Best Website Builders for SEO: My Top Choices To Boost Visibility

Wix handles the SEO basics with its website builder, such as solid infrastructure to work from, customizable URLs, and automatic creation of a mobile-friendly version of your site. On top of that, I liked that Wix lets you create SEO logic and apply it to multiple pages instead of working through them individually.

What I Like

✔️ The Google Business Profile integration allows you to gain valuable insights that improve your visibility, build customer engagement, and manage reviews

✔️ If you’re an SEO beginner, the custom SEO checklist will guide you through all the need-to-knows for your site

✔️ The Semrush integration analyzes keywords and creates reports showcasing the best words and phrases you should target with your content

✔️ Wix’s AI meta tag creator helps you generate optimized title tags and meta descriptions, ensuring your pages adhere to SEO best practices

✔️ Understand and fix technical issues with the Lumar (DeepCrawl) integration to make sure your site’s performance remains up to par

✔️ The Wix SEO Learning Hub is a one-stop destination to help bring you up to speed on the SEO basics – I particularly love the webinars from industry experts

What I Dislike

❌ Wix has continued to decline in our site speed tests, which could impact the user experience – I noticed a lot of lag when using Wix myself, and Wix received an average performance score of 73 (this is lower than last year, and Google classifies anything below 90 as needing improvement)

❌ Wix offers so many features that it can be difficult to navigate its settings and find where to tweak your site’s SEO – this isn’t ideal for beginners or SEO novices

Squarespace is the easiest website builder that I’ve tested, making it simple and accessible to optimize your site for SEO. Its intuitive interface and easy-to-navigate backend gave me no trouble, and I was impressed by the advanced built-in SEO features available, such as automatic schema markup and mobile optimization. Customers can browse, manage their cart, and pay without leaving your store.

What I Like

✔️ Squarespace’s SEO features give you plenty of support – the SEO panel (like Wix’s SEO checklist) provides you with the best possible starting foundation if you’re after results in the SERPs

✔️ The search preview tool shows you exactly how your site will appear to users searching online, allowing you to make tweaks if necessary

✔️ Squarespace was the first builder to directly integrate with Google Search Console, helping you see what keywords customers and visitors are using to find your site (this helps you target your audience more effectively with content)

✔️ I love Squarespace’s social media integration, which allows you to display content from your social profiles on your site and automatically share content when published – this boosts the visibility of your website and its content

What I Dislike

❌ When testing, I noticed a few of Squarespace’s stylish elements went against SEO best practices – for example, Squarespace set a testimonial element as an H2, creating a strange structure on my page when an H2 should be reserved for subheadings

❌ There’s less variety when it comes to SEO plugins – Shopify claims to offer over 300 SEO-related apps, whereas I could only see one integration in the Squarespace Extensions library

❌ Like Wix, Squarespace performed poorly during our site speed tests (in fact, it had one of the slowest average times) – a slow website could severely harm the performance of your site and potentially push visitors away to competitors

Hostinger caters to beginners and budget-conscious businesses with its easy-to-use and cheap website builder. But cheaper plans don’t mean you miss out on any key SEO features, and Hostinger performed the best in our site speed tests, so you can rest assured that your website is fully optimized for both search engines and visitors.

What I Like

✔️ Hostinger has the best site speed out of every website builder we’ve tested – this is crucial if you want your website to run smoothly and reliably and have search engines look favorably upon it

✔️ Hostinger handles certain SEO factors automatically, such as sitemaps and performance, giving you one less thing to worry about

✔️ You can use Hostinger’s AI SEO assistant to help create new title tags, meta descriptions, and suggest keywords

✔️ I could tweak the SEO settings for individual product pages, making sure my products can be seen by the right customers

What I Dislike

❌ Hostinger’s AI SEO assistant is only available on the Business Website Builder plan – this means you have to pay for advanced SEO features and support

❌ Hostinger’s SEO features are quite limited and basic in comparison to other builders, such as Wix – for example, there’s no option to add schema markup

❌ I struggled to find the SEO settings when navigating my Hostinger account – for a builder that does well at catering for beginners, this was disappointing to see

Shopify is unbeatable when it comes to sales features, topping our list of the best ecommerce website builders for three years in a row. Shopify handles essential SEO tasks automatically, such as auto-generating canonical tags to prevent duplicate content from appearing in the SERPs, saving you time and effort to focus on other business priorities. So, how can Shopify help your store follow ecommerce SEO best practices?

What I Like

✔️ Shopify Magic helps generate readable and SEO-friendly product copy, email subject lines, headings, and more – the AI-powered tool can help your online store convert more customers

✔️ Shopify Sidekick has started rolling out to merchants, working as an AI assistant to support your business needs – you can ask the AI chatbot for SEO advice

✔️ Shopify automatically creates canonical tags, your website’s sitemap.xml and robots.txt files, as well as title tags personalized to your store to help search engines understand your site’s content and relevance

✔️ Shopify teamed up with SEO giant Semrush to bring you the add-on “Ecommerce Booster,” providing Shopify stores with a clear optimization plan (this includes an AI description editor and an image tool that can audit images and generate alt text for you)

What I Dislike

❌ Shopify relies heavily on third-party app integrations, whereas most of Wix’s features (and SEO tools) are built-in – you’ll need to browse Shopify’s app market for advanced SEO features, meaning you’ll also have to navigate between apps to oversee your SEO settings

❌ You can’t edit your sitemaps manually – Shopify automatically generates these, so it’s not ideal if you want greater control over this area

❌ Like Wix’s convoluted backend, I found it tricky to find Shopify’s SEO settings – they’re tucked away in your account settings

❌ Shopify performed poorly in our site speed tests, sitting just ahead of Squarespace

GoDaddy didn’t perform as well in our SEO testing, which is why it takes fifth position. That said, the simple builder prioritizes ease and speed with its features, and it certainly provides the basics you need to boost your traffic and visibility in the SERPs. But is it worth using over other SEO website builders?

What I Like

✔️ GoDaddy’s simplified, straightforward SEO wizard – the feature asks you questions to optimize your site, such as where your customers are located, and even suggests industry-relevant keywords to target

✔️ There’s expert SEO support available – you can pay for experienced SEO professionals to optimize your site for you, offering onsite recommendations and advice on things like content creation and traffic

✔️ GoDaddy’s built-in SEO features are included with its cheapest Basic plan – in comparison, Hostinger’s AI SEO support is only on its most expensive plan

✔️ GoDaddy provides amazing social media tools, helping you manage and grow your social media SEO with features such as its content calendar and AI social post creator

What I Dislike

❌ After testing GoDaddy, clearer SEO guidance is needed – the SEO wizard is useful but quite basic, and GoDaddy doesn’t offer any tooltips or information when tweaking your SEO settings (it’s quite top-level and doesn’t dig into advanced SEO)

❌ There’s a risk of keyword stuffing (overusing keywords in your content) – after setting my keywords, I couldn’t mark one as my primary keyword, and GoDaddy requested I add all three of my target keywords throughout my copy, which felt a bit unnatural at points and not very helpful to readers

❌ It was difficult to find all of the SEO settings – broad site tools are located under GoDaddy’s “Marketing” heading, but if you want to list your business on Google, you’ll have to navigate to the “Social” tab instead