Implementing proper search engine optimization is key to ensuring that your website is both discoverable and visible in the online world. SEO is an essential part of many business’ marketing strategies and helps to attract more traffic to your website.
However, not all page builders offer the same high-quality results when it comes to increasing your site’s rank in various search engines.
In this article, we are going to discuss the benefits of SEO and why Gutenberg is better for SEO than WPBakery. We also touch on why using WordPress’s block editor will help you to increase organic traffic to your website.
Why is SEO Important?
More often than not, organic searches form the primary source of a website’s monthly traffic and immensely increase a website’s overall performance. The higher your website ranks on a certain search engine, the more trust and credibility you can establish for your brand. Furthermore, great SEO also translates into better user experience and helps you to quantify your online results.
In order to maintain proper SEO and ultimately get a higher return on your investment, it is important to make use of the correct tools when it comes to search engine optimization.
By knowing which page builders and page editors work effortlessly with SEO software, you can invest in the right setup and reach a wider online audience.
Pro’s and Cons of WPBakery For SEO
WPBakery, formerly known as Visual Composer, is a front- and back-end page builder. It allows you to create website content on WordPress through the tool’s drag and drop function. When purchasing WPBakery separately, it will cost you roughly $45 for a private-use license and $245 for an enterprise license.
Some of WPBakery’s features include a template library, compatibility with lots of themes, and mobile and WooCommerce compatibility. According to the page builder, it is also compatible with one of WordPress’s most popular plugins: Yoast SEO.
When it comes to site speed, which heavily affects a page’s SEO ranking, WPBakery gives an acceptable performance. But, it does not outdo most page builders of the same rank.
One of the largest setbacks in using WPBakery is the lack of a clean and usable code when deactivating the page builder. This can make it hard to simply start over with another page builder or to not use one at all, and can also heavily affect your website’s SEO.
If you are using WPBakery and later decide to stop using it, the page builder will leave behind a heap of shortcodes that you’ll need to find a way to remove.
Some users have also been reporting that some versions of WPBakery are not compatible with Yoast. This means that if this page builder is not fully updated, you may not be able to use Yoast at all.
Although you can use a different SEO plugin when utilizing WordPress, Yoast has an overall top rating. This means it is the best choice when it comes to SEO plugins.
Pro’s and Cons of Gutenberg For SEO
WordPress’s official block editor, Gutenberg, makes WordPress easier to use without having to know any coding language. Gutenberg SEO overall performance has also improved with every version that has been released so far. This has also immensely improved SEO ratings. Whilst version 5.3 scored a page loading time of 5.3 seconds, version 7.0 now only requires 5.1 seconds to load a page.
The overall speed of a website can significantly add or take away from its SEO rating. So, the speed improvement in Gutenberg shows immense promise in what can be expected in future developments.
WordPress has also improved usability across its various platforms and trimmed PHP 5.2 compatibility code from the RSS block. By using the most up to date version of PHP, which is currently in the 7.x version, you can speed up your website even more.
Furthermore, Gutenberg allows you to add alt-text to images, change the image size, and link the image out to a web page. These features can help to increase your website’s overall authority rating.
One big difference between WPBakery and Gutenberg is that Yoast remastered its software to effortlessly integrate with Gutenberg. From building a sidebar API, modernizing the UI, choosing JavaScript as the base, and fitting a 640px meta-box into a 280px sidebar, Yoast made sure that its software compliments Gutenberg in every way possible.
Updated extensions like News SEO and Local SEO, along with some accessibility improvements, makes Gutenberg and Yoast the ultimate dream team when it comes to optimizing SEO on WordPress.
In a Nutshell
Although WPBakery will still be able to ensure a modest SEO rating, this page builder simply does not measure up to Gutenberg’s performance. Seeing as Gutenberg and Yoast have teamed up in offering effortless, high-quality SEO results, it really is the obvious choice when trying to move up the ranks in the online world.