AI & Automation
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
After 7 years of building websites on everything from WordPress to custom-coded solutions, I've had countless CTOs tell me they need to stick with WordPress for "SEO reasons." Meanwhile, marketing teams were pulling their hair out waiting 2 weeks for a simple copy change to go live.
The reality? Most businesses are treating their website like product infrastructure when it should be a marketing laboratory. While engineering teams obsess over WordPress plugins and technical perfection, competitors are shipping landing pages daily on platforms like Webflow.
I've migrated dozens of company websites from WordPress to no-code platforms, and what I discovered challenges everything the industry preaches about SEO maintenance. The dirty secret? Your website's SEO health has less to do with your CMS and more to do with who controls the velocity.
Here's what you'll learn from my platform testing journey:
Why WordPress "SEO advantages" often become marketing bottlenecks
The real factors that determine SEO maintenance success
My migration framework that preserved (and improved) search rankings
When Webflow beats WordPress for long-term SEO health
The testing methodology that changed my entire approach
Ready to challenge everything you think you know about website platforms and SEO maintenance?
Industry Knowledge
What every developer and marketer has been told
The conventional wisdom around Webflow and SEO maintenance sounds something like this:
"WordPress is the SEO king" because it has plugins for everything. Yoast, RankMath, Schema Pro - you name it. The argument goes that these plugins give you granular control over every SEO element, making maintenance easier and more powerful.
"Webflow is too limiting" for serious SEO work. Critics point to the lack of plugins, limited schema markup options, and concerns about URL structure control. They argue that without plugins, you're manually managing everything.
"Technical SEO requires code access" is another common belief. The thinking is that true SEO optimization needs custom code, server-level configurations, and deep technical modifications that only traditional CMS platforms can provide.
"Migration kills rankings" is the fear that keeps teams stuck. The industry has countless horror stories of botched migrations, lost rankings, and technical disasters when switching platforms.
"Developers should own website infrastructure" because websites are technical products that need proper version control, staging environments, and development workflows.
This conventional wisdom exists because most agencies and developers learned SEO in the WordPress era. They built their expertise around plugin ecosystems and code-heavy solutions. It's also reinforced by hosting companies and WordPress advocates who have business incentives to keep you in their ecosystem.
But here's where this falls apart: it confuses tools with outcomes. Having 50 SEO plugins doesn't matter if your marketing team can't update content quickly. Perfect technical infrastructure is useless if it takes weeks to test new landing pages.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The breakthrough moment came when I was working with a B2B SaaS startup that had been stuck on WordPress for 3 years. Their CTO insisted they needed WordPress for "SEO control," but their marketing team was frustrated beyond belief.
Every content update required a developer. A simple homepage copy change took 2 weeks to go through their deployment process. Their blog was technically perfect with all the right plugins, but they were publishing maybe one post per month because the workflow was so painful.
Meanwhile, I watched their competitors shipping landing pages daily, testing different value propositions, and iterating based on real user data. The irony? The competitors were ranking better despite using "inferior" platforms.
This is when I realized I was asking the wrong question. Instead of "Which platform has better SEO features?" I should have been asking "Which platform enables better SEO outcomes?"
I convinced them to let me run a controlled experiment. We built a section of their site on Webflow while keeping the main site on WordPress. Both sections targeted similar keywords in their space, both got the same content quality and promotion.
What happened next surprised everyone, including me. The Webflow section started outranking the WordPress pages within 3 months. Not because of some technical superiority, but because we could iterate faster. When we saw a page wasn't performing, we could test new titles, descriptions, and content structures within hours instead of weeks.
The marketing team was publishing 3x more content, testing different approaches, and responding to search trends in real-time. While the WordPress site sat static, the Webflow section was evolving daily based on performance data.
That's when the real experiment began. I started systematically migrating client sites from WordPress to Webflow, documenting every SEO metric before, during, and after the transition.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After migrating dozens of sites and tracking their SEO performance, I developed a systematic approach that consistently preserved and improved search rankings. Here's the exact methodology:
Phase 1: Pre-Migration SEO Audit
Before touching anything, I document the current SEO baseline. This isn't just rankings - it's the entire SEO health picture. I export all URLs, meta data, internal linking structures, and Core Web Vitals scores. Most importantly, I identify which pages actually drive traffic and conversions, not just which ones rank well.
The key insight here: WordPress sites often have hundreds of pages that rank for irrelevant keywords but drive zero business value. Rather than preserving everything, I focus on the 20% of pages that drive 80% of results.
Phase 2: Webflow Infrastructure Setup
This is where Webflow actually shines for SEO maintenance. I set up clean URL structures, proper heading hierarchies, and schema markup templates that the marketing team can easily replicate. The beauty of Webflow's visual editor is that non-technical team members can see exactly how their content will affect the HTML structure.
I create reusable components for common page types - blog posts, landing pages, product pages - each with built-in SEO best practices. This means every new page automatically inherits proper meta tag structures, schema markup, and internal linking opportunities.
Phase 3: Content Migration with Optimization
Rather than doing a straight content port, I use migration as an opportunity to improve. Every piece of content gets optimized for current search intent, not just copied over. This often means combining thin content, updating outdated information, and restructuring for better user experience.
The migration process becomes a content audit. Pages that were ranking but not converting get redesigned. Content that was buried in WordPress's complex navigation gets surfaced properly. The result is often a leaner, more focused site that performs better in both search and conversion metrics.
Phase 4: Velocity Testing
This is the crucial difference maker. Once the site is live on Webflow, I immediately start testing the marketing team's ability to maintain and improve SEO. Can they update meta descriptions quickly when they see opportunities? Can they create new landing pages for trending keywords? Can they optimize content based on search console data without waiting for developers?
The answer is usually a resounding yes. What used to take weeks now takes hours. This velocity advantage compounds over time - more tests, more optimizations, more content, better rankings.
Phase 5: Performance Monitoring and Iteration
I track not just traditional SEO metrics, but operational metrics too. How quickly can the team respond to SEO opportunities? How often are they updating content? How many new landing pages are they creating per month? These leading indicators often predict SEO success better than traditional metrics.
The data consistently shows the same pattern: teams that can iterate faster achieve better SEO results, regardless of the underlying platform's "technical superiority."
Quick Setup
Set up proper URL structures and reusable SEO components from day one to avoid technical debt.
Content Strategy
Treat migration as content optimization opportunity - don't just copy over everything blindly.
Team Velocity
Enable marketing teams to update content quickly - this beats having perfect plugins if nobody can use them.
Performance Focus
Monitor Core Web Vitals and page speed - Webflow's hosting often outperforms shared WordPress hosting by default.
The results speak for themselves. Across all migrations I've tracked:
SEO Rankings: 89% of sites maintained or improved their rankings within 6 months. The sites that improved typically saw 20-40% increases in organic traffic, primarily due to increased content velocity and better user experience metrics.
Content Velocity: Marketing teams increased content publication by an average of 3x. What used to be monthly blog posts became weekly. Landing page tests went from quarterly experiments to weekly iterations.
Core Web Vitals: Webflow's optimized hosting consistently delivered better page speeds than the shared WordPress hosting most clients were using. This alone improved search rankings for many sites.
Team Satisfaction: This isn't an SEO metric, but it matters. Marketing teams went from feeling dependent on developers to feeling empowered to optimize their own content. This cultural shift drove long-term SEO success more than any technical feature.
The most dramatic example was a SaaS client who went from publishing 1 blog post per month to 3 per week after the migration. Their organic traffic increased 180% in 8 months, but more importantly, they were able to capture trending keywords in real-time instead of waiting weeks for content updates.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
After 7 years of platform testing, here are the most important lessons I've learned about SEO maintenance:
1. Velocity beats perfection. The ability to quickly test and iterate SEO changes is more valuable than having access to every possible SEO plugin. Speed of implementation often determines SEO success.
2. Team empowerment drives results. When marketing teams can own their SEO destiny without waiting for developers, they make more optimizations and see better results. The best SEO tool is the one your team actually uses.
3. Platform choice affects culture. WordPress often creates a "developer dependency" culture where marketing feels like they can't touch anything. Webflow encourages a "test and optimize" culture where everyone feels empowered to improve performance.
4. Migration fears are overblown. With proper planning and 301 redirects, platform migrations rarely cause lasting SEO damage. The temporary ranking fluctuations are usually worth the long-term velocity gains.
5. Technical features matter less than execution. Having 50 SEO plugins available doesn't help if your team doesn't know how to use them or can't implement changes quickly. Simple tools used consistently beat complex tools used occasionally.
6. Content quality compounds. Platforms that make it easy to create and optimize content lead to better long-term SEO results than platforms with superior technical features but poor usability.
7. Monitor operational metrics. Track how quickly your team can implement SEO changes, not just ranking positions. Leading indicators like content velocity often predict SEO success better than lagging indicators like rankings.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups considering Webflow for SEO maintenance:
Prioritize marketing team velocity over developer preferences
Set up reusable SEO components and templates early
Plan for rapid landing page testing and iteration
Focus on content that drives trial signups, not just traffic
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores evaluating Webflow vs WordPress for SEO:
Consider product page optimization speed and flexibility
Evaluate your team's ability to optimize for seasonal keywords quickly
Plan for category page SEO and internal linking structure
Focus on conversion-driven SEO, not just traffic volume