Which Page Builder is the Most SEO-Friendly?

Allan created a poll.
Which page builder is the most SEO friendly?
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which page builder is the most seo-friendly
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Hemmen
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) does not come with the builder. But if you indirect count performance as SEO friendly then definitely Oxygen builder. (The others are bloated)
Also, oxygen builder makes it easier to make a site that forces clients to do SEO better.
It's the more out of the box work like this you can do with oxygen that makes it more SEO friendly.
For example if you use Access Control Field (ACF) and use required fields for structured data markup (json) that you build into your page.

Daniel » Hemmen
Okay I'll ask you here because I definitely know WP bakeries bloated like crazy very chunky very heavy very poorly coded and programmed. Now I mentioned slider Revolution and you gave me a haha reaction. I take it your opinion on slider Rev isn't so good either? In any case these content builders' should be used sparingly. One should do as much Native hard coding as possible. When I first started literally everything on my websites was built with slider Revolution and I've always managed even then to get high performance websites done. But these days I'm probably 60% slider rev 40% Native code.
Hemmen » Daniel
If it works for you, that's fine.

Rishabh
None of the builders are SEO friendly but all the builders except Oxygen will work with a theme. Themes are mostly SEO optimized which makes all the builders SEO optimized other than Oxygen. So far I have worked with Elementor, Divi, WP Bakery and Oxygen and found Elementor to be better than all.
While Oxygen websites load better but you spend way too much time creating a website with Oxygen than other builders. Elementor, on the other hand, works like charm and you can create a website in a few hours and later spend another hour optimizing the speed.

Hemmen
Oxygenbuilder is SEO optimized if you use it with an SEO plugin. The optimization that comes with themes is mostly minimal.
Rishabh » Hemmen
I agree as I did the same. But it's not that user friendly. The builder itself is not that user friendly, for now. The last time I checked the website header was not having any schema while themes take care of that part nicely. So you see tiny stuff matter and I can't spend that much time looking after those things for every website I create.
Rishabh
But other than these few small things, I like the builder and I hope they make it better with every update. I love the fact that they are continuosly rolling out updates. That's a good sign!
Ferdinand
WPBakery is a total nightmare. Divi is bloated. Elementor is the way to go in my experience.

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Mišo
Why are people pushing Oxygen as the most SEO friendly builder? What are the actual facts for that?
Because it has the least nested Divs in its architecture? That has nothing to do with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Because it "doesn't need" a Theme? If you want a functional website, you need most of the WordPress hierarchy templates. So with Oxygen you need to create them by yourself. There are bloated themes for sure. But there are enough clean ones as well.
Also, what does "Bloated" even mean? The key question is how many unnecessary stuff is outputted to the front end, and how much the necessary stuff slows down the frontend and the backend.
There are larger themes and plugins with lots of on/off switches. If something is off, it doesn't add to the bloat.
I have bought Oxygen's license and went through extensive training, because I like the concept. First, nasty standstill bugs can occur. Right now there are over 900 of them. While with more mature builders people are asking boring support questions and often don't understand how it is supposed to work, with Oxygen they are mostly reporting bugs. Endless stream of them. That's (still) not an environment for a serious work.

Hemmen
Oxygen builder is more focused on webdesigners / developers and has a bigger learning curve. There are some annoying bugs but also good workarounds and you can create great working sites with it. If you work trough the learning curve. The end product is great.
I really like the combination with Access Control Field (ACF). To force clients toe fill in complete information and optimized images for example.
Next to great loading speed (Oxygen Builder pushes way less unnecessary stuff to front end and that's where its all about). Oxygen Builder provides webdesigners lots more flexibility to build in (out of the box) SEO like they wish.
That's why people are pushing Oxygen Builder.
People that are less into webdesign (Marketeers, lost of SEOers) might go for ease of build and choose Elementor. But Elementor has its issues as well.
Mišo » Dennis
I'm all into webdesign. 🙂
I agree with you that Oxygen can produce fantastic end product, if all things work.
Personally, I'm building sites with Themeco's Pro theme (with integrated Cornerstone builder), for the past 7 years. Besides bugs, it is the main reason why I haven't switched to Oxygen.
It matches Oxygen's front end speed with ease. It surpasses Oxygen's backend speed in many situations.
It is more mature, and with literally zero standstill bugs. Also, there were zero security breaches, despite few times longer history.
Then there is the fact that Pro has most modern architecture, based on Ember & React plus it stores data as Json. That is why it performs so well.
It is fully integrated with ACF Pro, but with Pro, the full version of it comes bundled, just like $1000 worth of other premium plugins.
Themeco as a company takes great care of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), so they have integrated Schema wherever possible.
The Oxygen's last advantage, the ability to build WP index/post templates is being leveled this month with the new version.
Oh, and there is also a full native integration of CSS Grid. It allows layouts beyond any other page builder on the market.
This is getting exhausting, because there is so much more to say. I wrote the full review here if you'd like to learn more: https://www.wpusability.com/…/x-and-pro-theme-review…/ 🙂
I see Cornerstone is not on the above list, that's really a shame.
X&Pro theme from Themeco: reveiw after 7 years of using it | WPUsability
Joshua » Mišo
When is the new version being releases?
Mišo » Joshua
Public beta starts any day now. It is announced for this week. As soon as the beta is ironed out, the official release is out. Could be by the end of month.
Having said that and knowing Themeco, they have never released a half-baked product to the beta. With last version, I was able to build the whole new website using the pre-release version. This one: https://www.mojemalozlato.com/en/ (I needed the CSS Grid for that site, so I couldn't wait).
Gluten free – Problem free | Moje Malo Zlato
Atif » Mišo
Can I PM you? Cheers

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Daniel
You forgot slider revolution. Blows everyone one of those away on your list. Don't let the name throw you slides is just one thing it can do. But I'm not in entirely sure any of these have anything to do with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I mean what can be the extent of it it allows you to tag pictures and tag your titles? Maybe some built in schema fields etc etc. Everything else should be done by programming coding or some other plugin. If we're talking SEO.
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Daniel » Daniel
Hemmen please elaborate. Much more usefull than hahaha. I've built many sites solely with Sydney theme and slider rev as my content builder if its not straight up code, its Slider Revolution. Its UI, vast amount of potential applications, and speed is really awesome.
Eric » Daniel
Dennis obviously doesn't know what he's laughing at.
Hemmen
I'm sorry, but I really thought you where joking. As slider revolution is NOT a pagebuilder and definitely not lightweight.
Obviously doesn't know what he's laughing at.
I Guess I don't then.
I admit I've used slider revolution in the past. And I'm even running that on my current site (that's very long due for a redesign).
But I always found it a bottleneck when it comes to performance.
Daniel » Hemmen
Interesting … more so then WP-Bakery? I believe No way because I do have extensive experience with WP-Bakery and SR is way WAY better … And what makes you say its not a Content Management System (cms)? I have a feeling your making an assumption based on the name of the product. It is a cms. I mean if WP Bakery is a cms, then so to is Slider Rev, and in fact SR is better again then Bakery FOR SURE. So I'm not sure how you arrived at that conclusion. The name of it? lol … YOU HAVE 100% CONTROL OVER everything in that plugin and I've not seen it bottlenecking my sites at all. Since you admit you've really got a little experience with SR, I would love it if you tried it out more extensively and give me feedback then. It's UI, is certainly one of a kind and I just love how they have it set up. If you have an Adobe background, SR, will intuitively make sense to you. Absolute control over what you build you can literally design anything you want with it. BTW, if you're actually using slider's then yes the extra dynamics are going to decrease performance but you don't have to use it. You can turn off all effects like Parallax etc etc, or specify it only off on mobile etc etc. I would love to see more extensive testing on it for sure. Let me know if you actually get the time and are willing to do a deep dive on it. Would be honored to hear from you about that.💯💯👍🙏
Hemmen
I guess it comes from my experience that the further you go from traditional webdesign (so more drag/drop) the less flexible it gets when it comes to custom coding / out of the box work and the more "bloat" (so more unnecessary scripts and divs).
I've seen those RS scripts slowing down sites (measured in GTMetrix). And I've actually sped up sites by replacing Slider Revolution parts.
Just look at the scripts it adds in your source code and the requests it adds.
Now I don't have the time to set up an extensive test and compare two pages. So I've shared some sites that already did.
And this:
https://www.isitwp.com/WordPress-plugins/slider-revolution/ (read part about testing and speed)
https://wpjohnny.com/worst-WordPress-plugins-ever/ (to be honest, this blog does have a very strong opinion about things)
And this:
https://wp-rocket.me/…/fastest-WordPress-image-slider…/
Sorry they only compare with other sliders, not pagebuilders. But as its a plugin, the loading time is added to your theme. I do not have the time te set up an extensive test (To compare a page build with oxygen, elementor en SR).
But clearly you found a way to have it work for you (and perform well). Like I said. That's fine. We have different needs.
ISITWP.COM
Slider Revolution Review – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

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Nick
Using none of these builders is probably best for SEO (loading time). You might be able to use the (Gutenberg) block editor in WordPress.

Daniel » Nick
Yeah that's kind of what I was alluding to. Not only load time but render blocking resources are an issue with builders. That also has to do with the theme you use though but still when you get to Minify JavaScript and deferring loading and stuff like that render blocking Scripts excetera excetera if you use page Builders it's going to be hard to get all of that perfectly optimized. Now not even a purely hard-coded website is going to get a perfect score but I just mean like the most optimize you can be kind of thing.

Michahu
SEO is theme independent.

Daniel » Michahu
You know I'm a bit confused because the list seems to have themes and content Builders listed. Unless wpbakery is being referred to as a theme because they also have a theme. But their cms is poo poo and definitely hurts SEO.
Michahu
yeh the terminology gets mixed up a lot these days, because plugins are often being used for design.
Michahu
But theme's don't "hurt SEO", because SEO is theme independent. Google doesn't rank a site lower just because it is using wpbakery. If a heavy theme is being used together with other heavy plugins and is slowing down a site, and takes 6 seconds to load the page, making the site hard to use, then that is an issue and needs speed optimization. In this case, good technical expertise and a sound speed optimisation strategy will fix that. But the theme just being used on the site as a factor by itself doesn't affect rankings.
Daniel » Michahu
Of course not Google doesn't give a shit what you use to build a website with they only care about how it performs of course I know that. And so when you look at it this way SEO is not theme independent. For instance finally I've come up with a solution and will no longer be using the Sydney theme instead I had a custom-built PHP framework designed for me by my friend who is on that level. This particular PHP framework is going to make it very easy for me to actually defer render blocking resources excetera excetera which will help the performance of the site which is an SEO Factor.

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Mišo
A Page builder and a Theme are sometimes same and sometimes a separate thing. Some listed are pure Page builders, and their overall "SEO friendliness" will depend on the theme they are paired with.
Some don't even need a theme and the SEO friendliness is up to what the user will make for himself, provided that the performance is ok.
Some are integrated with their own theme and then we need to evaluate both the Theme and the Builder to be fair.
What is "SEO friendliness" of the technology used anyway?
It comes down to three things: Performance, Tags and Schema. (Ok, also Architecture, but let's not go there for now).
With performance, the question is how fast a page loads on the basic install with no plugins, on a decent host, with basic speed optimization allowed. That means http/2, caching, preloading, prerendering, lazy-loading, and any other standard optimization method.
This is related to the dev team's expertise, clean coding, obeying standards, use of modern architecture, way the database calls are made, way the data is stored, ability to turn-off any extra stuff that users may not need (Lean Base), stability when additional speed optimization is done, etc. Users can ruin any page builder or theme with bad choice of plugins and lack of understanding of basic optimization.
With tags, that is partly a Builder and partly a theme thing. It is user's responsibility to use proper heading tags on pages, for example. But it is a theme's responsibility to do that on Index pages, at least if Index pages are not built with the Builder. For example, last week I saw a theme that has no tags whatsoever on taxonomy index pages, search results, etc. Nor it recognizes Category descriptions that are already in WordPress.
Schema can be integrated deeper in the theme or not at all. Some themes have JSON-LD tagged Breadcrumbs, and Schema powered Ratings, Testimonials and other elements. They also may be able to output Schema per page/post type. This is great, but those can be added manually or by the use of SEO/Schema plugins.
The rest is down to the SEO plugin used.
Each Page builder/Theme can be run against those parameters and the "Most SEO friendly one" can surface out. (There are important players missing on this list). All things being equal it could even have actual impact on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). But all things are rarely equal, so relax. Unless your tech is utterly bad and you are not optimizing for performance properly, it probably won't affect site's SEO. 🙂

Daniel » Mišo
I'd be interested to hear about what you think of slider Revolution. If you have experience with it. In my opinion it's one of the major players that are not on the list. And it is a Content Management System (cms) don't let the name fool you. Like you mentioned you have absolute control over everything in it you can even specify certain functions to work only on mobile. It handles at media requests in its own way which is brilliant simply by allowing you to specify layers as being visible on whatever given screen resolution you choose and therefore get to build a second frame for say only tablet and mobile. Definitely tracking your post though most of the SEO is not really related to the cms but it can be. It's just cms ratings shouldn't be related to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in my opinion because of the lot of reasons you said. The one at the oh consideration that is related however would be site performance. Which then kind of Daisy chains site traffic.
Mišo » Daniel
Yes, bringing cms solutions to the list has no point, as we are talking here about only one cms: WordPress, and various Page builders.
In all honesty, Slider Revolution is a poor replacement for a proper page builder. It can do stuff that most page builders do.
Also, when you talk about its responsive features and the use of layers, have you ever tested such pages in dev tools or with performance websites such as WebPageTest? You may get surprized by the fact that if you display:none a picture for a certain media query, it will still be loaded on all screens, creating a huge mess and bloat.
And that what Slider Revolution is: a mess and a bloat in most cases. It is usually misused. The very use of a slider is questionable due to so many reasons. Even if it is properly used, it often has much better performing alternatives, starting with what better page builders have to offer.
Every single website I influenced to get rid of it literally started to bread.
Sorry if this is not what you have expected. 🙂
Daniel » Mišo
I would change that "sorry if that's not what you expected" to "that's not what you've experienced." Because I get my sites all loading at least 2 seconds. With WP-Bakery, was never able to get that fast. I do use it more sparingly these days though because of the reasons you state, so I' like 60% SR, 40% hardcode. My post pages are 100% HTML hard code though, it's just the site pages that have it mostly. My next mountain though is indeed getting rid of all cms ish like content builders and going all straight code. I'm almost there. I get my sites fast from optimizing and then, of course, a Content Delivery Network (CDN), that especially handles dynamic content is always ALWAYS there too. And yes your right I have noticed if you use SR's hide layer that's what happens, but usually, I'll class a layer and CSS @MEDIA QUERIES INSTEAD. shoot sry caps … now that makes me think of a question for you. I've div display none other things like free schema markup builders keeping them from displaying the stupid gross looking schema box at the bottom of the page by writing that code in wp-admins CSS, customization area but when I look at the page source code the schema is indeed still there, so … what say you? In that case it's not just an SR thing the display none is just that display none not make it disappear from the existence of course. It wasn't a performance comment just you really have 100% control over everything comment design-wise.
Mišo » Daniel
An element that is display:none is of course present in the source, but it is removed from the flow. Other elements below it, or elements floated to the right can take its place. Google should be ignoring these elements as well. If you are hiding hardcoded Schema, that's a problem. If the Schema is JSON-LD, then you should be able to hide the visual part.
The problem with display:none is that browser will still download the resources in the element. That's ok if this resource is just text. But if it is an image, then it adds a lot of potential weight.
For example, I have seen people"optimizing" the hero background image for mobile by hiding it, leaving just the background color. The logic is to save mobile bandwidth. But this picture is still loaded.
Your way to go fully hardcode is intersting. There are some performance gains in that, possibly. Personally, I like hundreds of hours of head-start provided by WP and a good quality builder. I can still load it under a second if I want to. Even on a shared hosting.
Also, if someone works for clients, the last thing they want is someone's custom solution. They depend on the author for the maintenance, and if the author goes away, they usually need to scrap the site. With WP cms and a decent, well maintained theme/builder, they have the long term security.
I still don't get why is SR a solution that controls everything design-wise? Maybe I didn't get that part correctly. A good builder that supports Flexbox and possibly CSS Grid eats it for the breakfast. 🙂
Daniel » Mišo
Yeah got that about the display none deal … About design method/tools, I Just never learned it that way. Wish I would have but I'm an Adobe guy. That's where I started and so when I found SR, it made so much sense to me because it operates very similarly, and finally, I could build really cool dynamic sites with cool effects and stuff; you know the dream of any digital designer, having fun designing. See I'm self made. I taught myself everything I know using the university of Google, plus I have some good friends in the industry that are like way up there so sometimes I would get help from them. For me, it's about climbing the mountain while delivering results, the ultimate puzzle/chess game. I love it. Plus I'm an artist so I get to use all that digital production abilities I have often enough. I am to deliver the best results I know-how, and while I would like to start learning your way, there's simply no time, especially since I've been a roaring success BY THE GRACE OF GOD, until now, so the only learning curve I'm willing to take is my own custom PHP frame work "plus remember, my friend that designed it is the author." 😉 So, as per my clients, I don't think in terms of what happens if I'm gone, I'll make sure their taken care of and I'm certainly not thinking of dying so … I just like I said, shoot for the stars always and deliver the best possible product/RESULTS I know how; hence the frame work = complete and utter control. That's the only learning curve I feel is worth my time be it the success I've had with my methods. But again, sounds like yours would have brought me potentially a bit more lol.

Azman
I think this poll turned into "which page builder has the most users?"
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