WordPress vs Shopify for SEO: what each one lets you control

Neither WordPress nor Shopify ranks better because of what it is. Google's technical requirements for a page to appear in search are three: its crawler is not blocked, the page loads, and the page has content that can be indexed. None of them names a platform, and a page built on either one can meet all three.

What differs is how much of a page you can change, who runs the servers, and how much work it takes to keep the site in good order. This comparison takes those in turn, from each platform's own documentation, for someone choosing where to build a store or a content site.

"WordPress" here means the software you install with a hosting company. The WooCommerce plugin turns it into a store.

Side by side

Page addresses

WordPress lets you set the shape of every address. Under Settings, then Permalinks there are six choices, from "Plain" to "Post name" and "Custom Structure", which builds an address from parts such as the category and the post's name. Each page also has its own slug that you can edit. Category and tag archives carry a prefix that you can change but not remove. In WooCommerce the first part of a product's address is a setting too: the default, your shop page's name, or a base you type in.

Shopify fixes the first part of an address by the kind of page. Its documentation calls /products and /collections fixed paths. What you edit is the last part, called the handle. When you change a handle, Shopify offers to create a redirect from the old address.

Google's guidance on addresses asks for words in them that are useful to a reader. Both platforms manage that. Where the fixed first part matters is a move from another system. If your present product addresses have a different shape, they will all change on Shopify, and each one needs a redirect.

Titles and descriptions

Shopify has these built in. You can edit the title tag, the meta description and the handle for products, collections, pages and blog posts. Themes add the store's name to title tags, and Shopify adds canonical tags to pages to keep duplicate content out of search results.

On WordPress the usual way to get these fields is an SEO plugin. Yoast SEO is one example. It is free with a paid version, and its listing covers meta tags, XML sitemaps, canonical URLs and Schema.org data.

Google's starter guide notes that on a content management system there is often nothing technical to do to a title beyond writing a good one.

Redirects

WordPress redirects by itself in one case: change a post's slug and the old address is sent to the new one with a 301. Everything else needs a plugin or a rule on the server. Redirection is a free plugin that manages 301 redirects, keeps a record of 404 errors and accepts patterns. With access to the server's configuration, any address can be redirected.

Shopify has a list of redirects in its admin, which can be imported and exported as a file. It has limits. A redirect works only from an address that no longer loads. Addresses that begin with /apps, /cart, /orders and a few other prefixes cannot be redirected, nor can the fixed paths themselves.

For a store that changes a few handles a year, either is enough. For a site that is being moved or reorganized, WordPress gives more room.

Sitemaps and robots.txt

Both generate a sitemap without being asked. WordPress's is at /wp-sitemap.xml and lists public posts, pages, categories, tags and author archives. An SEO plugin can replace it with its own. Shopify's is at /sitemap.xml and lists products, pages, collections and blog posts. Google's documentation says that on a content management system the sitemap has usually been made for you already.

Both generate robots.txt too, the file that tells crawlers which addresses to leave alone.

• WordPress writes one that keeps crawlers out of /wp-admin/. You change it with a plugin, with code through the robots_txt filter, or by placing your own file of that name in the site's main folder.
• Shopify writes a default that keeps crawlers out of the cart, the checkout and account pages. To change it you add a template named robots.txt.liquid to the theme. Shopify calls this an unsupported customization that its support team cannot help with, and warns that a mistake "can result in loss of all traffic."

Structured data

Structured data is markup that describes a page to a search engine: this is a product, this is its price, this is an article. Google uses it to show richer results, and a page must include the properties Google requires to be eligible for them.

On Shopify it comes from the theme. Shopify gives theme developers a filter that turns a product into schema.org Product or ProductGroup markup and a blog post into Article markup. What your store outputs depends on the theme you chose.

On WordPress it comes from the theme or a plugin. WooCommerce generates product markup itself. For a product with variations it outputs one combined block, not one for each variation. An SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO adds Schema.org markup of its own.

Speed and hosting

Google says its ranking systems use Core Web Vitals, its measures of loading, responsiveness and visual stability. It also says that good scores do not guarantee a place at the top, and that it tries to show the most relevant content even where the page experience is poor.

Shopify runs the hosting. Stores sit on its servers behind a content delivery network, images are resized and compressed as they are served, and each domain gets a TLS certificate at no charge. What is left to you is what you add. Shopify names the theme and the installed apps as the biggest factors in a store's performance.

WordPress runs on hosting you pick. Its documentation lists the hosting environment, the theme, the software versions and the images as the things that decide performance. A page cache and a CDN are yours to add. The result depends on those choices: see how to speed up WordPress and how to improve Core Web Vitals.

Blogging and content

WordPress is, in its own documentation's words, "an advanced blogging tool". Posts are organized into categories, which can be nested, and tags. Each has its own archive page, and the site has feeds and comments. Alongside posts there are pages, and the address structure for all of it is your choice.

Shopify has a blog built in. A store starts with one blog named "News" and can have more. A post has tags, an author, an excerpt, a featured image, a publishing date you can set ahead, and its own search title and description. Posts are organized by blog and by tag.

For a site where articles and guides are most of the pages, WordPress gives more ways to arrange them. For a store with a blog beside it, Shopify's is usually enough.

Upkeep

This is the largest difference, and it is not about search at all.

On WordPress the application is yours to look after. Its documentation says that hosts are often responsible for the infrastructure and "not responsible for the application you choose to install." That leaves you with updates to WordPress, the plugins and the theme, and with backups of the database and the files: weekly for a small site, daily for a busy one, by WordPress's own guidance. How to safely update WordPress and the WordPress maintenance checklist set out the routine.

On Shopify there is no server and no application for you to update. The theme and the apps are still yours. Shopify tells you when a newer version of a Theme Store theme is released, and code you have edited may need to be copied across to it by hand.

We work on WordPress and not on Shopify, so read the next line knowing that. If you choose WordPress and would rather not do the upkeep yourself, a care plan covers weekly updates, daily offsite backups, uptime monitoring and security scanning.

Which one to choose when

• If the store is the whole site and nobody wants to look after software, Shopify takes the servers, the certificate and the platform off your hands. You accept its address structure and whatever markup your theme provides.
• If content is most of the site, with or without a store, WordPress gives you more control over how articles are organized and addressed.
• If you are moving an existing store and its addresses must stay as they are, check what Shopify's fixed paths would do to them before you decide. On WordPress the old structure can usually be kept.
• If you want to change robots.txt, structured data or redirects in detail, both allow it. On WordPress it is mostly plugins and settings. On Shopify, redirects are a setting, and robots.txt and structured data mean editing the theme's code.
• If your site already does well in search where it is, the platform is not a reason to move. A move changes addresses, and that carries its own risk.