Wix vs WordPress for SEO: What Business Owners Really Need to Know

Is Wix actually “bad” for SEO?

Let’s clear this up straight away: Wix isn’t automatically “bad” for SEO. What’s usually bad is the way the site has been set up.

Most Wix sites I see haven’t had any real SEO work done. There’s no keyword strategy, pages are competing with each other, titles are vague, and local SEO is either half-done or missing entirely. That’s not a Wix problem, that’s an optimisation problem.

Over the last few years, Wix has grown up a lot. You can set custom meta titles and descriptions, choose clean URLs, create blogs and categories, add redirects, and keep things secure and mobile-friendly. For a typical small or local business, those tools are more than enough to get results, if they’re used properly.

So before you assume you need to jump ship to WordPress, it’s worth asking a simple question: has anyone ever sat down and actually done serious SEO on your Wix site?

When it’s smarter to stay on Wix and hire an SEO agency

Rebuilding a website on a new platform is a big decision. It’s a bit like moving your business to a new premises: possible, sometimes necessary, but not something you do on a whim.

If you’re a non-technical business owner who just wants to log in, tweak some text, publish the odd blog and not break anything, sticking with Wix is often the smarter move. It’s especially true if your site is fairly small, you’re happy with the overall look and feel, and you know that when people do find you, they tend to enquire or buy.

In that situation, the quickest win is usually to keep Wix and bring in someone who understands both SEO and the platform. A good Wix SEO specialist can tidy up the structure, improve your internal linking, sort redirects, speed up slow pages, and put a proper keyword and content plan in place. If you’re working with a Local SEO agency, they can also layer in strong local SEO so you show up across your area.

You get better rankings and more leads, without the cost and risk of starting again.

When WordPress might make more sense

WordPress comes into its own when your website needs to do more than just present information and capture enquiries.

If you’re planning a large content hub, running complex booking systems, building a membership area, or you know you’ll be publishing a lot of content across multiple categories, then WordPress is often the better fit. It’s more flexible under the hood, and with the right plugins and developer support, you can shape it into almost anything you want.

From an SEO point of view, that flexibility is powerful. You can fine-tune technical details, create sophisticated content structures, and use advanced SEO plugins to manage redirects, schema and sitemaps at scale (With Wix you will have to write the code yourself).

But there is a trade-off. WordPress needs looking after. Themes and plugins need updating. Backups need to be in place. Security needs to be taken seriously. If you don’t have someone responsible for that, the “flexible” platform can quickly become slow, clunky and fragile and that’s not great for rankings or for your stress levels.

Pros and cons for non-technical business owners

For non-technical owners, the real question isn’t “which platform is best in theory?” but “which platform will I actually manage in real life?”

With Wix, most people feel comfortable quite quickly. You can drag and drop, type into text boxes and publish updates without touching code. There are fewer moving parts, so there’s less to accidentally break. For a small or local business, that simplicity is a genuine advantage.

WordPress can be friendly too, but only if it’s been set up well and you’ve got someone you trust on hand. If not, it can feel intimidating: too many menus, too many plugins, and a constant worry that clicking the wrong thing might break the layout.

That’s why, for many small businesses, Wix plus a solid SEO strategy will beat WordPress plus no strategy at all, every single time.

How to decide Wix vs WordPress for SEO (and a sensible next step)

If you’re sitting on a Wix site right now, wondering whether you should rebuild on WordPress “for SEO,” the safest next step isn’t a new website. It’s an honest review of what you already have.

Start with a proper SEO audit of your current Wix setup. Look at your content, structure, technical foundations, and local visibility. In a lot of cases, we find there’s plenty of room to grow without touching the platform at all.

As a Leading SEO agency In Kent, I’ll always start there. A free SEO audit of your existing Wix site will show whether you’re really held back by the platform, or just by the way it’s been set up. If Wix is right for your business, we’ll help you make the most of it. And if you’ve genuinely outgrown it and WordPress is the better long-term move, we’ll explain why in plain English, with a clear plan to protect your rankings during the switch.