Complete Wix SEO Guide
- Shaun Sadlier
- Mar 21, 2021
- 10 min read
Updated: Feb 28
Wix is probably the most affordable website builder and content management system. Starting at only £6.00 Per Month, it is a strong contender against other popular systems, including WordPress.
But the infinite consumer complaints regarding their sites’ performances have led to many questioning Wix’s abilities as a content management platform.
So, does Wix SEO work?
The short answer is yes. Wix SEO can help your site rank and compete with other online businesses hosted on different platforms.
If that has piqued your interest, here is everything you need to know about using Wix SEO to rank your business in search results.
Wix SEO vs WordPress SEO
WordPress powers 35% of sites on the web, while Wix hosts 22 million of the remaining sites. If you are wondering why WordPress has such a large market share, it is because it has been pegged as the more flexible of the two content management systems.
With better SEO options and a vaster catalog of products, WordPress appears to be the clear winner. But what is the reality?
Google's senior webmaster and trend analyst, John Mueller weighed in on the neverending battle between Wix and WordPress. “The more small business sites I see, the fewer I see with technical SEO issues, and the more the issues lie with the content,” he said.
So, that settles it then. You don’t need to host your website on a specific CMS to rank higher or to compete with the bigger names in your industry.
Most businesses don’t need to follow aggressively advanced SEO practices. All they need is impressive content and decent SEO to get noticed by search engines.
Key things to remember about using Wix SEO Wiz
Although WordPress is more scalable, Wix offers much more convenience for beginners. So, if you are planning to use a Wix site for SEO activities, there are three things you must know.
You should have basic SEO knowledge
Wix SEO Wiz is quite honestly the most easy-to-use SEO tool. It effortlessly takes you from point A to Z and its step-by-step guide is perfect for those who have never used SEO tools before. But you still need to know some things about conducting search engine optimisation, such as keyword research and meta tag optimisation.
Sometimes, you may not get a good plugin
Wix is a closed-source CMS, unlike WordPress, which is an open-source CMS and houses nearly 60,000 plugins and supports almost 9,000 in-built themes.
On the other hand, Wix App Market has 250+ plugins, but they work well with their sites. Think of them as iOS and Android. While Android gives you a ton of options, you always find good apps in the App Store. So, you aren’t really missing out on anything.
Besides, Wix has some great third-party SEO apps and they always deliver.
You can hire a Wix SEO expert anytime
In case you can’t figure out Wix SEO, the CMS allows you to hire an SEO expert via the platform itself. It asks you for some details regarding your requirement and connects you with the most suitable provider within hours. It saves you time and you know you are getting authorized support for your site.
What is wrong with Wix SEO? Should you worry?
Wix has put in a lot of work to improve their SEO Wiz. Still, the following are some of the common complaints that Wix users have.
Poor site ranking
Wix users often complain about not getting sufficient exposure on the search engines. But in 2016, Wix fixed their terrible URL structure by getting rid of ‘#’ that accompanied every page URL. Since then, thousands of sites have seen a difference.
According to Wix’s report, 82% of sites rank higher using Wix SEO Wiz and 67% of sites appear on the first page of Google.
Verdict: You should not worry about ranking low using Wix.
Not enough SEO tools
Wix is absolute value for money, which means that you don’t have enough SEO tools to work with. But you don’t need 5000 tools to rank. You only need one good tool to get the job done.
For instance, WordPress has a plethora of free and paid SEO tools but you can count the popular ones on your fingertips. Try it! Besides Yoast and RankMath, there are very few exclusive SEO tools that you can use to optimise your website.
Verdict: You should not worry about not having enough SEO tools on Wix.
Lack of advanced SEO options
The entire USP of Wix is that it is beginner-friendly. But before we criticize the system, let’s understand what people are referring to when talking about ‘advanced tools.’
While every SEO expert has a different notion of ‘advanced,’ competitor analysis, responsive SEO design, planning featured snippets, backlinking, targeting voice search, advanced analytics and reports are some commonly spoken of terms.
However, except for off-site SEO, which no CMS proactively supports, Wix can handle all those tasks. The only useful advanced feature that Wix really needs to add is bulk SEO tools, so you don’t have to optimise your site page-by-page.
Verdict: You should not worry about the lack of advanced SEO options.
No AMP support
For now, Wix does not support Accelerated Mobile Pages. Because AMP is quite an advanced feature, Wix has not introduced this feature in their CMS. That said, if your site is mobile-friendly and has basic SEO integrated into it, you won’t need AMP support.
Verdict: You should worry about not having AMP support if you are looking to launch them for your business.
The pros of using Wix SEO
As you can see, Wix has already resolved three out of the four major snags. And there are some other favorable SEO benefits for users, such as:
In-built SEO Wiz
Unlike other CMSs, you don’t have to find the right SEO apps to optimise your site. Wix SEO Wiz is a built-in tool that eliminates the need for multiple SEO tools. This one feature allows you to concentrate on each specific content without managing a ton of apps, helping you rank your site and easily compete with other online businesses.
In-built SEO guide
The best part about Wix SEO Wiz is that it comes with a step-by-step guide for optimisation. If you are a small business owner or hosting a website for the first time, Wix will help you set up your SEO plan by providing you with clear actions, unlike any other CMS.
If you find it difficult to get around, Wix is actually equipped to offer you a customized plan. It asks you a few questions about your business, location, and the search terms that you wish to rank for, and instantly generates an SEO plan for your site.
No coding required
Wix is a straightforward drag and drop site builder, so you don’t have to know any coding to create or optimise your website. All SEO activity can be carried out using the Wix SEO Wiz, making it really convenient for you to appear in search results.
What SEO features does Wix have?
A comprehensive SEO tool, Wix SEO Wiz offers everything you need to get started with your site optimisation. Here is what you get when you set up your Wix site.
Default and custom title tags, meta descriptions, H tags (H1, H2, etc.)
SEO patterns to automatically update sitewide default settings
Custom URLs for every page
Alt image tags to optimise photos on the page
Already optimised mobile-friendly templates
Google Analytics & Search Console integration
Canonical tags
HTTPS
XML sitemap
Schema markup
Structured data
Social share settings
Instant indexing
The more you learn about how these features work, the better you can optimise your website. In fact, one of Wix’s users jumped from page 14 to page 1 after using SEO Wiz for just one month.
15 ways to boost your Wix website using SEO
SEO can be challenging if you are clueless about it. So, if you believe Wix can make having an online presence easier for you, here are 15 tips to optimise your Wix site using SEO.
1. Do keyword research to find long-tail keywords
Wix SEO Wiz allows you to conduct basic keyword research for your site. But if you need tangible results, start by looking for what is trending. Google Trends works perfectly for this.
Use other keyword research tools to find combinations of search terms that people are using to connect with providers. Answer the Public, Keyword Planner, Keyword Sheeter, and Keyword Surfer are a few common free choices out there.
Remember that you don’t always have to go for the most popular terms. In fact, popular keywords are the hardest to optimise due to high competition. So, go for those that are incredibly specific and have low SEO difficulty as you have a higher chance of ranking with them.
2. Set up Wix SEO Wiz
Once you narrow down your keywords, enter the combinations of your keywords in Wix SEO Wiz. The tool has a brilliant feature that allows you to check the strength of your keywords, so you know you are using the best possible search terms. You can choose up to 5 keywords at a time to optimise your site.
3. Choose the right domain
If you are operating in a highly competitive industry (ex. digital marketing), consider getting a domain that includes your main keyword. For example, if you are a career coach, you might want to work those words into your domain name to make it easier for people to find you.
4. Write unique titles & descriptions
The internet is a jungle and it is easy to get lost in it because if you are writing something, chances are that somebody else has already written about it. So, your titles and meta descriptions are the only two things that increase the clickability of your content.
When writing your titles and descriptions, think like a reader. For instance, from the above results, which are you most likely to click on? They all look the same and each of these sites has a high domain authority. But one of them is likely to receive more traffic than others. Your goal should be to be that site.
5. Make your site mobile-friendly
Smartphones make for almost 50% of total site traffic. And as you can see, the figure is growing every year. So, a site that is not optimised for mobile browsing might as well be taken off the web as it is bound to experience a ton of lead leakage across the site.
6. Verify your site to officially claim ownership of your site
Once your site is ready, connect it with search engines. Google Search Console, Baidu, Bing, and Yandex are a few search engines you can start off with. This will help you get featured in their search results.
Then, add your site to Google Analytics to get in-depth user insights. Verifying your site can take some time but
7. Submit a sitemap
The best part about Wix is that it only takes 30 seconds to index your site. For reference, other CMSs take up to 4 days to do the same.
8. Structure your site
Wix sites are already optimally structured. But if you wish to make a few tweaks to your design, you can do so easily using the designing guides on the toolbar. Remember to structure your site according to the various aspect ratios. Also, consider how your site would appear in split windows and smaller screens as millions of users prefer multitasking.
9. Optimise your site images
Search engines can’t read images, so you ought to add short descriptions to each of them to make crawling easier for search engines. Alt tags also play a big role in image searches. If your site or content does not rank in the ‘all’ section of the search results, optimising images might help you rank under the ‘images’ section.
10. Publish value-based content
Source: Moz
Google has specific parameters for ranking content. To make it valuable, the search engine encourages site owners to write E-A-T content. E-A-T measures the Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness of your content. If your site lacks either of these, your content will definitely not perform well in search results.
11. Optimise page URLs
An optimised URL helps you rank higher even when you are hosting your site on Wix. For instance, Tech Crunch can often be found using popular but relevant keywords in their URLs to increase their chances of getting noticed. Here, they have used a long-tail search term “Instagram WhatsApp down,” which is exactly what people were searching online when this happened.
12. Add internal links
For the longest time, Wix had a poor interlinking system. But after their 2016 update, Wix SEO Wiz not only supports interlinking but also encourages site users to interlink their pages as an essential SEO practice.
13. Get more backlinks
One of the common complaints that Wix users previously had was the system’s inability to offer good backlinking opportunities. But that is another element that Wix has fixed and even offers a guide on how to effectively build backlinks.
14. Set up local SEO
Source: Search Engine Journal
49% of businesses enjoy more views when they set up local SEO. So, if you are a local business, consider setting up local SEO to get noticed by local customers. All you need to do is claim your business on Google My Business, so when anybody is looking for providers related to your keywords, you have better chances of getting their business as they are near you.
15. Analyze, improve, repeat
Source: Mind Tools
The most successful sites are those that are continuously improving their SEO plans. Although you don’t have to redesign your Wix website every day or change your keywords every week, you ought to focus on improving on what you have already built.
The key is sustainability. Ensure that your SEO modifications align with the results you desire and that they are well-thought-out.
Finally, remember that every SEO plan takes roughly 3 months to show tangible results. So, while you keep at it, keep yourself from expecting a miracle.
So, who ideally should create a Wix site?
With Google’s algorithms becoming more accommodating and sophisticated, hosting a website has become easier than ever. As long as you have a digital presence, creating a site on any CMS is a wise decision. But does that apply to Wix?
Simply put, any business looking for a decent web presence can opt for a Wix site. The SEO plans are powerful enough to make a place for your site in search results. So, with a little help and nudge in the right direction, you can also have a thriving online presence using Wix SEO.
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