Why was I a WordPress fan for so long?
Because WordPress and SEO simply work well together: few other platforms can be tuned for search engines as quickly and flexibly.
People often asked me why I was such a big WordPress fan. Fair question – WordPress has its downsides, especially around performance and security, and plenty of founders steer clear of it for that reason.
I still built on WordPress for many years, and I continue to work on WordPress projects. At WordCamp Europe 2014 in Sofia I met Yoast founder Joost de Valk and put my questions to Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress – you can watch the interview with Matt Mullenweg.
What makes WordPress strong for SEO?
1. SEO plugins like Yoast SEO and Rank Math
An SEO plugin is an extension that lets you manage titles, meta descriptions, sitemaps and structured data right in the editor. Yoast SEO is under constant development, and Rank Math is a popular alternative. Posts, pages and category archives take minutes to optimise, and advanced users get fields for custom titles and descriptions per template. Few other systems offer that many SEO settings without code.
2. Clean URLs (permalinks)
Permalinks are the permanent addresses of your pages. In WordPress you set them up in a few clicks so they contain your keyword. If you later realise a slug – the last part of the URL – isn’t right, you simply change it. For posts, WordPress usually redirects the old address automatically. Don’t rely on that alone: a redirect plugin keeps a clean record of every redirect.
3. Internal linking
WordPress makes internal links easy. Categories, tags and archive pages spread link equity across all your posts. Be careful with automation, though: too many thin tag pages and auto-inserted links do more harm than good. If you’re not an SEO, set internal links by hand.
4. 404 monitoring and redirects
On older domains or after a migration, you need to know which old URLs still have links or visitors. A 404 plugin shows you instantly so you can redirect them where they belong – and win back lost visitors and link equity.
5. A huge ecosystem
For almost every problem there’s a plugin, a theme or someone who knows how to solve it. That makes WordPress convenient for businesses that want to launch quickly without in-house developers.
Where does WordPress fall short for SEO?
- Speed: heavy themes, page builders and lots of plugins slow pages down. That costs visitors and affects Google through the Core Web Vitals. More in my guide Speed up WordPress.
- Security: most attacks come through outdated plugins and themes. Without regular updates, WordPress becomes a liability.
- Maintenance: updates, backups, compatibility checks – it all takes time every month. Fast managed WordPress hosting takes some of that off your plate.
- Dependency: the more plugins you run, the more your site depends on third-party code that could be abandoned tomorrow.
Why did I move hamed.de from WordPress to Astro in 2026?
Astro is a framework that builds a website into ready-made HTML pages ahead of time. When someone visits, the server has nothing left to compute – no database, no plugins that need updating.
For my own site, three things tipped the balance:
- Speed: every page should score 100 in Google Lighthouse and show its largest element within 1.5 seconds. Pre-built HTML makes that much easier to achieve.
- Less maintenance: no plugin updates, no database, a smaller attack surface.
- Content as files: all copy lives under version control in a repository. That suits the way I work as an AI tinkerer, because I can edit and review content cleanly with AI support.
What matters for SEO: every existing German URL stayed the same during the move, and any changed address gets a 301 redirect to the matching new page. Pages with no sensible replacement return status code 410 (“permanently removed”). That’s how the new site gives its existing rankings the best chance of carrying over.
When is WordPress the right choice – and when isn’t it?
| Situation | My recommendation |
|---|---|
| You publish regularly and several authors contribute | WordPress |
| You need features like a members’ area, bookings or forms without a developer | WordPress with a few well-maintained plugins |
| A smaller company or personal-brand site that mainly has to be fast and low-maintenance | A static site generator such as Astro |
| An online shop with a large catalogue | A shop system that fits your range – WooCommerce is one option |
| You want to be online in an hour without touching any tech | A website builder – read my Strato website builder review from an SEO perspective first |
So is WordPress the best choice for SEO?
The platform doesn’t decide your rankings. Google looks at whether your page answers the searcher’s question best, loads fast and is technically sound. WordPress makes a lot of that easy – another system can do just as well or better if it suits your team and your goals.
If you’re sticking with WordPress, my WordPress SEO guide walks you through the settings that matter. To see where your website stands on Google and in AI search today, run a quick check here:
If you’d like support, here’s how I work as a WordPress expert in Hamburg. You’ll find more guides on the blog. And where do you stand – WordPress or something else? Drop me a line using the form below.
