seems to be a matter of personal preference.

The good news is that all of our top picks come with free plans or free trial periods, so you can check each one out for free and decide which option works best for you before paying.

What is alt text?

Alt Text is the text which helps internet search engines to understand what photos and images are about. While search engines are getting smarter by the day, they are still unable to recognize exactly what a photo is about without an explanatory Alt text.

Website builders that offer to edit and adding Alt text will help your images appear in image search results.

What is structured data?

Structured data is the means of providing specific information regarding your website and web pages to Internet search engines like Google, Yahoo! Yandex, or Bing.

It is the basis of the useful snippets which appear in search result pages. These snippets can include star ratings, recipes, and more.

Structured data will enable more potential visitors to your website to get an overview of what you are offering and will prompt more people to visit your website.