Does a CMS affect rankings? Or is it a myth?

[Asset.Building]

I have been looking at moving my site (currently on ASP.NET) to Weebly (on my own domain, not on a weebly subdomain), due to the ease of use. I started on the assumption that the CMS itself doesn't affect rankings, only the content and SEO-friendliness of the final website produced.

Weebly appears to have fast load times, fairly customizable (can change most on-page factors), and doesn't appear to me to have any major SEO issues. They have themes that are fully responsive. The only issue I've come across so far is that the URL must be the same as the page title, can't be customized separately.

However, from excessive Googling and talking to some SEO-savvy people, they all say to steer clear of any hosted solution and go to Wordpress, due primarily to the amount of successful websites on it.

The only "authority" third-party article I could find that spoke favorably of Weebly's SEO capability was this: http://www.longtailpro.com/weebly-seo/.

So my question is: Does the CMS chosen affect rankings, i.e. Weebly vs Wordpress, or is it just a myth?

[kbos2hm]

If i remember right i'm sure ex Matt Cutts said something like you have to have your own (its a while since he stared on the hot seat for Google.). What i can add i look after about 16 sites currently one is on Weebly.

The sites that do there best are sites that are hosted in there own country on there own domain on either WordPress or Drupal. The weebly site is ok but only one site to compare to.

As far as page insights go the Drupal and WordPress are well ahead in terms of speed.

Now a better idea would be to find someone who has 30 sites on each and see how they perform. Now that would make a great blog post.

[LoganRay]

There are some CMS platforms that are easier to apply proper SEO elements to, so in that regard, yes some CMSs are better for SEO. But in terms of actually improving organic visibility strictly based on the platform being used; on sites I've managed (using ASPDNSF, DNN, WP, Drupal, Magento) I've never seen any evidence of that.

[Asset.Building]

Thanks Logan, that's interesting.

Those platforms you mentioned are all self-hosted, I believe. The fundamental argument I've found online is between Self-hosted and Hosted solutions (where the Hosting is either your own or belongs to the company/platform the website is built on).

However, seems to me so far that SEO depends on the elements of the website more than the platform used to create those elements (as long as the hosting basics like page load speed are acceptable).

I'll give Weebly a go and see how it performs.

[Asset.Building]

Thanks, Kevin. Appreciate the input.

I'm thinking I'll still give Weebly a shot, because I've got a deadline and I can't meet it if I go with a platform I have to learn all over (like wordpress).

I'll give it a go and see how it performs.