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Does your CMS choice actually affect Google rankings anymore?
Posted by on February 28, 2026 at 11:43 amI see this question pop up constantly and the answers are always all over the place. Some people swear you need WordPress or nothing. Others are building sites on Figma, Framer, Webflow or even straight up AI generated platforms and claiming rankings are fine. I get that page speed and core web vitals matter but can Google really tell or care what CMS you used behind the scenes A client wants to rebuild on a newer platform like Framer or even a headless CMS but the old school agency is warning them it will tank their search visibility. Is that fear outdated or is there still a genuine technical SEO risk with non traditional builders My gut says content quality and backlinks are what really move the needle these days. But I also wonder about things like crawlability and proper structured data support on these newer platforms.
For those of you managing larger sites have you migrated away from WordPress or another legacy CMS without losing rankings Or did you run into hidden technical issues that hurt your search performance I want to hear real experiences not just speculation. Is the CMS debate just noise now or does it still matter for SEO
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1 Reply
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Google (or any other search engine or answer engine) doesn’t care about your “CMS”.
What they care about, is the standards/structure, as well as the content.
If you can re-invent the wheel (start from scratch) and still manage to fully follow the rules and standards, you’ll rank up.
What certain CMS likes WordPress offer is time-saving and pre-defined/pre-implemented rules. (Otherwise, if you be a professional SEO specialist with technical knowledge, you know even WP needs so much optimizations when you really start doing professional works (both in performance and in even Basic SEO stuff)
I used to focus on custom solutions only. But since 2 years ago I invested more on WP and I’m still happy with the decision (I don’t know until when I’ll stay happy though. For now, I’m totally fine with it and I created my own “custom solutions” on top of WordPress. Saves a ton of time, and resources.
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Search engines don’t use CMS type as a ranking factor but a CMS will impact your rankings if it makes content difficult to upload or they contribute to server errors (5xx codes) for whatever reason.
I would with go with the clients wishes here. Personally I like the headless CMS’s as lot of the companies we work with are either growing or changing a lot due to funding rounds, pivots etc.
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No, but personally I avoid WordPress because the latticework of plugins makes for messy structure and a lack of security. Even then, I don’t think a standard WP site with the usual amount of plugins is bad for SEO.
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