Wix SEO: Review Your Site
Updated: Sep 24, 2019
Talk about Wix SEO with any expert who doesn't already use Wix and you are likely to hear the same dismissive response.
It's terrible!...
But Wix has made several upgrades throughout the years to their platform to fix the perception.
Now what you will see with Wix are header tags, meta titles, meta descriptions, page URL alteration, structured data, canonical URL, social sharing customization, video integration, blogs, and the easy to use Wix SEO Wiz that can index your site to Google for you.
The truth is that Wix has implemented a large amount of SEO options available throughout the site building experience that now compares to any other site builder on the market.
Ahrefs even conducted a Wix vs. Wordpress SEO study of over 6.4 million domains to finally put the rumor to rest once and for all. The study found no conclusive data to show Wix being inferior in its ability to rank higher in search results.
In the beginning of the Wix days the platform was based on Flash which meant they could look pretty but loading times were terrible and there was not an accessible way to increase your chances of being found in search engines using SEO best practices.
This has always been the foundation for the rumors that still persist today but the reality of the situation has changed and the playing fields are evened.
I am going to break down Wix SEO piece-by-piece throughout the entire platform. I want to make it so that you know every single place you need to invest time into in order to help your chances at ranking higher.
If you have the resources and are planning on outsourcing most of your SEO then type in the comments "Yes" and if you are planning on hitting the ground running and bootstrapping this yourself then type "No" in the comments. When I make edits to this post I want to make sure I'm focusing on the right direction for you all.
Let's dive in!
Table of Contents
Wix Keyword Research
Wix On Page SEO
Wix Editor SEO
Wix SEO Wiz
Wix Blog
Wix SEO Expert
Conclusion
Wix Keyword Research
First things first.... You need to do your keyword research!
This part of the SEO process will be done outside of Wix so it isn't really mentioned on the platform expect in your Wix SEO Wiz and by this time you have probably already built your entire site.
I recommend starting this before building your site and adding all your text. This is because the keywords will inform your text and let you know which words you should be putting where which could ultimately change your design.
Keyword research is the process of finding words and phrases that people are typing into search engines like Google that relate to your niche. If you take people on fishing trips at your local lake then your keyword might be "fishing guide in [lake name]".
Google wants to make sure it is giving people the results they want, so if your site is exactly what the people who typed in the search term are looking for, then google wants to make sure you are in the top spot.
There are other factors that depend if you get that top spot, like what we will describe below, but if you don't know the best keywords that people are searching for you won't have a chance to show up on a first page of Google.
If you are doing keyword research yourself then I can't recommend highly enough Miles Beckler's video and his lessons. They are some of the most helpful marketing videos out there and the one below is about how to do your keyword research using free tools.
I do recommend a tool that I use called KWFinder that has some VERY valuable info you won't be able to access easily using any of the free options above. The tool has a 14 day trial period that you can take advantage of so if I would get a list of words that you are curious about, run them through the tools within your 14 days, and then cancel you trial.
Wix On Page SEO
In the world of SEO there's what is known as On Page SEO and Off Page SEO. Since we are talking mainly about the Wix platform we are going to focus on the One Page SEO but I will give some good tips on the other later in the article.
Keep the following tips in mind while you are building to save you time from having to go back and make changes to every page of your site.
Header Tags
Header tags are text based and let Google know what you pages and site are about.
When you add text to your site you will be shown an option of different headings. They are usually in order from 1-6. What you will need to know is that search engines will take the Heading 1 as the most important, Heading 2 and second most important, and so on.
So if your keyword is "Fishing guide" you will want to make sure this is included in your Heading 1 header tag.
The importance of headings has gone down over the years for SEO but you still want to be using best practices.
Stick to one h1 tag per page of your site
Stay true to the descending order. If you have a h1 then go to h2 and so on. Don't skip from h1 to h3.
Think of your headings as a tree structure. Your most important keyword at the top (h1) and supporting keywords follow (h2) and even more supporting keywords (h3).
Using these tags in their proper use will give your site some added structure when you are building and make sure you have a great foundation to start from.
Alternate Picture Text
When adding any pictures on your site you will have an option to put in an alternate text. You will want to do this for EVERY picture on your site.
Once you add a picture to your site, click on the picture and then click on the "gear" icon that is highlighted in blue below. Then click in the "What's in the image? Tell Google" field and type your alt-text
Google is not very good at determining what is actually in a picture. When you add alternate text you are telling Google what that picture is. If your keyword is "Fishing guide" and you post a picture of one of your guest catching a fish then you can put something like "catching fish with fishing guide".
Alt text is also important for accessibility. As the internet grows so does our awareness of everyone who is using it. When someone who is blind is accessing your site they will obviously not be able to see your picture and having alt-text will allow them to to hear what your pictures are when their program reads it aloud for them.
Your alt-text will also appear if your image cannot load for any reason and helps search engines recognize what your site is about so I recommend using this in every picture you have.
This will be harder for picture based sites and why it is so important this is being utilized as the site is being built.
As a side note, you should be using jpgs whenever possible and NOT png. This is recommended by Wix and has clear effect on your site. I cover this in-depth in my post about the Ideal Wix background Size but I will also mention it later in this article.
Wix Site Speed
Loading speeds are a factor when trying to rank higher in Google search results so it is important that while you are building your site you always keep this in mind.
There are some ways in which Wix has built their platform that has negative effects on your SEO you will not be able to change. Since Wix uses a proprietary code you will not be able to change any of these settings to optimize your site speed.
What you can do is make sure you aren't putting any unnecessary load on your site by adding more pictures, videos, gifs, or any other media that needs to be on your site.
Adding animations to your site will also slow it down like parallax or slide in, or rollovers.
Putting lots of different types of fonts or uploading your own fonts can cause your site speed to slow down as well.
Adding excessive elements of any kind is going to slow your site down so it is best to understand that although you want to wow your guests coming to your site you want them to have the best overall experience and a slow loading site does not get the job done.
Wix Editor SEO
There are a couple of places in your editor that you will absolutely need to go when optimizing your Wix site.
The SEO settings and the Advances SEO settings are both located through your editor and I will show you how to access them below.
1. In your editor, click on the "Menus & Pages" button on the left hand side of your screen.
2. Click on the three dots icon next to the page you want to edit the SEO
4. Click on "SEO (Google)"
5. To get to "Advanced SEO" simple click on the blue tab at the top of your page settings.
SEO (Google) Settings
This area is very powerful not only because they help in your Google rankings by allowing you to put your keywords but they are also exactly what your guest is going to see before they click on your site in Google.
The title and description in this section is called your Meta Title and Meta Description and you will also be able to manipulate your URL as well.
For best practices you will want your main keyword in your meta title, meta description, and even in your URL. Make sure your URL is as short as you can make it.
If you are ranking high on google but having trouble getting people to click through to your site I would suggest altering your meta title and/or description.
You also have the ability to toggle if you want this page to show in search results. Let's say you had an intake form for clients but you didn't really want anyone to just find it. You could toggle this button off so that the page is only seen by the people you want to see it.
Advanced SEO Settings
This was the latest addition to Wix SEO which allows you to input structured data, add custom meta tags and change your Canonical URL.
This is probably one of the more technical areas of SEO on any Wix site and if you aren't familiar with how to add meta tags or structured data I would recommend getting an SEO expert to fix this for you.
Wouldn't take long and shouldn't be very expensive but can be confusing.
Caching
There is one last area you should check before we are done with the editor section and that is in the "Page Info" tab of your page settings.
You will see at the bottom of this section there is an area for Advanced settings. Click the settings and you will see an option for Caching you page.
This option is available for most of your Wix pages but is only recommended for highly visitied pages like your homepage and about. You will also have the option to select from a time frame in which the page resets automatically.
Wix SEO Wiz
The most accessible part of the Wix SEO experience is the Wix SEO Wiz. The Wiz is free to access but you will not be able to connect your site to google unless you connect a custom domain that you will need to purchase. The only way to have a custom domain on a Wix site is if you buy a premium Wix account.
So although the access is free you can't really take advantage of the great SEO you set up if you don't have the domain and premium account.
The video below made by Wix will run down exactly how to get started with your Wix SEO Wiz and the steps you need to take.
In order to finish the Wiz you will also need to have designed your mobile site as well so that it is accessible for mobile users.
Once these steps are taken, you build your site, and you did your keyword research you will find the Wiz in the dashboard section of your editor.
Go to marketing tools on the left hand-side menu, then click on the "SEO" tab on the left-hand side menu. Then click on the "Get Found On Google" tab. Here you will be prompted to start your building your foundation.
You will first enter your keywords that you researched and then Wix will lead you down the basics of your SEO by going over the homepage.
You will enter a meta title and meta description but if you followed the steps we mentioned above you should have already had this info entered.
There are specific practices that are recommended to follow and Wix will actually give you examples and tips on how to write these for your site and the steps needed to take in the editor to make them happen.
Once all of the initial steps are taken in your Wiz then you will be able to index your site with Google!
What this means is that google will know your site exist and you will be available to be found on search engines. Without this step it might take google a while to actually find your site on the internet because of the sheer numbers of sites being made every day.
After connecting you site you will be able to finish any of the other Wix SEO Wiz steps if you have more pages to your site where you need to add a meta description/title.
When you finish the entire Wiz you will be offered a FREE resource that has been provided by Wix. You should definitely read through this material as it provides a very easy to understand, in-depth explanation of SEO and how to use your site in the best way.
On the right side of the page you will have some neat achievements that will be great to see after you spend some time working on your SEO.
Wix Blog
I HIGHLY recommend starting a blog on your site, or transcribing your podcast, or transcribing and embedding your youtube channel.
Reason being, and most people don't seem to know this, is that SEO these days is A LOT about content marketing and giving your audience the best content you can. It is also very beneficial to have updated content on the site at all times.
You can always change your about section or update your products but then you are not giving yourself a chance to rank for as many keywords as you can. Using these other content strategies allows you to do this to give you a better option at ranking higher in google.
I use the Wix blog app to create this content and inside the blog you have your own SEO settings you can control for each post like meta title and meta description just like we covered above.
Wix makes it easy for you to easily embed video content on your Wix site like you have seen in this post. I literally copied and pasted the youtube link and Wix pulled the video for me.
If you have a youtube channel you can add this content, transcribe it into words and post on your site.
You can do this same method with a podcast.
The best chance you have in ranking in google is to provide valuable content to your audience in your niche. Best way of doing this is adding great content to your site.
Wix SEO Partner
If you are thinking this might be a little too much then no need to worry because there are Wix SEO partners waiting for you to reach out.
Go to the Wix arena where you will have the best chance at finding experts who specialize in Wix SEO specifically.
This is important because Wix has set up their website builder slightly different so it may not be as easy for a Wordpress developer to recognize how to find the areas they need. Ultimately the concepts are the same but you need to know how to add code to certain areas.
As always you need to be careful and informed on how you outsource your Wix SEO. I use a paid tool called KWFinder that gives me information that would take someone else a lot more effort to figure out on their own.
So ask your SEO expert what tools they use, can they send any comparison pictures that gives you data on how your SEO is actually improving? Do you have a clear idea on where your SEO is at currently and can they provide that? What are the steps they are taking in order to improve your SEO? Have they mentioned google analytics to you, yet?
So what is the Wix SEO price? You can find someone to do some simple on page SEO for as low as $20. This is the low hanging fruit.
If you want someone to build out a content strategy that includes keyword silos and will write 4 blog posts a month for you, well you could expect to pay as much as $1,500 for this. If not more depending on the results they have gotten for others.
Really good SEO experts who have proven results will often write a contract with the business for a percentage of profits gained from the SEO work.
You have to think of this as an investment, if you get to the first spot of google for any keyword then you have potential of getting hundreds of more guest to your site that are already interested in your niche. This means more leads which means more sales if your site is efficient.
And the ranking doesn't go away unless someone else beats you out. You potentially have these leads for years. Do this for 4-5 keywords and you will have huge changes for your online presence.
Mercado Wix Design Takeaways
DO KEYWORD RESEARCH. And take the time it takes to do it right. Too many businesses don't do this or skip on it completely and it will cause you to be in the same spot year over year.
If you hire a Wix SEO expert make sure you are informed and have some questions ready for them. If you can't get real data back on how your SEO is improving you do not want to work with that expert.
SEO takes longer than most people think. Unless you are willing to throw a lot of money at the problem, keep in mind that this is a marathon that you will need to be consistently updating and working on in order to improve your ranking.
SEO is a long-term strategy that most businesses will give up on because the results don't come right away. If you have a strategy that you are using or if there is something I forgot to mention then please let me know in the comments because I would love to hear what is working or what I have looked over and add it to the post.
If you learned a little more about Wix SEO and feel this post could help others then please like and share with other entrepreneurs so they can rank faster, get more business, and keep living this lifestyle!
I want to provide businesses with the resources to make the best decisions. If you need some help getting started then sign up for my free, 10-minute Wix support session where we can talk over your issues and find answers!