Best Website Builders for SEO – Which One Will Help Your Business?

The best website builder for SEO is Wix, thanks to its low starting price and useful SEO features, such as keyword support, social media integrations, and SEO best practice prompts. Additionally, Wix integrates seamlessly with SEO tools like SEMrush, a brilliant resource for businesses trying to get discovered on search engines like Google.

Wix isn’t the only website builder that’s great for search engine optimization (SEO). For instance, we found Squarespace to have the best mobile optimization features, and considering the ever-growing number of people accessing websites through handheld devices rather than desktops, that helped it edge ahead of the rest of the pack with Wix.

We’ve got the lowdown on the top website builders specifically designed to help you improve your SEO to get your business noticed, which we’ve graded and ranked using a research and testing framework we’ve developed in-house. In this guide, we’ll cover all the features, pricing, and general SEO functionality of top website builders, so you can make the right decision.

In this guide:

• Best Website Builders for SEO
• How to Choose the Right Website Builder for SEO
• Why Is SEO Important for Websites?
• Methodology: How we find the Best Website Builders for SEO
• Verdict: Best Website Builder for SEO Overall
• Frequently Asked Questions

Best Website Builders for SEO

The best website builder for SEO overall is Wix, according to our research, but there are plenty of great website builders that will help you rank well on Google. Our independent research team compared site speed, usability, design functionality, marketing functions, SEO tools, guides and more, to find the best 5 website builders for SEO:

• Wix – best SEO features overall
• Squarespace – best for mobile optimization
• WordPress.com – best for bloggers
• GoDaddy – best for SEO guidance
• Hostinger – best for uptime reliability

Wix – the best website builder for SEO

Best for: Overall SEO features, and Wix was the best website builder we tested overall
Pricing: from $17/month (billed annually)
Free plan: No
Free trial: Yes

Wix overview

Wix is the best website builder we tested regarding SEO. Wix comes packed full of SEO features, including Meta descriptions, custom URLs, image Alt attributes, header code, social media integrations, and SEO-specific apps. It always provides support for canonical tags, which is not available on either GoDaddy or Hostinger.

In fact, of the 21 features and functionalities by which we measured the effectiveness of a website builder’s SEO platform, Wix offered all 21 of them, including sitemap management and multilingual support. Impressively, Wix now caters to 180 languages, which is more than Squarespace (11), GoDaddy (15), and Hostinger (17) combined by a factor of six. 

Wix provides SEO best practice prompts as you build your website, so we were able to optimize at every step of the way — there’s even a “get found on Google” section on the site’s dashboard to take us through it, step by step. 

Wix let me edit the content, color and style of the text on my website, and move it wherever I wanted on my page. Source: Tech.co testing

One key thing that makes Wix stand out is the website builder’s integration with Semrush, which will allowed us to access Semrush’s SEO keyword data directly from your Wix dashboard. Semrush is one of the best tools around for helping website owners determine precisely what keywords they should be targeting and, to top it all off, it’s available at no extra charge to Wix users.

We found that Wix had a secret weapon, though: AI features. With the Wix AI Website Builder, we were able to get a professional, unique website live in a matter of seconds by just answering a few short prompts and queries. Even better, the AI Text Generator from Wix is available throughout the platform, including SEO Settings, so we could easily generate copy that was in line with our SEO strategy.

Wix AI-driven SEO features are built right into the platform. Source: Tech.co testing

Wix pricing

Wix’s pricing recently changed dramatically, removing the free plan option and dedicated ecommerce plans. Luckily, you’ve got us to explain exactly what you’re working with now. Here are the new pricing plans from Wix:

• Light Plan ($17 per month)
• Core Plan ($29 per month)
• Business Plan ($36 per month)
• Business Elite Plan ($159 per month)

Wix’s value for money score is actually a little bit lower in (3.6/5) than it was the last time we tested the product last year. However, due to market-wide pricing increases, a lot of other website builders — Squarespace included — lost points in this assessment area too.

Squarespace

Best for: Mobile optimization, and the best option for businesses looking to grow
Pricing: from $16/month (billed annually)
Free plan: No
Free trial: Yes

Squarespace overview

The biggest plus for us that put Squarespace near the top of this list is that it is super mobile-friendly. The editor allowed us to immediately check what the site looks like on desktop and mobile, so we could really optimize the page for both, a vital tool for SEO. On top of that, there are SEO-specific apps, canonical tags, image alt attributes, custom URLs, and other features that will help optimize a site for Google.

As far as the number of SEO features, Squarespace was quite comparable to Wix, although it doesn’t have multilingual support without an app or manually changing the language yourself.

Squarespace offers AI text generation to improve your online content. Image: Tech.co testing

Although it’s strong for SEO, Squarespace stands out when it comes to design, helping us to build some of the msot aesthetically pleasing websites with minimal effort. Squarespace is definitely the most design-centric website builder on this list, so if that’s a priority for you, along with SEO, then Squarespace is the provider for you.

Beyond SEO, there are also a lot of related features Squarespace offers under the umbrella of visibility – including advanced social media and email support, ensuring that search engine rankings aren’t the only way to spread the word about your website. Other highlights include the provider’s knowledge center, which has some great SEO tips on it, including video guidance.

Squarespace search analytics provide a clear picture of where your visits come from. Source: Tech.co testing

Squarespace pricing

Comparing Wix to Squarespace isn’t easy, especially when they score so closely together and have exactly the same starting price point for paid plans at $16 per month. Here are the options for Squarespace paid plans.

• Personal ($16 per month): This Squarespace plan includes SEO and visibility-enhancing features, and mobile optimization. There are no website analytics or commerce functions, which means it is quite limited.
• Business ($23 per month): Along with the SEO functions included in the Personal plan, you’ll be able to track traffic, site paths, popular content and, if you’re running an ecommerce operation, how users with commercial intent interact with the sales-based functions of your page.
• Commerce Basic ($28 per month): Although the business plan has some ecommerce features, this is the plan you’ll need if you want to sell online. It offers a variety of powerful merchandising tools and access to ecommerce analytics.
• Commerce Advanced ($52 per month): This is the most fully-featured plan on offer and, much like the name suggests, provides numerous advanced commerce features, like abandoned cart recovery and danced discounts, that aren’t on other Squarespace plans.

WordPress.com

Best for: Bloggers and Yoast SEO users
Price: from $4/month (billed annually)
Free trial: No
Free plan: Yes

WordPress overview

WordPress.com is one of the most well-known website builders out there and has a great range of SEO features that put it alongside the best in the business, such as being mobile-friendly and supplying custom URLs and canonical tags. 

The true value of WordPress when it comes to SEO is that it flawless integrates with Yoast SEO, another popular platform that provides all the insights and instruction you need to properly approach your SEO strategy. It allows you to change search engine content, like meta description and meta titles, and gives you grades on how SEO friendly our content it. It even provides suggestions beneath your content for ways to take your page from red (bad SEO) to yellow (good SEO) to green (great SEO)!

That said, WordPress as a website builder is quite basic when it comes to customizability. Although design functionality may not have as direct of an impact on the fate of your site in SEO terms as the actual SEO tools provided, the design of your website will impact the user experience, which will in turn impact how useful Google perceives your site to be. Given the basic nature of WordPress, we’d recommend sticking to blogging and not much else.

Another notable downside of WordPress is that many of the advanced SEO tools aren’t accessible on the $4 per month Starter plan. You’ll have to pay at least $25 per month for the Creator plan. Comparatively, SEO features are cheaper from builders like Hostinger.

WordPress integrates directly with Yoast SEO to give users tips. Source: wordpress.org

WordPress pricing

WordPress has a free plan, but you won’t get much SEO support and you’ll have to run ads on your website. WordPress’s four paid plans are:

• Starter ($4 per month): This plan will let you create a free custom domain for a year, and remove ads from your site. However, it’s missing important features that let you track how your content is performing, like a Google Analytics integration, but you will get Live Chat support and be able to earn ad revenue.
• Explorer ($8 per month): The Premium plan has a Google Analytics integration, so you’ll be able to check if your SEO techniques are resulting in better traffic outcomes.
• Creator ($25 per month): This WordPress plan comes with advanced SEO features and is the first plan that will allow you to install plugins from WordPress’s famous plugin and add-on ecosystem.
• Entrepreneur ($45 per month): If you want to launch an online store with WordPress, you’ll need to pay for this more expensive plan to access ecommerce features.

Impressively, WordPress is quite a good value, largely thanks to those cheap first plans. The Premium plan, for instance, is cheaper than Squarespace’s first paid plan.

GoDaddy

Best for: SEO Beginners and those who like a quick setup
Price: from $10.99/month (billed annually)
Free plan: Yes
Free trial: Yes

GoDaddy overview

When it comes to SEO, GoDaddy is all about ease of use. The platform offers an extremely handy SEO tool, called SEO Wizard, that can walk you through optimization with a simple step by step guide that essentially does it all for you. By answering basic questions, like whether we were targeting local or worldwide attention, what topics our site focuses on, and what kind of headlines we expect to use, we were able to ensure that our page was set up for success on search engines.

However, this ease of use comes at a price, namely that GoDaddy doesn’t provide some of the more advanced SEO functions, like Squarespace or Wix, such as canonical tags, multilingual support, or an SEO specific app.

I was impressed at how much I could edit my template with GoDaddy. Source: Tech.co testing

Recently, GoDaddy added custom URLs and header code, though, which pushed its SEO score up. However, the lack of mobile optimization functionality is a big ding, which kept GoDaddy out of the top three.

Still, ease of use is the GoDaddy for its entire platform, providing a quick and efficient experience, even for beginners. After all, not everyone is patient enough to sit for hours to perfect their website design, as many perfectionists using Squarespace or Wix may end up doing.

Overall, GoDaddy does the basics very well, isn’t an intimidating software program, and really embodies the no-frills approach that many people may prefer over a website builder that has a seemingly endless stream of functions and features. Plus, you get access to all SEO features in the cheapest plan, which is a good deal compared to others on the list.

Check out our GoDaddy review for more information

GoDaddy’s SEO Wizard features help you set up your keywords. Source: Tech.co testing

GoDaddy pricing

Along with GoDaddy’s pretty limited free plan, the provider offers three pricing plans, with the latter focused on commerce and selling products online.

• Basic plan ($10.99 per month): GoDaddy undercuts Wix and Squarespace’s starting prices but, unfortunately, there’s no built-in website optimizer. So, if SEO and getting your site seen is your priority, you’ll have to try one of the pricier plans GoDaddy has on offer. There are, however, a number of limited, but useful, marketing tools.
• Standard plan ($11.99 per month): Only a dollar more, but unlocks the SEO features built-in to GoDaddy. So if you’re looking for SEO help, this is the plan you should start with.
• Premium plan ($14.99 per month): This is the plan we’d recommend if you’re looking to optimize your site for search engines but aren’t too focused on selling products or services via your site. You’ll be able to send more social posts and responses as well as marketing emails, too.

GoDaddy also an Ecommerce plan, which cost $16.99 per month. Like the premium plan, this plan has a built-in website optimizer for Google and other website search engines, as well as a number of other tools to aid with visibility, such as social post boosting and the ability to launch paid search campaigns.

Hostinger

Best for: Uptime reliability
Price: from $2.99/month + 3 months free, $6.99 per month thereafter
Free plan: No
Free Trial: No

Hostinger overview

Hostinger is probably best known for its web hosting service, but the company has now taken over Zyro and offers a serviceable website builder with SEO features built in. You’ll be able to edit the meta descriptions of pages and the alt attributes of images as you can with most website builders.

Hostinger also has SEO best practice prompts built into its website builder, as well as an SEO-specific guidance page, something GoDaddy doesn’t actually offer. We also liked the fact that we could view how our website would look on a mobile and desktop while editing, which was vital for making it SEO-ready for both types of devices.

However, there’s no SEO-specific app for Hostinger. In fact, Hostinger comes up pretty short as far as advanced SEO features are concerned, missing out on some vital tools like keyword support, canonical tags, and noindex functionality.

The reason Hostinger made the list, however, is because of one key reason that can have a big impact on the SEO of your site: uptime. Hostinger has a 99.9% uptime guarantee, so your site is always available. This is huge for SEO, as uptime is a big factor when it comes to figuring out how to rank your site on search engines.

Check out our Hostinger review for more information

Hostinger’s AI copy generator can help you craft content for SEO. Source: Tech.co testing

Hostinger pricing

Hostinger offers a small selection of affordable pricing plans, making it the clear budget decision on this list.

The first plan — Premium — is currently available for just $2.99 per month, and you’ll get 3 months free on top of that, making it one of the cheapest website builders to get going with right out of the box. However, Hostinger notes that the price will increase to $7.99 per month if you’d like to renew.

There’s also the Business plan, which costs $3.99 per month with three free months, and costs $8.99 per month when you renew. This plan unlocks AI SEO features, allowing you “to automate the full website’s SEO content preparation and setup,” with AI-powered SEO suggestions.

How to Choose the Right Website Builder for SEO

There are lots of techniques you can employ to find the right website builder for your particular SEO needs. Most providers offer some, if not all, of the options listed below, but there are some ways to differentiate that can help you make a decision.

Here are some of the criteria you should consider when looking for a website builder for SEO.

Keyword support

Not to be redundant, but keywords are the key to SEO. They can help denote what kind of content you’re putting out on your website, subsequently allowing search engines like Google to point its users to your page.

A good website builder for SEO will have some kind of keyword support, helping you to track keywords that are important to your site, suggest new keywords to guide your content, and even provide generative AI features that can create keyword-rich copy for your page.

Mobile optimization

A really good way to understand the benefits of SEO for a website is the concept of mobile-friendliness, which Wix and Squarespace both do automatically. Over 60% of all Google searches come from mobile, and having a website that only looks good on a desktop, but has usability issues on mobile, will mean users will behave negatively on your site and, ultimately, not spend a lot of time on it.

This will tell Google that your website isn’t very useful or providing a very good experience, so it will knock you down the search engine results in favor of more useful sites – and the result this can have on your business or personal page is drastic.

Customization

Because SEO is such a nebulous concept with a lot of different factors making an impact, having a flexible website builder will be vital for your long-term success. For one, a custom URL is an absolute must, because Google isn’t going to recommend anyone to a site that doesn’t have a proper web address.

On top of that, you’ll want to be able to customize all the content on your site, like the meta descriptions and meta titles, as these directly contribute to your ranking. Imagery also needs some customizability, more specifically the ability to add alt attributes to pictures is well-known to impact SEO.

Up-time reliability

Another big factor that SEO takes into consideration is whether or not your website is actually available at any given moment. Subsequently, finding a website builder that has a high uptime guarantee, preferably in the 99.99% range, while absolutely improve your SEO ranking.

Why is SEO important for Websites?

A beautifully designed, super useful website is no good to anyone – owner or audience – if it’s only being viewed by users on page 134,345 of Google Search. This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in.

In a nutshell, SEO makes your site more visible on search engine results pages. This will increase the volume of traffic arriving on your page and, if you’re in the ecommerce game, how many you’ll subsequently be able to sell.

When deciding which pages to show a reader searching for a specific term, Google will take lots of things into account before showing you their page – including the keywords you have on your page, the experience readers have on your page, and much more.

There are plenty of reasons why SEO is important — and why most web builders will consider SEO in their offering.  However, it’s crucial to look at how these offerings differ before you hand over any hard-earned cash.

Methodology: How We Find the Best Website Builders for SEO

Here at Tech.co, we do all of our own research and some members of our team are exclusively here to help us to user-test all of the products we write articles about, as full-time researchers. We have devised a stringent testing criteria to accurately analyze all aspects of the software, services, and products we cover, and website builders are no different.

For our latest round of website builder testing, the team looked in detail at six core subcategories:

• Features: SEO, blogging, and assistance tools
• Design functionalities: Design factors like themes, mobile editors, and general flexibility
• Value for money: Ratio of plan costs to features included with each plan
• Help and support: Type of support and hours offered
• Customer score: Customer feedback and user testing notes
• Ease of use: How easy, simple, and flexible is the software to use?

Marketing functions, ecommerce features, and design capabilities impacted our scoring algorithm more significantly than last year. These assessment areas increased in importance as more businesses look to expand their operations, promote growth and improve the user journey on their sites.

The conclusions we draw in articles on our site are based entirely on our own research and, although we have commercial partnerships with some of the providers we write about, this never, ever impacts Tech.co’s editorial independence (and it never will)!

Here are the full final scores our team found for all the best website builders:

FAQs