Choosing the right content management system depends on many things. Is SEO one of them? It’s often stated that WordPress is the best CMS system for SEO purposes – but does this mean that other CMS systems put law firms at a disadvantage? Here’s what you need to know about how CMS affects SEO for law firms. 

What a Google Insider Says About CMS and SEO for Law Firms

In part of a recent video series, Ask Google Bot on YouTube, Google’s Search Advocate John Mueller discussed whether or not there might be an SEO advantage based on which CMS system a company uses. 

He begins by clarifying that CMS is not a ranking factor. In essence, Google doesn’t really care what’s happening on the back-end of a website, only how things appear to the user. You can send the same signals to Google whether you’re using WordPress, Wix, any number of other CMS systems, or no CMS at all. Mueller states: 

“As far as I know, our search systems don’t look for any particular content management system to treat it differently. For us, a CMS is just one way of creating web pages. Google systems don’t focus on how the page was created. Instead, they focus on the final result. Hand-created web pages can be just as good as those generated by WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or similar.”

Great Pages are Key to Cracking the SEO Code

Mueller also goes on to say that great pages can be created using any of the major content management systems. The important thing is to create pages that work well. This is because SEO is not a proprietary formula that only one CMS developer has access to. Similarly, SEO isn’t a highly guarded secret (though it can be complex and confusing). If you apply good SEO fundamentals, you can achieve positive ranking results no matter which CMS you use. The expert goes on to say:

​​“As far as I can tell, all mainstream CMS systems can create pages that work well in search. For the most part, SEO is not magic. It’s well documented, and there are many testing tools so all providers can include SEO elements if they choose to do so. There are slight differences across systems, just like all webpages are slightly different. For the average site owner, they either all work well for search out of the box, or can easily be tuned to do so with a few settings or plugins.”

Takeaway: 

The short and sweet answer is that your CMS won’t affect SEO in any real way. Feel free to choose whatever CMS offers the most benefits to your team, with little concern over SEO. The most important thing is to make sure to follow SEO best practices, no matter how you create and house your content.