What’s the best CMS for SEO?
We analyzed 59,033 top-ranking domains to find out.
Here’s what we discovered.
We analyzed the top 100 keywords using CPC data and discovered that 49% of the top-ranking domains use WordPress.
This is a 175% increase from our original study in 2016, when only 18% of the top-ranking websites were using WordPress.
It’s safe to say:
WordPress is the best CMS for SEO.
Unsurprisingly, WordPress usage keeps growing among top websites in Google.
It’s the best CMS because it’s built for SEO, easy to use, and you have complete control over your website.
I can’t recommend it enough.
I’m not a developer, so Next.js was a surprise to me. It came out of nowhere and top-ranking websites seem to be loving it.
According to their website, it’s:
“Used by some of the world’s largest companies, Next.js enables you to create full-stack Web applications by extending the latest React features and integrating powerful Rust-based JavaScript tooling for the fastest builds.
In 2016, only 0.06% of the top-ranking websites were using Webflow, and now it’s up to 1.54%, a 2548% increase.
They still have a lot of ground to make up, but still impressive.
Here’s the complete list:
| CMS | 2024 | 2016 | (+/-) |
| WordPress | 49.94% | 18.19% | 175% |
| CMS Not Detected | 23.69% | 58.90% | -60% |
| Next.js | 2.43% | 0% | New |
| Drupal | 2.43% | 3.56% | -32% |
| SiteCore | 2.18% | 0.64% | 241% |
| Website down or unavailable | 1.79% | 1.15% | 56% |
| Duda | 1.67% | 0.05% | 3520% |
| WooCommerce | 1.54% | 0% | New |
| Webflow | 1.54% | 0.06% | 2548% |
| Wix | 1.28% | 0.22% | 487% |
| Adobe Experience Manager | 1.28% | 1.92% | -33% |
| Gatsby | 1.15% | 0.06% | 1820% |
| HubSpot | 1.02% | 0.46% | 124% |
| GoDaddy Website Builder | 0.77% | 0.07% | 997% |
| Laravel | 0.64% | 0.32% | 101% |
| Squarespace | 0.64% | 0.40% | 61% |
| Django Framework | 0.64% | 0.52% | 24% |
| dotCMS | 0.38% | 0.01% | 2643% |
| DNN | 0.38% | 0.11% | 240% |
| Brightspot | 0.38% | 0.29% | 34% |
| Joomla | 0.38% | 0.35% | 11% |
| Google My Business | 0.26% | 0% | New |
| DatoCMS | 0.26% | 0% | New |
| Craft CMS | 0.26% | 0.09% | 191% |
| Contentful | 0.26% | 0.10% | 153% |
| Weebly | 0.26% | 0.10% | 153% |
| ExpressionEngine | 0.26% | 0.12% | 117% |
| Sitefinity | 0.26% | 0.16% | 65% |
| Shopify | 0.26% | 0.40% | -35% |
| Ruby on Rails | 0.26% | 1.59% | -84% |
| MediaWiki | 0.26% | 4.07% | -94% |
| Wagtail | 0.13% | 0% | New |
| WebsiteBuilder | 0.13% | 0% | New |
| Statamic | 0.13% | 0.00% | 6300% |
| Episerver | 0.13% | 0.02% | 653% |
| OpenCart | 0.13% | 0.02% | 510% |
| Omni CMS | 0.13% | 0.05% | 142% |
| Zendesk | 0.13% | 0.07% | 78% |
| Umbraco | 0.13% | 0.18% | -27% |
| Medium | 0.13% | 0.20% | -35% |
For our newest study, we analyzed the top commercial keywords based on CPC data. We analyzed 105 keywords and 781 unique domains.
In the 2016 study, we created 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.
Do you agree, or are you surprised by this data?
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Thanks for reading!
