Structured Data and ExpressionEngine: What Your Site Is Missing and Why It Matters
Most ExpressionEngine sites have no structured data. Here is what structured data does, what your site is missing, and what implementing it involves.
Most business owners understand that keeping ExpressionEngine up to date is good practice from a security standpoint. What is less well understood is that an outdated EE installation also affects Google rankings, through a chain of consequences that can be traced back to the version the site is running. Understanding that chain helps you make the case internally for upgrade work that might otherwise be deferred indefinitely.
PHP version and performance
Older versions of ExpressionEngine required older versions of PHP. Older PHP versions are significantly slower than current ones, and page speed is a Google ranking factor. A site running EE 3 or 4 is likely running on PHP 7.x at best, and PHP 7.x performs considerably worse than PHP 8.x on page execution time. Modern hosting increasingly pushes PHP versions forward, which can create compatibility problems for old EE installations. Sites held back on old PHP because of their EE version are running slower than they should, and Google notices.
Security issues and Google Safe Browsing
ExpressionEngine versions that are no longer receiving security patches are more likely to be compromised. When a site is compromised, Google will often flag it via Safe Browsing, which can result in warning messages appearing in search results or, in serious cases, de-indexing. A site that has been blacklisted for malware can take months to recover search presence, even after the site itself is clean. Prevention is considerably less expensive than recovery.
The inability to implement modern SEO tooling
Many modern ExpressionEngine addons that support SEO, structured data, sitemap generation, and social meta tags require current EE versions to run. A site on an old EE version cannot use these tools, which means it is limited to manual or legacy approaches to SEO that other sites have moved beyond. Over time, the gap between what a current EE site can do for search and what an old one can do grows wider.
URL structure and canonical handling
Older versions of ExpressionEngine had less flexibility in URL structure and canonical URL handling than current versions. Sites still running old EE versions may be generating URLs in formats that are suboptimal for search, or handling canonicalisation in ways that split ranking signals across multiple versions of the same page. Upgrading to current EE often addresses these issues as a direct consequence of the version improvements, without any additional SEO-specific work required.
If your ExpressionEngine site is overdue an upgrade, get in touch with Karl to find out what it is costing you in search.
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