Which CMS to choose?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  George G.: no, doesnt make a difference as long as you know what you are doing.
  
  use wordpress as a beginner, it is the most well documented and has some out of the box plugins etc.
  
  but the cms is not that important, it is important how you structure your site.
• 
  Will Tisdall: Understood. Thanks for your response.
• 
  Rob Woods: really depends on the site. for smaller sites WP with a good dev that can optimize for speed and someone with decent SEO knowledge with a few plugins is usually all you need. From there your actual content is far more important that what CMS you use. There are specific reasons to use other CMSs however.
• 
  Will Tisdall: Hi Rob, thanks. Do you happen to know of any reference material where I could see which CMS`s are better for different types of site?
• 
  Michael Martinez: "What CMS (if any) would be preferable?" That depends entirely on what you prefer. If you don`t mind letting someone else make most of the design decisions for you, WordPress is easy to use and fast to learn. If you want more granular control over the look and feel of your site, Drupal and Joomla offer that. There are, in fact, dozens of CMS frameworks and platforms to choose from. Some of them haven`t been updated in 2+ years but you can still find a fair few to play with out there. According to Wikipedia there is still at least one Perl CMS in development. Not sure how up-to-date or thorough the Wikipedia article is, as it doesn`t list every CMS I have run into.
• 
  Dave Elliott: Some CMS are better at certain things but all the decent ones can be optimal with a bit of effort. Just don`t use Wix
• 
  Asif Yusuf: Haven’t they stopped developing Drupal?
• 
  Michael Martinez: Unless they are planning to announce that at DrupalCon next month, it looks to me like it`s still going. Drupal 8.6 was released in August 2018.
• 
  Stockbridge Truslow: The above is all pretty much spot on. I might only simplify it to say - Most of them can be great, and most of them can suck - really hard.
  
  Whatever you pick. learn it. Know what it`s good at and where it falls short - and then learn how you can fill those gaps.
  
  I tend to work with Wordpress because it`s hugely popular and the zillion plugins mean that I can cost effectively meet most any goal my client has. Yet, even with all the plugins (which can often cause their own problems) I can never really get much closer than 75-80% of the way "there". I still need to do some of my own coding and work to make it do what it really needs to do.
  
  So, yeah - they`re all good. And they all suck. Pick what feels right for you, learn where it sucks, then learn how to fix that. All of the major CMS names have ways to accomplish that with some reading.
• 
  Hayk Saakian: There is not DIRECT benefit with Drupal or Wordpress, you could technically create a website that was indistinguishable.
  
  However there are a lot of conveniences and time savings benefits of choosing wordpress.
  
  Google doesn`t prefer WordPress website over other kinds of websites, but the time it would take you to perform basic SEO tasks may be faster with WordPress.
  
  All of these things will save you time, so instead of mucking around in your CMS you can focus on building links or writing content to grow your rankings.
  
  #1 WordPress has hundreds of plugins to help automate some SEO tasks
  
  For example, the very popular Yoast SEO plugin creates a user friendly interface for updating your title tag and meta description.
  
  It also gives you a sitemap, easy UI for marking parts of your site noindex, and other quality of life improvements.
  
  Instead of having to assign these tasks to a developer, either you or a much less experienced person can them on their own.
  
  There are over 50, 000 WordPress plugins as of 3/19/19
  
  https://wordpress.org/plugins/
  
  #2 Your writers can publish content without a developer
  
  Some writers may already be familiar with WordPress. For those who are new, there are dozens and dozens of guides and tutorials and videos teaching how to use WordPress.
  
  Instead of paying publishing content yourself you can delegate this task to a writer because they either already know or could easily learn to use WordPress.
  
  3 out of 10 websites use WordPress. If your writer has ever published content before, there`s a good chance they know WordPress
  
  https://venturebeat.com/.../wordpress-now-powers-30-of.../
  
  #3 Easy to find developers to extend WordPress
  
  For example imagine you want to implement a custom page template to help automate SEO for your images.
  
  You could easily find a developer to do this for you.
  
  With other CMS`s there will be fewer developers in the market, so you`ll either pay more than you should or take longer to find someone qualified.
  
  When you search for “WordPress" on upwork, a popular freelancing website, you`ll see over 160, 000 people come up.
  
  #4 Easy to get help
  
  There are hundreds of resources online addressing many of the common SEO issues that website owners might face. Many of these resources assume you`re using WordPress.
  
  For example if you want to add star rating / review schema to your site, many of the guides would recommend installing a particular plugin.
  
  If you didn`t use WordPress you would have to hope your cms has a similar plugin or be able to develop one yourself.
  
  Overall:
  
  you can do SEO just fine without using WordPress, but the platform you choose can either save or waste a lot of your time depending on how well it`s set up for SEO.
  
  Shopify comes in close, but that platform works best for ecommerce and has its own drawbacks.
  
  If you`re thinking about an ecommerce site, WooCommerce (via wordpress) and Shopify are the best options. There`s an in depth comparison here:
  
  https://www.logicinbound.com/woocommerce-vs-shopify/
• 
  JL Faverio: WordPress is much more versatile, responsive and secure than Drupal. Even the White House switched. https://www.whitehouse.gov/
• 
  Jeff Ferguson: Nope.
• 
  Travis Bailey: Not trying to be an ass, but that`s like asking if the Pacific or Atlantic is wetter. Both have their ups and downs. Though neither have a distinct advantage, in regard to ranking.
  
  You could shoot yourself in the foot with either. WordPress has a lot more community support though.