Wordpress versus html and google ranking

[CalicoKitty2000]

My current SEO has always recommended that I take my site to wordpress.  I really don't want to move to wordpress.  I don't like it... I just like writing code in raw html, css, and script.  I feel like I have more control that way. Wordpress just seems like a platform for blogs (I have my blog in wordpress).

My question is, do wordpress websites typically rank better? Is there benefit to moving to it?

[Houses]

I don't think they rank better but it isn't just used for blogging. You can make decent website but if you know how to code and are happy doing it then probably stick to it.

Wordpress is easy though and you can write a custom theme.

[GPainter]

Wordpress has the capability to do so much more than be a blog, its like saying a car is only for getting you from a to b whilst technically true there is more to it. If you don't like wordpress don't use it, use a format that gives you passion if you really enjoying coding etc. then do that it will come across better and the more passion you put into a site the better it normally is. Wordpress tends to have more plugins to help with SEO which is why it might seem better but isn't anything you can't get on a normal site.

TL;DR

Use a format you know inside and out and can work well with and you will get better results, Wordpress has lots of plugins that can help which is why it might look good.

Hope that helps & good luck

[CalicoKitty2000]

Thank you  I'll stick with writing my own code for now.  Thanks for responding!  I am really trying to understand all of this and improve my SEO.  I'm good at making a lovely website... just not so good at getting it to rank.

[Couture]

In the end it is all HTML/CSS and some scripts. What search engines need in code is to be able to find what they're looking for easily: sitemaps, Title, etc

Wordpress does a lot of this automatically, but there is absolutely no reason why a clean hand-coded site wouldn't achieve all these requirements as good as a Wordpress site. Wordpress sites also need optimizations in terms of SEO, speedetc before they become top-rank.

[georgexx]

I think the notion of WP based sites doing well in search comes from the fact that it makes posting content very easy. So you could end up with more content, and better content (ie with images and image galleries/videos) compared to hand coding everything Also because the market share of WP sites is so high (around 20% of world's sites run WP) google is probably optimised to crawl and evaluate that structure well.

But WP suffers with a few faults out of the box depending on template, for example category pages/tag pages spit out the whole posts which causes duplicate content. Some SEO plugins alleviate that problem. Also another problem i've heard is of stale content, where an old post becomes more and more buried and many levels deep further from the homepage. This only applies if you are planning to use WP in its blog format rather then use the Pages functionality.

[Andy-Halliday]

it is around 20% of the world sites are run using Wordpress (as George says), from simple blogs like you mention to some of the worlds biggest sites.

Wordpress does have its very good features some great plugins like Yoast, which helps to improve your site from an google presepective - changing meta deta, titles etc.

I do use wordpress for my sites for one reason only - I can't code and wouldn't know where to start.

If you are a competent coder and by the sounds of it you are - I would stay away from WP, for all its great benefits and there are loads, its still an out of the box solution that is trying to meet everybodys needs so is not brilliant and while you can do some wonderful themes etc in wordpress you are still working within their framework.

Starting from scratch (if you have the skills and the time) is always a much better solution. So much more can be done

[DeanAndrews]

I hear what you are saying re having the control over the code, I've been coding for more years than I care to remember however I prefer to run sites on Wordpress for a number of reasons such as control over content, navigation is simplified, translation management, hundreds of plug ins and it's written in php so is a standard language.

I always use a child theme and recommend anyone to create one for their theme if the developers has not provided one for you. This is where the real control over a well written theme comes into play. I have full e-commerce sites using woocommerce, optimised using yoast and customised to work and look exactly how I want by me and my team.

I would just say try it, get a decent pre built theme (suggestion only - http://themeforest.net/item/impreza-retina-responsive-wordpress-theme/6434280) to give you some idea what Wordpress and a theme can actually do.

[CalicoKitty2000]

Thank you everyone!  I will be building a site for one of our other companies soon... maybe I'll try wordpress to give it a chance.