Hi everyone, I have a question regarding html and wordpress cms, I have a website built in html, and wanted to do SEO. Do you think it is a good idea to maintain the html format than using wordpress seo friendly cms? Please i need your thoughts. Thank you.
How many pages do you have? IMHO, If you only have 1-10 pages then there's no need to switch to a CMS with database. If you have more than 10 pages and would want to add more pages on a regular basis, then you would want to take an advantage of using CMS (such as wordpress) with a database. Having your site coded in HTML/PHP without database gives you an advantage of pages that are generated very quickly, because they do not need to talk to database server. Some things may go wrong with database server, database connection, etc, or database tables, so not-using database is an advantage. However, there is an advantage of using CMS such as Wordpress (which requires database), that is, you can manage and easily manipulate tens to hundreds or thousands of pages without even having to touch a single page in particular.
If HTML is better than WordPress in terms of SEO, why would you like to move it to a less good platform? It makes no sense. Stick with HTML.
Don't be fooled - most wordpress sites suffer because they economise on the theme and get one that is either free or commercially available. In order to be "flexible" a ton of crap gets built in and the output is often less than ideal. With a properly crafted theme you can have just the same on page SEO clout that you'd get from your plain HTML site - but you've gained the ability to edit your content, add new pages etc without having to write html, use ftp etc.
Those days are gone when there was a tension of having html vs dynamic site. @sarahk has said it correct. You need an seo expert to finetune wordpress blog for better results.
HTML sites are also good for SEO purpose but if you want to avoid the coding and all the other hassles then switching to WordPress can be a good idea (in terms of long term plans). With WordPress, you will find many great SEO plugins to help you out.
As far as SEO is concerned, the Search engine doesn't discriminate between HTML and CMS based pages. It treats both the same. If you have Meta Tags and all [like I have] on the HTML pages, it is as good as a CMS. Having a CMS ONLY makes sense when you are going to bring out a lot of content in very little time.
Having a CMS makes sense if you or your client wants to be able to edit their sites quickly and easily. You overestimate the abilities of many of the users here, and of their clients.
Having a system like Wordpress is useful if ONLY you want to add new content OFTEN... If it's a static or informative website about a company for example that won't be changed or at least not so often, then you can still use HTML!