HTML vs WordPress

[CapitolShine]

Which website gets better SEO results? I was told that HTML is crawled better than WordPress. Which is a more expensive website to design? What are the pros and cons of each?

[Klarke]

Neither ranks better than the other.  Wordpress produces HTML pages and can even produce .html permalinks.  Google treats them the same.

The benefit of using Wordpress (or any CMS) is that it makes it easier to manage the content and structure of the website.  Some say Google has preference for Wordpress but that's only because out of the box with even the default theme, it meets many basic seo requirements.  That ..and about 15% of all websites use it.

[jlane9]

Its not so straight forward as which gets better results for seo. Both can rank very well based on how they are optimized. you can have a great looking wordpress site that is set up for great seo that can easily out rank a poorly optimized HTML site. and vice versa.

Again I would say there is no hard rule and that either type of site when built and optimized well cna have a greater crawl rate and results than the other.

The expense part will depend on the design company you choose, it will depend on how much customization and seo work have to go into the site to get what you want.

Pros,

If you are building a site yourself the the pros would probably go to wordpress as it comes with a basic set up and easy plug ins to get seo friendly right away.

If you are hiring a firm - they should know how to make the most of either type.

cons,

No cons unless your design firm is not familiar with one or the other type of site.

[donford]

Hi Capitol,

This isn't a fair question.

HTML is a browser language. Wordpress is a CMS (Content Management System).

Wordpress uses HTML, html doesn't use Wordpress.

The purpose of Wordpress is to make web pages easier to generate, manage and archive. A website built outside of a CMS system can work great but can require more time to create. My company's website is done in straight development (HTML/PHP/JAVASCRIPT/JQUERY), but we also run a site that uses a CMS (Oscommerce). Each one requires specific requirements. The main site requires more of my time, but the CMS requires knowledge of specific Oscommerce requirements, Wordpress would be the same.