Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for your website if you want your online business to flourish in today’s competitive market. This is why Wix not only provides users with the robust tools necessary to create a website, but also the features, infrastructure and information built on a foundation of SEO best practices to improve their ranking on Google’s pages and allow for customization.
Over the years we have continued to improve our SEO offering, yet, some users still ask, “What is SEO exactly?” and, “Is Wix SEO friendly?” In this article, we’re going to address some of the most burning questions around the topic of Wix SEO and share some helpful SEO capabilities for your website.
Are Wix websites good for SEO?
When it comes to your website’s SEO, search engines like Google don’t differentiate between website builders or any content management systems (CMS). Good SEO consists of a combination of factors, including infrastructure that allows for easy crawling and indexing, strategic content, plus optimization on and off the page (i.e., backlinks) If you're wondering, "Is Wix good for SEO?" just know that 82% of users saw improvements in their Google rankings after using Wix SEO tools.
"Wix is fine for SEO. A few years back it was pretty bad in terms of SEO, but they’ve made fantastic progress, and are now a fine platform for businesses. The reputation from back then lingers on, but don’t be swayed by it. What they’ve done in recent years is really good stuff, including making it trivial to have a really fast site (as you see in the Lighthouse scores — admittedly, speed is only a tiny part of SEO). If Wix works for them, and they don’t need more, there’s no reason to switch."- John Mueller, search advocate
How are Wix websites good for SEO?
Wix websites are built on not only a performance-first foundation, but also SEO best practices from dynamic rendering to automatic caching.
01. Server-side rendering
Wix websites are built on server-side rendering, a solution both Google and Bing advocate for. While complex, it basically boils down to a process that delivers server-side website content to search engines, avoiding the additional data fetching and templating on the client.
Your website users get the dynamic content they can act upon, and search engines get the fully rendered content on your page to index and rank it. This is important for sites of all sizes. Anything that makes it easier for search engines to crawl your website pages is an SEO win, and Wix websites do that from the minute they go live.
02. Crawlability and indexing
The first step to getting your website found on Google is allowing search engines to crawl and index it. Wix websites can do this easily with a direct connection to Google Search Console and instant homepage indexing.
Your Wix site automatically builds optimized sitemaps as you set it up, and then submits them to Google Search Console for indexing. Why is this important? A sitemap is what it sounds like; it's a map of your site’s pages. It first feeds Google which of your site’s pages you want it to see and index, and it also tells the search engine how to navigate its way through your site. A large part of SEO is making Google's life easier, especially when it comes to the basics. Wix sites can do that with our built-in Wix SEO tools.
03. Performance-first mindset
It wouldn’t be an article about SEO and performance if we didn’t mention Core Web Vitals (CWV)—Google’s golden standard for site speed. Since their introduction and evolution into a ranking factor (what elements of a site Google considers before ranking it in its search results), we’ve worked hard to make major improvements to how sites built on Wix score on CWV.
As of writing, over 60% of Wix mobile sites built or based in the U.S. pass CWV testing.
We know that website performance (how fast your pages load and other metrics) is an important part of creating a user-friendly site. That’s why all Wix websites are built on a foundation of performance best practices.
Images used on a Wix website are converted to WebP when the browser supports it. This Google-developed image format compresses images since smaller images load faster and improve website performance. Wix also auto-compresses images, so they’re the right size for your website speed optimization.
Wix sites also use “lazy loading” to optimize performance, so browsers delay loading content or media outside of a user’s initial view.
04. CDN and caching
A CDN or content-delivery network delivers website content to users faster. Wix automatically selects the optimal CDN, generally based on a user's location—the closer the CDN to the user, the faster the content is delivered. This is another win for your site’s performance and SEO.
Wix websites also use automatic caching, or when versions of a page are saved and then shown to users when they return to a website. This means that websites can avoid lengthy server-side requests for repeat users—all of which means a faster site. Our sites are also smart enough to know when a site contains custom code (i.e., Velo) that conflicts with auto-caching.
05. Customization
SEO should not be approached with a one-size-fits-all mindset—and we know that. That’s why at the heart of every Wix site’s SEO setup, we make sure you can customize your site in line with best practices and your specific strategy.
How do we do that?
Customized structured data (You can add a how-to schema, add a FAQ schema, whatever you need)
Editable robots.txt file (you can control what gets crawled on your site and what doesn’t)
Custom meta tags (you can write your own tags based on your targeted search terms)
Bulk 301 redirects (we also catch errors and loops for you)
Bulk SEO customization at the folder level using the Wix SEO Settings tool (a game changer for large sites that want to save time creating standardized metadata)
Will my Wix website be found on Google?
Google can find your Wix homepage. Here’s why: Once you connect to Google Search Console through the SEO setup checklist, Wix websites directly integrate with Google, both in terms of their sitemap creation and its submission to the search engine. This, combined with strong server-side rendering, makes it easier for Google to crawl a Wix site. Make Google happy and you’re on the road to a potentially successful SEO strategy. You can also track how often Google crawls your site, including specific pages, with Wix bot log data.
Does good SEO cost a lot of money?
It doesn’t have to. Wix sets up every site with an array of free built-in SEO tools. We also make education an important part of helping our users with our SEO Learning Hub. It’s filled with podcasts, webinars, videos and articles to get you started with your SEO or help you scale it. If you do find that your site has specific needs, you also have the option to take your strategy further by hiring a Wix SEO professional.
Full disclosure: You do need a premium Wix account for direct homepage indexing via Google Search Console.
Are Wix’s URLs properly optimized?
You can edit the slug of any URL on your site—meaning you get to optimize it for the page. You can also edit the folder name for both blog and product pages.
To make managing your pages easier and more technically correct, Wix implements an auto-redirect when you change URLs on the main editor, booking, events and product pages. One less SEO task to think about.
Are products on my Wix online store SEO-optimized?
Definitely. All Wix product pages have product schema and image markup added automatically—schema helps Google better understand your page’s content and structure. If you need to, this schema can also be customized to better your website’s goals. As a Wix user, you’ll also have full control over your product titles, descriptions and product page meta tags.
Will the Javascript that my site is built on hurt my SEO?
Javascript is here to say, and Google recognizes that:
“The web has moved from plain HTML - as an SEO you can embrace that. Learn from JS devs & share SEO knowledge with them. JS's not going away.”—John Muller
Google can index Javascript, but it requires two-step rendering which creates more work. And that’s why Wix uses server-side rendering to handle Javascript. This means Google doesn’t have to complete a two-step rendering process—they just get the fully rendered version.
Are Wix websites mobile-friendly?
They are designed to be. The main Wix Editor is adaptive and uses an algorithm to update the content on your site’s desktop version and reformat it properly for mobile. The same goes for strips within the main Editor. If you need a fully responsive site-building solution, EditorX might be the best option.
Will the images on my Wix website be found on image search?
From a technical standpoint, there’s no reason why not. Just make sure to add alt text to your images. This, as well as adding captions to your images, alongside great, explanatory content surrounding an image, will enable Google to understand it and potentially rank it in image search.
Pro tips to improve the SEO of your site
First of all, Google has no preferred CMS, nor is there any truth to the claim that it ranks sites built with one CMS over another.
Will a Wix website rank? This ultimately depends on you. Ranking does depend on your site being built with best practices guiding it (all possible with a Wix site). Google can crawl and index a Wix site and its content. Everything that makes it possible and easier for Google to crawl and index a site exists with a Wix website—server-side rendering, customizable meta tags and auto-generated sitemaps that are sent to Google when you connect your site to Google Search Console via the SEO setup checklist.
We also want to add first-class reliability to the mix. With servers with a 99.9% uptime, Wix sites are up and running whenever Google comes to crawl a page. But ranking also depends on creating good, optimized content. Your site must also be structured and pages organized in line with best SEO practices. What we can say is that Wix allows for the customization of all of these best practices, allowing you to better navigate and implement your SEO strategy.
There are things you can do, beyond the in-built SEO features of your CMS, in order to help your site rank better. Some of these best practices include:
Research your keywords and understand intent: If you want your website and its pages to show up in search engine results pages, you’re going to need to make sure you’re targeting the right keywords. If it’s a product page you want to rank, make sure all ranking results for that keyword are product-related—otherwise you might need to choose another keyword or create a different kind of page to match the intent of the results.
Create a blog: "A great way to rank for more keywords and pages is to create a blog," says Rebecca Tomasis, SEO expert at Wix. "This allows you to target informational intent keywords, and allows you to build lots of pages to rank and generate organic traffic from search, specifically information intent and queries." Yael Iba Tepeleni, international SEO strategist at Wix, adds, "Clustering is an effective way to take your blog content and structure to the next level, especially in terms of building an SEO strategy for your site through content. Clustering is considered one of the best ways to show search engines authority in a given topic. It helps search engines understand better the hierarchy of website content which can be connected and relevant to your core product pages. Make sure you have very strong pillar pages at the head of each of your content clusters, and revamp them whenever you see their visibility going down in search results."
Don't neglect backlinks: The first priority is to make sure your site’s navigation is well structured via the internal linking between your site’s pages and content. At the same time creating high-quality content that will gain organic traffic through valuable backlinks can also help your site’s positioning and ranking on the SERP (search engine results page). Backlinks are seen as votes of equity transferred between websites that assist search engines in assessing the authority and relevancy of a domain.
Map out your website pages: Do this either before you create your site, or as part of a website audit once it’s published. You should know which keyword each page on your website should rank. If you look at a page and can’t identify what you want people to type in to find it, then you should reevaluate if the page is necessary. If you have two pages attempting to show up for the same target keyword, you should consider combining the pages, so that you aren’t competing with yourself to show up in search results. Often when mapping out your site pages you realize there is a major product or service you offer that does not have its own page and which should be created.