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Let's get this straight - the reputation of the Wix platform among SEO specialists leaves much to be desired. While WordPress is considered more suitable, not only in comparison with Wix, but also with most other CMSs.
Wix is actively trying to change this reputation. This year, the international “SEO hero” challenge was organized, in which the prize was $50,000 to the one who would overtake the organizers’ website and take first place in Google for the query [seo hero].
This year also witnessed the battle “Lovers vs. Haters" with a prize of $25,000. The winner was supposed to be announced in mid-summer, but apparently the competition was delayed. There were two teams left in the finals: the agency supporting Wix and the team opposing the platform. The results will be available on the competition website.
But is Wix really so bad that you can’t do without competitions? To figure it out, Ahrefs analyzed 3.2 million sites on WordPress and the same number on Wix.
In this article we will share the results of the study and draw conclusions.
To determine the platform of the selected sites, the BuiltWith service API was used. Subdomains were excluded from the analysis because they may have used different CMS and settings. In Pixel Tools, you can also determine the CMS using the Quick Site List Analysis tool.
For each of the 6.4 million sites, the following key Ahrefs metrics were checked:
To begin with, the sites were divided into two segments depending on organic traffic:
Here's what they found for the first segment: 46.1% of WordPress sites received organic traffic, while only 1.4% of Wix sites did.
For the second segment with traffic of more than 100 visits per month, the situation is as follows: 8.26% for WordPress and 0.06% for Wix.
It is obvious that WordPress sites receive much more search traffic, but this data is not enough to draw definitive conclusions, since the amount of organic traffic is influenced by many factors that are not necessarily related to the features of the CMS.
For example, backlinks. Ahrefs research shows that there is a strong correlation between the amount of organic traffic and inbound links from unique domains.
Average values for DR, number of dofollow donors and organic traffic showed the following results:
However, analyzing averages can easily lead to incorrect conclusions. Therefore, Ahrefs also provided median data, which is more accurate for analysis.
The median for Wix and WordPress projects showed that most sites receive very little traffic and have a poor link profile, regardless of platform.
Next, Ahrefs decided to analyze only sites with search traffic. Sampling adjustments were also made for a cleaner experiment.
Initially, 44,600 Wix sites and 1,475,147 WordPress sites attracted search traffic. For the purity of the experiment, 44,600 random sites were left from the latter.
For each site, the number of queries for which they are ranked in the TOP 10 of Google was determined. Search traffic for these keywords was also calculated.
For each site, queries that matched its exact domain were excluded.
Here are the results for sites with organic traffic:
The average values are close, but the median for Wix sites in terms of traffic for queries in the TOP 10 even exceeds the indicators for WordPress sites.
WordPress sites rank for more queries, but Wix wins in terms of traffic.
If you look in more detail at sites with traffic above 100, you will see that sites on Wix have a slightly higher DR, but the number of dofollow donors is significantly less.
This may indicate that Wix sites are getting more traffic from factors other than links or branded queries.
An example would be a restaurant website built on Wix that attracts thousands of users monthly, but the bulk of the traffic comes from brand queries.
It is quite difficult to prove the unequivocal superiority of one CMS over another. But here's what's obvious:
The choice of CMS depends on the specific tasks of the site owner. As always, there is no universal “best” solution, but there are most suitable platforms for different purposes.
SEO basics like filling out titles and meta tags are present on all platforms, but technical SEO is more flexible and functional on WordPress. However, Wix and other platforms can be great options for simple projects and brands.
If you need to create a website to promote a brand or service in an easy and affordable way, Wix may be a good fit. But for more complex and customized projects, it is better to choose WordPress or other platforms with full control over SEO.
You can ask any questions to the SEO studio “SEO COMPUTER” by email: info@seo.computer
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