Joomla Versus Wordpress for SEO.

I get asked all the time which CMS platform is better for SEO, Joomla or Wordpress?

There's so much horseshit flying around on the web and it all basically boils down to - whatever Clown A is using is the best, without the need for justification.

So let's try and add a little bit of science to all this "mine is bigger than yours" nonsense.

Looking at the actual SEO parameters from the perspective of a relative newbie, and giving marks out of 5 -

URL/ File name formatting -
Both can be setup for optimized URL's without plugins. Joomla uses 'sections' and 'categories' to organize content and the section name and category name are used in the URL. Wordpress uses Permalinks. With Joomla, it's actually quite difficult to create a full file path without the page appearing to be in a subdirectory. Google gives more prominence to pages in the root directory and less as pages are one or two steps down.
Out of the box, without using plugins,
Wordpress 4
Joomla 3

Ease of setting up out-of-the-box SEO components -
Joomla - On some apache installations when you select the the 3 SEO parameters to 'yes' in global config, you'll need to manually login to your Cpanel or FTP and change htaccess.txt to .htaccess. This is made clear in the config but newbies may have trouble working with the htaccess files particularly as some programs class them as system files and you  may need to change your file permissions to see the file.

Wordpress - setting the Permalinks is easy enough but there's a LOT of conflicting information over which settings are best for SEO. WP doesn't make a recommendation inside the Admin, so you'll need to either just use one of the default options (not recommended) or go off and research the best settings, which could get you into even deeper trouble.
Wordpress 2
Joomla 4

Meta Tags (Title)
Joomla - Fairly intuitive in that the page title will appear as the Meta title on all pages with the exception of the Home page. Then it becomes a newbie nightmare trying to find out how to set the home page Title tag. You'll need to research it the first time, the key is within the menu default landing page setting, which is not at all intuitive.
Wordpress - pretty straightforward to set the page title tag, which is the actual title you've created for the page. But what if you want to use all 70 characters in the Meta Title tag? - it means you're going to have a long and ugly page file name. Also, the Title will appear at the top of every page above the content block, so unless you manually remove it from the theme page.php you're stuck with it.
Joomla 4
Wordpress 1

Meta Tags (description)
Joomla - simple to set the description tag on any page from with the page/content edit screen.
Wordpress - You can't set the Meta description Tag without a plugin. You can handball code into the header.php but it will be static from page to page. Not good.

Joomla 5
Wordpress 0

Meta Tags (Keywords)
Joomla - Easy to set on a page per page basis
Wordpress - You can't set the Meta keywords Tag without a plugin. You can handball code into the header.php but it will be static from page to page. Not good. Some say you don't even need a keywords tag, but some SE's still seem to use it.

Joomla 5
Wordpress 0

Heading Tags (H1, H2 etc)
(These are important for on-page SEO)
Easy enough in both. For Joomla I'd recommend you go to 'plugins' - 'TinyMCE' and click 'Extended'. This isn't installing a new plugin it's merely adding more features to the existing plugin and it will give you more page formatting options.

Alt Tags
Easy enough for both.

So with an out-of-the-box approach my vote goes to Joomla for SEO. (you can add up the scores if you want).

IMHO Joomla can get by without an SEO plugin, in fact I rarely use one unless I'm converting an old HTML site to Joomla and need to match the file structure.

Wordpress absolutely needs a Plugin, at which point the playing field is leveled.

I find myself doing more code-hacks when I'm working with WP than with Joomla. Getting that Title tage out of the page.php is standard when I'm doing a WP install.


There are other more in-depth areas of CMS SEO that I won't cover in detail. One is the order in which the page is read by the SE. You ideally want your 'content' area to be read first, followed by column/sidebar 1, then 2. I've had more success finding Joomla templates with an optimized layout than WP. But YMMV.

Disclaimer - more experienced users will find a way to work around the limitations of each, and will build up an arsenal of tips, tweaks, cheats - I've offered the above more aimed at newbies than experienced users.

And don't forget to consider having a great looking theme or template for your website. Artisteer offers quick and easy template / theme creation for both Joomla and Wordpress (along with others) so checkout an Artisteer review here