Step-By-Step Wix Blog SEO
Updated: Oct 15, 2019
Publishing and creating your new Wix Blog posts includes SEO whether you are spending time on it or not. Heading tags, amount of words, keyword placement, meta titles and descriptions, images, alt text, and more need to be considered when optimizing your Wix blog for SEO.
This article is meant to give you a step-by-step instruction on exactly how to optimize every single post to ensure that the time you put in is making a difference.
Table of Contents
Keyword Research
Creating The Blog Silo
Write Your Articles
Change Your Heading Tags
Add Your Outbound Links
Add Inbound Links
Wix Alt Text For Images
Blog Post Settings
Publish Your Post
Conclusion
Keyword Research
This is a step that is often skipped altogether or not given enough attention by people. When you write your blogs it is incredibly important that you are writing articles about your niche that people want to actually read about.
How do you know what people want to read about? Well there are several ways to do this but ultimately you will need to do some research in order to figure this out.
I use a paid tool called KWFinder that allows you to see keyword competition to know if you have a chance to compete against other sites for certain keywords or phrases.
Even though I use a paid tool I will still spend a whole day on this process. You have to think of it as online real estate. The idea is to get to the front page of google because if you can do that your site can stay there for years. That means that you can count on a stream of visitors coming every month and you don't have to do anything else for it because you already wrote the post.
Because of this, it is important you do as much work as you can finding the best possible words for your niche and blog.
Once I gather a list of many words I feel I can compete with then I begin to write articles about those keywords, one by one.
This is how I get all of my content ideas.
If you don't have a fancy smancy online tool to use then you can still try the Google Keyword Planner or download the Google Chrome plugin "Keywords Everywhere".
The plugin will automatically tell you how many people are searching for any word you put into Google.
This won't tell you how competitive the words are but at least you will know if people are even looking for it!
Miles Beckler has a great video on how he goes about doing keyword research for his content.
Creating The Blog Silo
Once all of your keywords are figured out you will want to create what are called silos for your content.
What this means is that you will create a family tree like structure for your keywords. At the top is your homepage but then the silo 1/2/3 are your mega post. Let's say for me this would be this post that I am writing, a step-by-step to Wix blog SEO.
Then I would write several post that stem from this original like, "Silo Creation" or "Keyword Research" or "Heading Tags" and so on.
Keep in mind that all of these titles are my keywords. All I am doing is taking my keywords and creating a structure from them.
What this will do for SEO is let google know that your blog is all encompassing. Not only does it provide people with a gigantic post about blog SEO but it also goes into every single element of that, in detail, which must mean that it's the most informational blog about that topic!
Then it will start to rank your blog post higher because you are the leading expert on the subject matter and Google is trying to give people the most relevant information to the words they search.
Write Your Wix Blog Articles!
When you write your article keep in mind that your title needs to include your main keyword. Look at the title for this blog post to see my example.
Now that a structure is in place and you know what you want to write about it is time to start adding articles to your blog!
There are some general rules that you need to keep in mind when writing your blogs.
Always make sure that if you are trying to rank on the first page your blogs are no shorter than 1,500 words but keep in mind the average 1st page on google articles are around 2,000 words.
How many times you put your keywords into your post can change depending on how long the post is. If your post is about 1500 words then you will want to add your keyword about 5-7 times. You don't want to stuff your blog post full of your keyword or this will have a negative affect on trying to rank higher in Google.
Remember the silo structure we set up before? These will be your headings for each section. Check the headings in this blog post to understand what I mean.
Include about 2-4 outbound links in your article. More on this below.
Include at least 1-2 inbound link. More on this below.
Always include pictures, gifs or video. The post needs to be multimedia and should never be only text. More on this below.
You should write in a way that resembles your speaking voice as much as you can.
This will take time which means that the beginning articles you create might be harder to push through but stick with it and your voice will come through more easily.
Change Your Wix Heading Tags
When you are writing your articles you want to make sure that the audience can easily navigate through the articles and figure out where the information they need is.
In order to do this you will want to create headings for your different article sections.
You can identify each heading with a heading tag that tells Google exactly which headings are the most important and relevant to your article.
Once your article is written you will want to go back through and highlight all of your Main headings, click on the TT (this stands for regular text) till you see it display T1 (this represents the H1 tag that is used in code). This will make it so that Google or any other search engine will see these as being very important.
What you are doing is making sure that your main headings that include supplementary keywords are being recognized.
If you have sub headings from your main headings then make sure you highlight those and change them to T2 (this represents H2 tags) so that they can still be recognized but will not but put as a priority over your main headings.
Add Your Outbound Links
Now you will want to make sure you have set up links inside your post so that you can provide even more resources for your audience.
When you include these, Google will see your blog post and understand that you are not only providing great original content but you are also giving people access to other great content. What a great blog post!
The tricky part that is counter-intuitive to most people is these links should be to other sites on the front page of the keyword you are trying to rank for.
The reason you want to link to your "competition" is because you are letting Google know that not only are you providing more resources for your audience but they are the exact same sites that Google feels are already relevant to your audience.
It's kind of like showing up to a Google party where you already know what pie everyone likes most so your bring two pies of that then 1 pie of your own but your pie has homemade crust.
How can they resist....
Add these by highlighting your text and then clicking the link icon, add your website address and then click the "open in a new tab" button.
Opening a new tab is important because ultimately you want people to stay on your site because the longer people stay on your site the better this is for your SEO.
So, just because you add links to other places you want those links to open in a new tab so that your site is still active on their browser.
You also want to be understand the nofollow option. This lets Google know that any authority your site has does not get transferred to other sites.
This is basically like vouching for a buddy of yours.
Sometimes that buddy is awesome and you want your other friends to know that you have such a good buddy. This is a dofollow link and is the default link option when you add outbound links.
But what if that buddy was someone you knew 10 years ago and is kind of rude and obnoxious now. You aren't exactly jumping at the chance to promote this buddy of yours to all your friends. This would be a nofollow link.
Add Inbound Links
Ideally, when creating your post you want to make sure that you include at least two links that are to your own content.
Lets say that I wrote a post about store SEO so then I could link at the end of this article to my store SEO post so people could continue reading and stay interested in my blog.
This also helps your SEO because every single page of your site is given a rating. Depending on how valuable that page is, it will receive a higher rating. If you set up a link from a higher rated page to a lower rated page, that link will transfer your rating.
This is why it was so important to set up the silo structure we made before. The idea being that we create one mega post that ends up getting a very high rating and then we are able to link to more individual post from that mega post. Giving those individual post a higher ranking.
This is how you get multiple keywords to rank high in Google.
Many websites grow and become huge authorities in their niche using this method. You don't have to have every single blog post blow up and become popular, you just have to make sure you are using the system the right way.
Wix Alt Text For Images
Every post will either have pictures or videos or gifs. And very good post might have all three.
It is important that these pictures be relevant to your post and not always just funny pictures or beautiful landscapes.
Another important factor is that you add alt text to your pictures. This is because search engines can't tell what a picture actually contains in it so when we write the alt text it tells google what that picture is.
Something that is very important which I feel a lot of people miss is that you should be adding your keywords in the alt text.
Think about it...
You are trying to rank for a word and trying to give Google every opportunity to know what you post is about and how relevant it is to your subject matter so it would make sense that when Google is trying to learn about your pictures you give your keyword.
To access the alt text for pictures click on the picture, click on the settings icon, then you will see the alt text field where you can add your keyword.
Wix Blog Post Settings
So your blog is written, headings are changed, links are set up, media is added with alt text, now all there is left is heading to the post settings.
Click the 3 dots next to "publish" at the bottom of your blog editor, then click "post settings."
This will take you to your general settings where you will be able to add an excerpt, change author, change cover photo, feature the post, and display cover image.
None of these specific settings have much to do with SEO. The only thing that I recommend is that when adding your cover photo try to make the image file name the same as your main keyword.
Again, give as much as you can...
At the top you will see SEO, click here and it will take you to the section you need to focus on.
Here is where you will be able to manipulate your URL, your meta title, and your meta description.
These are what will be showing in Google and in your browser address bar.
Make sure your URL only contains your keyword. The key here is to make it as short as possible and keep your keyword at the beginning. Use "-" between words to link them together. I believe it is somewhere around 30 characters that Google places more importance on in a URL.
In your meta title, make sure this contains your main keyword. This can be longer but make sure your keyword can be seen in the Google preview that shows at the bottom of the settings.
The meta description needs to have your main keyword in it as well and make sure it is near the front of the description.
If you have ever noticed when googling a word that your search results will often bold the keywords you have searched for. If you don't put your keyword in the beginning of your text it wont show and could lose you some valuable SEO points.
You should try to fill up all the characters given and leave a little teaser at the end of your description.
Publish Your Post!
Now that you have everything set up on your blog you can feel confident publishing!
Content marketing is a long game which is exactly why many people don't give it a lot of time because it doesn't provide as many results as people want as quickly as they need.
But if you stick to creating amazing content that is optimized for SEO you will find in 3-6 months that your articles will start ranking.
There are other factors in SEO like backlinks and how optimized the rest of your site is, but sticking with these steps will make sure that at least your blog is where you need it to be.
You want to make sure that you post on social media about your blog as well. Let others have a chance to see what you are creating and making. I got more visitors to a particular post I made recently through social media and was able to track that my post has already jumped 63 places in rankings compared to other post I've made because it got a little traffic.
Mercado Wix Design Takeaways
1. Don't skip on keyword research! If you do this you might as well write these post blindfolded.
2. This is a marathon process. Each post takes time. Ranking in Google takes time. If you are looking to make quick results this is not your method. This is for long term sustainability!
3. Make sure you tell people about your blog. Post it on social media and on your personal page if you feel it could be relevant. Often times this can make a huge jump in rankings.
Day 14 of my 30 day Wix content challenge to bring free, highly valuable content to entrepreneurs and businesses. If you are interested in learning more about Wix SEO then check out my post that covers a full spectrum on best practices for your site.
If you enjoyed this post of the challenge so far then please like this post or like the Instagram page or Facebook page or comment and let me know! Making amazing Wix content means hearing from you and knowing how I can help you grow! Your business is awesome....let me prove it.