The last thing you want to do is start a debate about the best Content Management System (CMS) for SEO.
(Especially on Twitter).
That’s why I decided to look at the data instead.
In fact:
My team and I analyzed the top 10 ranking SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for 10,000 unique keywords to see what CMS is ACTUALLY the best for SEO.
Here’s what we discovered.
The Best CMS for SEO in 2023 is…
Not having a CMS at all…?
That’s right.
According to the data, 58% of the ranking results aren’t even using a CMS.
Even if the data isn’t 100% accurate, not having a CMS is still the overwhelming majority.
But if we remove sites that aren’t using a CMS, the results are far less surprising.
The best Content Management System for SEO is none other than… WordPress!
Anti-climatic, right?
Here’s a list of the top 21 CMSs that are dominating Google’s SERPs:
- WordPress (45%)
- MediaWiki (9%)
- Drupal (8%)
- Adobe Experience Manager (4%)
- Ruby on Rails (4%)
- ATG Web Commerce (1%)
- SiteCore (< 1%)
- HubSpot (< 1%)
- Magento (< 1%)
- Squarespace (< 1%)
- Shopify (< 1%)
- Liferay (< 1%)
- Django Framework (< 1%)
- Joomla (< 1%)
- Laravel (< 1%)
- Brightspot (< 1%)
- Adobe Dreamweaver (< 1%)
- Salesforce Commerce Cloud (< 1%)
- Wix (< 1%)
- IBM Websphere Commerce (< 1%)
- Medium (< 1%)
How We Conducted the Study
Let me start by saying that this is by no means a comprehensive study, but there’s a big reason why we shut it down at 10,000 keywords.
Why did we only analyze 10,000 keywords?
We felt that anything more than 10,000 would be a waste of time because it wouldn’t dramatically change the results. We assumed WordPress would be the best for SEO because it’s the most widely used.
As we added more and more URLs, the results weren’t changing at that much.
It’s possible that a bigger dataset may alter these results. It’s just unlikely.
Where did you get the data from?
We create a list of seed keywords like “car,” “books,” and “travel.” Then we ran those keywords through Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer tool and focused on the “Phrase Match” option (Ahrefs review).
From there, we exported 50 keywords and the top 10 results for each.
We repeated this process page by page. After we gathered 100,000 URLs from 10,000 keywords, we tested the URLs using What CMS’s API.
Unfortunately, we could only copy and paste 1,000 URLs at a time, so it was quite time-consuming.
Was there probably an easier or better way to gather this data? Definitely, but we’re just happy we got it done.
Why is this post so short?
Because there’s nothing left to say!
WordPress is the best CMS for SEO in 2023.
The bigger idea here is to make decisions based on real data. Not people’s opinions.
There is one other thing I’m going to prove with this post.
I’m going to prove that you don’t need to write “1,800” words to rank in Google.
You just need to satisfy search intent, create a super valuable piece of content, and acquire quality backlinks. Notice how I didn’t say to create a super long piece of content.
Length does NOT equal quality.
Watch this video (and subscribe to my channel) to master this concept:
Your Turn
Do you agree, or are you surprised by this data?
Let me know in the comment section. Also, if this is valuable, please share it with a friend or colleague.
Thanks for reading!
