Is WordPress still the best choice for SEO?

Everybody is stuck on 2024 and earlier, where the answer was "WordPress is the best for SEO." I've gone back and forth on this, and I don't think it's true anymore.

"Why would you use WordPress today? That doesn't make sense unless you just don't know, which is like 99% of people."

What do I use instead?

Next.js with a headless CMS. In 2026 I was building a local website on that stack, and I'd pick it again for any new client site.

• Faster. Pages load quickly, which helps both readers and search.
• Better looking.
• Better for SEO. Clean, server-rendered pages with the structure you choose.
• Cheaper to build. Because AI does the coding.

How does someone non-technical build on it?

I don't write code. I describe what I want to Claude, over and over, until it's right. That's the whole process.

My rough comparison: it's something like 100 times faster and two or three times better than doing it the old way, and cheaper. A team that would have cost $10,000 to $20,000 a month is now about $200 a month in AI tools. Those are my estimates, not a formal cost study.

A designer friend built an 80-stylist directory site in two days just by talking to Claude, pulling the data from a Notion database. Another builder I talked to put up a full site with a CMS, a chat widget and an SEO plan in two days by running six Claude chats at once against one shared plan.

What should the site do for SEO and AI search?

1. Live on one root domain, with content under paths, not subdomains. See subdomain vs. root domain.
2. Render real HTML on the server so crawlers and AI tools can read it.
3. Include structured data, a sitemap and an llms.txt file.
4. Own your content. I copy every newsletter issue to my own site as a proper page. More in publishing your newsletter archive.

Is there a case for WordPress?

My point is about new builds. Starting fresh in 2026, I don't see why you'd pick it.