Whenever you decide to build a website, you start looking for the best platform to bring all your creative and business ideas to life. Out of many CMSs and platforms available, page builders like Wix have revolutionized how we design and develop online projects. Beginner friendliness and advanced website editing functionality are among the major reasons why over 8 million websites are built on Wix.
What about the SEO part? Is Wix SEO good enough for an effective website promotion? This article discusses Wix SEO issues and provides practical recommendations for improving your website’s search performance.
Wix SEO Background
For Wix users, SEO starts with understanding the basic features and tools available in Wix’s editor. Whether you’re launching a website for a local business or a broader audience, Wix provides a platform for applying SEO principles through customizable settings, titles, and descriptions.
In the website-building community, Wix hasn’t always been considered a good choice in terms of SEO. Launched in 2006, the website builder got its first major update in 2016. Until then, Wix lacked basic SEO features, like the possibility to edit the URL structure or add alt text to images. However, this is no longer the case. Now, you can perform every SEO task on your Wix-based website.
The Wix team has made a huge leap ahead by integrating the page builder with all SEO features website owners use for their projects’ optimization. By reviewing Wix’s SEO features, Google’s senior search analyst John Mueller admitted:
“What they’ve done in recent years is really good stuff, including making it trivial to have a really fast site.”
Wix SEO Issues
Although Wix’s SEO characteristics have advanced recently, there are still several pitfalls you should know about if you feel serious about boosting your website’s ranking.
Slower loading speeds than custom-built websites.
This issue is not exclusive to Wix-based websites only. WordPress websites built with Elementor face a similar issue mainly due to the abundance of tools and features, most of which you will hardly ever use.
Wix isn’t the best choice if you’re building a multilingual website.
The page builder still has an issue with URL management, and you do not have full control over your website’s different language versions.
Limited advanced SEO control.
While the page builder offers basic SEO functionality, it still lacks advanced features, like a structured data mockup. Besides, there are certain SEO issues with Wix’s file naming. For example, instead of providing a readable name for images uploaded to your website, Wix provides cryptic file names like 09a0ab7~mv2.jpg.
Key Steps in the Wix Editor
To start, access the Wix Editor, where you can navigate between various pages, add new ones, or modify existing ones.
- Menus & Pages: List all the pages on your site and arrange them for easy navigation.
- Example Website: The video uses a coffee shop example to show how these principles apply to a business targeting local customers.
Setting SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions
Titles and meta descriptions are crucial for SEO as they define what visitors will see in search engine results.
SEO Basics: Click on the three dots in each page’s settings to enter the SEO basics section, where you can input the page’s title, description, and social sharing settings.
Title Tags: Each page should have a unique, descriptive title that incorporates a relevant keyword. For example, a coffee shop in Brooklyn could use “Best Coffee Shop in Downtown Brooklyn” as its title to attract local searchers.
Meta Descriptions: The meta description summarizes the page content and serves as a call-to-action in search results. Keep these descriptions under 150 characters and relevant to the content.
Conducting Keyword Research
Keywords are the foundation of SEO, helping search engines understand the main topics of each page. Tools like SEMrush and Google Keyword Planner can help identify relevant keywords.
- Keyword Selection: Choose keywords based on relevance and search intent. For example, a coffee shop may target “coffee shop downtown Brooklyn” to capture local traffic.
- Understanding Search Intent: Keywords like “best coffee shops” reflect a user’s intent to discover multiple options, which is useful for businesses in competitive areas.
Advanced SEO: Structured Data
Suctured data, or schema markup, helps search engines interpret page content. Adding structured data can help pages rank for “rich snippets,” enhancing visibility in search results.
- Wix Structured Data: Wix now includes structured data options, where users can add JSON-LD code for FAQs, products, and other elements.
- FAQ Schema: Adding FAQ schema for questions about the business can improve a website’s visibility when people search for related queries.
Structured data markup enhances Google rankings for local businesses by providing additional, easily readable information to search engines. Here’s how it helps:
Improves Search Relevance
Adding structured data for local businesses enables Google to better understand and categorize the content on a page. For instance, if a coffee shop includes schema markup with location details, business hours, and services offered, Google recognizes these specifics, improving the chances of appearing in local search results.
Increases Visibility with Rich Snippets
Local businesses using structured data may qualify for “rich snippets,” enhanced search result entries that include more information like ratings, price ranges, and FAQs. These snippets draw more attention than standard search results, helping businesses stand out and potentially increasing click-through rates.
Enhanced User Targeting
Structured data signals Google about user intent, which can improve rankings for specific queries, such as “coffee shops in downtown Brooklyn.” For local businesses, implementing FAQ or product schema makes it easier to rank in voice and mobile searches, which often have local intent.
Boosts Credibility with Additional Details
Including structured data for reviews, locations, and contact information increases credibility. When Google displays this enriched information directly on the search results page, it establishes the business as trustworthy, which can positively impact user behavior and rankings over time.
Structured data thus works as a powerful tool, helping local businesses improve both their visibility and relevance in competitive search landscapes.
Technical SEO Tags
Technical SEO tags guide how search engines treat each page. Some common options include:
- Noindex Tag: Prevents certain pages from appearing in search results (e.g., thank-you pages or private content).
- Nofollow Tag: Tells search engines not to follow links on a page, useful for internal links leading to pages without significant SEO value.
- Canonical Tags: Avoids duplicate content issues by pointing similar pages to a primary URL, telling search engines to focus ranking efforts on the main version.
The “noindex” and “nofollow” tags are useful tools in Wix SEO to manage which pages are discoverable by search engines and how link equity is distributed across your website. Here’s how each tag benefits SEO on Wix:
“Noindex” Tag
▪️ Control Over Search Visibility: Applying the “noindex” tag to specific pages, such as thank-you pages or internal search results, prevents them from appearing in Google’s search results. This keeps non-essential or sensitive pages hidden from public search listings.
▪️ Focuses Crawling on Important Pages: By excluding certain pages from indexing, Google can focus more attention on indexing the core content, like product or service pages, which directly contributes to your rankings.
▪️ Avoids Duplicate Content Issues: For pages with similar content, the “noindex” tag helps prevent duplicate content penalties by telling search engines not to index those pages, so only unique, valuable pages are included in results.
“Nofollow” Tag
▪️ Preserves Link Authority: The “nofollow” tag tells Google not to follow specific links, which prevents passing link authority to certain pages or external links that might not be relevant. This is especially useful for affiliate links, sponsored content, or internal links to less critical pages.
▪️ Reduces Crawling of Low-Priority Links: When used on links to low-priority pages, the “nofollow” tag helps direct Google’s crawling resources to more significant parts of the site, which can improve the visibility of important content.
▪️ Improves Page Authority Flow: On a Wix site, using “nofollow” strategically allows you to guide search engines to focus authority on your high-ranking pages by reducing the attention given to non-essential links.
In short, the “noindex” and “nofollow” tags in Wix SEO offer control over what search engines see and follow, helping you fine-tune which pages get visibility and how link authority flows through your site.
Performance Optimization for Content
Besides technical settings, high-quality, relevant content on each page is essential for SEO success. Each page should provide clear information on the subject it targets, incorporating keywords naturally to improve readability and engagement.
- Content-Length: Ensure content is detailed but relevant, adding value for the reader.
- Headings and Subheadings: Use headers like H1, H2, and H3 to break up content and make it easier for search engines to interpret.
Wix SEO Tips
Despite the SEO issues Wix used to have and several website optimization aspects their teams currently handle for further improvements, the platform provides website wonders with a solid ground for their projects’ optimization. Besides, the platform now features an SEO tool, providing tips and guidelines for your website’s content optimization. Let’s consider the tried-and-true Wix SEO tips and best practices described below.
1. Use Wix SEO Wiz
Wix SEO Wiz is a built-in tool that guides you through the website optimization process. It’s easy to use, meaning that even beginners can understand its guidelines easily. One of the best parts is its free cost.
You can find the Wix SEO Wiz tool by navigating “Marketing & SEO” > “Get Found On Google” in your website’s dashboard.
The tool provides tutorials for on-page optimization, a handy keyword suggestion tool, functionality to check your website’s indexability, and access to advanced SEO settings, such as social shares, structured data markup, meta tags, etc.
2. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
This strategy is not exclusive to Wix websites. With over 90% of internet users using a mobile phone, optimizing your website for mobile is a must-do. Besides, according to the most recent Google ranking algorithm updates, mobile-friendliness is one of the major ranking factors.
Consider implementing the following practices to ensure your Wix website is mobile-friendly:
- create a website layout that adapts to all popular screen sizes;
- apply responsive design techniques wherever possible, ensuring images, videos, menus, and other elements look good on smaller screens;
- focus on a mobile-first approach, where less is more;
- follow Wix’s recommendations on how to make your website responsive.
3. Create a Sitemap
If your website lacks a sitemap, now is the right time to work on it. A sitemap is a critical element of your Wix website’s SEO improvement. It tells users what to expect when visiting your website and lets webmasters see how users interact with your content.
The availability of a sitemap is vital for an improved website SEO for two major reasons:
- It reveals your website’s structure at a glance;
- It provides more efficient indexing of your website’s content by search engines.
As a website owner, you can use a sitemap to analyze where your visitors browse your website. This lets you optimize your content and website structure more effectively and discover broken links that prevent visitors from reaching the necessary content.
4. Set up Google Search Console and Analytics
Whether you run a Wix-based website or use any other platform as the foundation of your online project, one of the most effective ways to monitor its performance is by connecting it to Google Search Console. It provides an impressive selection of tools designed to monitor your website’s search ranking and prevent your website’s pages from being indexed by Googlebot.
Getting started with Wix integration with Google Analytics is a streamlined process. Wix provides easy-to-follow instructions on how to create a Google Analytics Property ID and connect that ID with your Wix website. Once the Google Search Console is set up, you can learn where your website’s traffic comes from and which pages users visit most often. Besides, you get insights into traffic and webpage reports, which give you a clue to the web pages that need your special attention and further improvement.
5. Create SEO-Friendly Content
You will hardly find a better recommendation than crafting SEO-friendly content. The content type varies based on your website’s niche and specifications. If your brand provides services, then creating SEO-friendly service pages should be a wise move for your website’s optimization. If you have a single-page website, you may add user testimonials as one of its blocks. SEO experts haven’t yet found a better source of relevant, human-generated content than testimonials.
6. Work on Internal Links
Adding internal links to your website is one of the SEO fundamentals for any online project, not exclusively for Wix-based websites. Internal linking and backlinking (e.i. links from external websites to your project) are among the most important ranking factors. However, getting quality backlinks may take a lot of work. The case is different with internal linking. Here, a website owner and his team completely control the process and add links from one page of your website to another.
To improve the ranking of specific pages on your website, consider increasing the number of internal links directing to those pages. While this strategy alone won’t guarantee a top spot for a keyword, it’s a crucial—and frequently underestimated—step toward enhancing your rankings.
If you’re using Wix, adding an internal link is straightforward. Select the text you wish to link, click the “chain link” icon, and select the page you want to connect to.
7. Run Regular SEO Audits
Once the major part of the SEO work is done, ensure you set up regular audits to ensure your website performs as planned, none of the links available on your website’s pages are broken, and the content ranks well in SERPs. Of course, this is a perfect image of how things should go. Yet, be ready to come across SEO issues on your website every once in a while. Checking every aspect of your website manually is a time-consuming process. Besides, you can easily miss tiny errors. That’s why it’s better to rely on SEO audits.
The web offers plenty of tools for this purpose. Ahrefs and Semrush are indisputable industry leaders. With their help, you can set up automatic weekly or monthly audits to ensure your website is error-free. If the tools find anything, you will get prompt notifications and suggestions for improvement.
Boost Your Wix SEO: How PRNEWS.IO Can Help
PRNEWS.IO can really help Wix site owners improve their SEO by connecting them with a wide range of media outlets and journalists. This allows businesses to publish press releases and articles that boost their online visibility. By using PRNEWS.IO, Wix users can get valuable backlinks from trustworthy websites, which not only brings in more visitors but also helps increase their site’s authority in the eyes of search engines.
Plus, PRNEWS.IO provides tools to track media coverage and see how well their content is performing. This way, Wix site owners can adjust their SEO strategies based on what’s working.
With personalized support and smart distribution options, PRNEWS.IO makes it easier for Wix users to strengthen their online presence and optimize their content for better search results.
Final thoughts
Although Wox has had specific SEO issues in the past, luckily, things are getting better now. The famous page builder supports all the primary website optimization techniques, letting you improve your project’s rankings by creating SEO-friendly content, using internal and external linking techniques, tracking your website’s performance with Google Analytics, and performing regular SEO audits.
In many aspects, Wix SEO optimization is similar to the techniques and approaches we use on WordPress and other websites. The platform continuously develops and improves, providing us with more SEO opportunities.
