Over 200 million people trust their websites to Wix.
There are a lot of people who create a lot of websites and post a lot of web content.
And that’s why it’s really important to talk about some of the pros and cons of SEO on a Wix site.
While I could write a generic post highlighting the SEO features built into Wix, I don’t think it’s very useful.
Instead, I’ll focus on some things you may not understand about Wix and how this plays into the optimization of a Wix site.
(And, as a bonus, I’ve gathered tips from our broader SEO team to help give you a more comprehensive look at how to work with Wix for SEO.)
Contents
1. Place Content Inside Of Strips
Let’s start with a Wix SEO tip that I didn’t know about until I casually named a successful Wix client: using “strips” to create responsive functionality.
As far as you can, place the content inside “strips”.
You can use two editors when creating a Wix site: EditorX, designed for experienced designers, and the main Wix editor.
While Editor X is fully responsive, the main Wix editor is adaptive.
Wix uses a complex algorithm to convert what you have created for desktop to be optimized for mobile devices; however, there are cases where some changes may need to be made.
(Personally, I had to make such changes to the button size on the mobile version of my Wix sites.)
One way to essentially create a fully responsive page within the main Wix editor is to place all of the page content within the strips.
The strips are reactive as a page element, so whatever you put into them also becomes responsive.
A strip is an element that allows you to create a new section on your website. For example, the following image contains an image that is inside a stripe.
As you can see, the stripe is black to match the color within the image.
In addition to creating new sections within a page, Wix strips also act as full-length page elements that can contain content.
As you can see above, the Wix Editor divides a web page into three vertical sections.
The middle section, represented by # 2, is the section shown on all screen sizes, while the contents on the left and right need to be adjusted.
However, because a stripe is a full-length element, as it spans the entire width of the page, it must be responsive to work properly.
So, a strip is responsive, and whatever content you put into it, be it an image, a header, or a few paragraphs of text, it also becomes responsive.
You can even create a blank strip or use a template-based version to more easily create columns for different content elements (and then insert whatever content or element you want within the strip).
Use a blank strip or template-based version designed for specific content types.
One final point about strips: they mostly come into play on your static pages (i.e. your home page, info page, landing pages, etc.).
Vertical pages, such as blog or product pages, are built where the full width of the page is not used.
As such, they automatically translate appropriately to different screen sizes.
A vertical page for an event uses only the central content column and therefore presents no problems when viewed on smaller screens.
2. Understand The Platform’s Logic
Again, I’m almost tempted to pick a more compelling (if not seductive) Wix SEO tip, but I want to understand how the platform’s features can help you take advantage of everything that’s there for you.
It also helps you work more efficiently, which is an important part of optimization!
There are mainly three places where most of your SEO work will take place within Wix:
There are two places where Wix users can manage their pages: Wix Editor and Wix Dashboard.
Simply put, static pages are managed in the Wix editor and vertical pages (blogs, products, event pages, etc.) are managed in the Wix dashboard.
How come? Partly because of what we discussed above regarding the stripes.
Vertical pages are built with a specific configuration, while with static pages the desired configuration is determined.
As a result, two-page types are created in different ecosystems: Wix Editor and Wix dashboard.
For SEO professionals, you need to know that you will find the Wix SEO Panel every time you manage a page.
You can set the canonical tag in the panel or add custom structured data markup, etc., at the page level.
For the main editor pages, the SEO panel is located within the page settings menu for a specific page on the site:
Within these settings, an advanced SEO tab allows you to set up robot meta tags, structured data, etc.
The advanced SEO tab within the Wix SEO Panel.
While the SEO panel can be accessed equally for all static pages within the Wix editor, there are some variations on where you can find the SEO panel on vertical pages (which, again, are managed in the Wix dashboard).
For example, for Wix blogs, the SEO panel is located in the left menu:
While the SEO panel for product pages is located in the Promote section to the right of the product information:
While there are some inconsistencies here that might create some initial confusion, keep in mind that the page you’re working on includes the SEO panel so you can customize what you want.
Another important thing about the SEO panel is that what you enter will override any folder-level templates you have set up.
In this context, the SEO panel becomes your tool for removing a page from a larger pattern.
(For example, if you have set product prices to show in all title tags of your product page but you don’t want to do it for a specific product, you should go to the SEO panel for that specific page and set the custom tag).
You can also set items such as title tags, meta robot tags, and folder-level structured data.
This is done in the third place where most of the SEO work on Wix is handled: the SEO Tools section within the Wix dashboard.
Here you can set anything from the URL structure (which, for blog and product pages, includes renaming the folder itself), to automatically extract something like a product description to act as meta descriptions for all pages to ‘inside certain folders and much further:
I say this not only because changing a setting within the SEO panel takes precedence over the folder-level template, but because so many site owners don’t realize these options are available.
When I asked our SEO Product Manager, Einat Hoobian-Seybold, what information he wanted SEO professionals to know about Wix, he replied:
“Use the default SEO (pattern) settings if you have a site with many pages – you can set up your meta tag structures that fit all your pages of a certain type and we have already predefined it for you.”
How come? Because so many people don’t explore the SEO Settings tool enough to make the most of it.
The tool will most likely be very useful if you are looking to work on a large scale.
You should also know how Wix allows you to designate link attributes.
Unlike most other SEO related tasks, this is handled neither in the SEO Tools within the dashboard nor in the SEO panel.
Rather, a special link panel is displayed every time you add a link.
Inside the links panel is an expandable section called Advanced SEO Settings, where you can apply the appropriate attribute.
One thing to know is that Wix static pages automatically apply the noopener and noreferrer attributes to all links by default.
The links panel within Wix where you can add link attributes.
Editable Robots.txt Files And The Automated Logic
Since we are talking about the logic of the platform, I thought this would be a good time to discuss the robots.txt file on the Wix sites.
First things first: Wix makes its robots.txt files editable. You can add any directive you want (or just do one of those cool logo things inside the file to show all your SEO friends).
You can also easily restore the file to default values. If you come across a file with all kinds of problems and illogical directives, you can restore order with just one click.
Wix gives you access to edit the robots.txt file and easily restore it to default settings.
These defaults, for the record, include Petal Bot auto-blocking as we found it was resource intensive. For server performance reasons, we’ve blocked it (so if for some reason you need it, go ahead and edit the robots.txt file).
The default settings within a Wix robots.txt file.
We have also prevented Google ad bots from accessing certain scripts and resources to better optimize how they crawl a Wix site.
3. When To Utilize Manual Page Caching
Automatic page caching is a great way to improve load times unless you have a widget with real-time stock prices on the page (in which case your users may end up with some outdated information).
Wix automatically caches most pages.
We also track when you edit a page so we can re-cache it, so users are offered the most up-to-date content.
What if there is content on the page that could be adversely affected by the caching of the page, such as a stock price widget or some other form of real-time information?
When custom code is added to a Wix site via our Velo developer tool, we automatically disable page caching in most cases.
Basically Wix says, “We don’t fully understand the logic you set up on the page, so we don’t want to damage it by auto-caching the page.”
So, if you are working for a client who has hired a developer to add custom features to their Wix site, it is very likely that the page is not automatically cached.
However, it’s certainly possible that you used Velo to add custom code that would benefit from page caching.
In such cases, you should turn on manual page caching, which can be found in the page settings within the main Wix editor:
After enabling manual caching, you can designate a caching range.
Again, that’s just another thing you most likely didn’t know about Wix from an SEO standpoint.
4. Wix SEO Success Means Leveraging The Little Things
Reinforcing the theme that it is worth looking beyond the obvious highlights of Wix’s SEO offerings, one of the most important things to consider is how to take advantage of the little things.
Wix is an interesting platform for SEO because it was built with multiple audiences in mind.
One of those audiences is people who don’t have a lot of SEO background.
You may not think that what we have developed for this audience is relevant to SEO experts, but it really is.
To protect users who may not have much SEO experience, we have created protections in some of the tools designed for more advanced users.
These “protections” can be very useful for SEO professionals working on a Wix site as they can help you catch errors and work more efficiently.
Here are some examples you should be aware of when working on a Wix site:
Redirect Loops & Errors
Within the SEO Tools within the Wix dashboard is what we call the Redirect Manager.
There you can set up individual 301 redirects, group redirects when the path is the same, or bulk redirects via a CSV upload.
In all cases, Wix will detect any errors or redirect the loops.
A few notes on redirects while we are already on the subject. The maximum number of redirects supported by a Wix site is 5,000 redirects. It should be more than enough, but if it’s not, let us know.
Also, you can only implement a 301 redirect after setting up a custom domain. If you’re still using the free version of Wix (which doesn’t use a custom domain), you won’t be able to implement a redirect.
Of course, redirecting to a different domain is a bit more complex. For this, you have to connect external domains to your Wix site and, consequently, this is not done within the aforementioned Redirect Manager. The same goes for redirects from your home page; this must be done within your Wix site’s domain settings, not via the Redirect Manager.
As mentioned above, you can set up a group redirect when the path is the same, but that doesn’t mean we support full regex redirects (however, that’s something that’s already part of our future plans). Meanwhile, group redirects should cover many similar use cases.
Auto-Redirects
This is important that it can save you time.
When you change the URL for certain page types, we automatically set up 301 redirects. This means you don’t have to waste time redirecting yourself.
When you change the URL, a warning will appear stating that Wix will automatically redirect the old URL to the new one (you can disable redirection here if you prefer).
This applies to the main static pages within the Wix Editor and to the pages of products, reservations, events and online programs.
The automatic redirect feature found within the Wix editor has a checkbox for deactivation.
Structured Data Markup Errors
When you add custom structured data markup to a Wix page, we will show an error warning when the code is not in JSON-LD format or does not follow the correct syntax.
There are links to a structured data code generator and Google rich results test right in the panel where you place the markup.
At the same time, we often automate tasks or simplify them so users can work more efficiently.
And that, of course, can save you a lot of time, SEO.
Automated Structured Data
There are several types of pages to which structured data is automatically added. Specifically, this includes product and course pages.
So, your customers are eligible for rich results right away.
Knowing this could affect your priority list, as you might improve the code we implement or add other markup to the page, but it wouldn’t be necessary to simply be eligible to appear as a rich result on the SERP.
Additionally, there are areas where you might not even realize that we automatically add structured data markup, with local business markup being the prime example that comes to mind.
If your customer’s home page contains the physical address of the business, we automatically add the markup.
One-Click Connection To Google Search Console
You can manually add a meta tag to verify a site and link it to Google Search Console, but when working with a Wix site, I suggest you don’t.
Rather, via the initial SEO configuration settings that Wix presents when creating a new site, you can leverage our partnership with Google and connect to Search Console with a single click.
As a result, this partnership with Google also includes instant indexing of your home page.
It seems that if Google is instantly crawling your home page, there’s a good chance it will notice some of your other pages while on your site.
Automatic Image Compression
You don’t have to worry about compressing images when working with a Wix client. We automatically compress them.
We recommend using JPEG over PNG as we compress images to their original size.
Likewise, there is no need to configure WebP for your images; we automatically convert images to the format when the browser supports it.
5. Take The Advice Of Wix’s Wider SEO Team
Wix has a large SEO team that works with the platform in a variety of ways.
I thought it would be helpful for SEO professionals to hear from the people working on the SEO product at Wix and the SEO experts from the organic growth team using Wix to attract relevant traffic.
Here are some tips from the broader SEO team to add breadth to your Wix SEO skills:
How To Audit A Wix Site
Nati Elimelech, Head of SEO, said:
“Wix uses dynamic rendering to serve the final HTML displayed on the server side to bots and crawlers, so it doesn’t require JavaScript to load.
When auditing a Wix website manually or with a tool, be sure to use a Googlebot user agent to emulate how search engines see your website. “
Fully Utilize What Wix Offers Around Images
Crystal Carter, Head of SEO Communications, said:
“Take advantage of Wix’s built-in image enhancement tools.
While uploading images, you can use API integration with Vision AI to understand the data labels that Google interprets from your images to optimize visual search.
In addition, we automatically serve structured data for product images, be it the main image or the thumbnail.
These tools allow you to leverage image-rich SERP capabilities and improve the viability of your content as search evolves. “
It is also worth noting what Wix does for image optimization, which includes but is not limited to:
For the record, we’ve worked hard over the past few years to better optimize the way Wix handles images.
Wix sites lead the industry with low image weight per page.
For this, we partially use srcset for still images to serve images to devices with high DPI. While the vast majority of Wix images are client-side responsive, we are currently looking to fully implement the server-side of responsive images as well.
A Wix image that uses srcset in HTML.
While we don’t currently offer a specific option to preload the LCP image, moving the image in HTML often prevents its need from occurring. As a result, and as shown below, PSI will indicate that the LCP image has been preloaded successfully:
For the above, at specific times, we use the priority tips to help the browser better optimize the loading of above-the-fold images, which is rendered in LCP as the LCP image is usually above the fold.
You can see more about what Wix supports and does to provide an optimized experience when publishing images in the Image Tools report in the “Builder Overview” section.
Customize Your SERP Presence With Meta Robots Tags
Moshe Ma-Yafit, Wix SEO domain expert, explained:
“If you want to hide the page meta description, use the ‘nosnippet robot’ meta tag. Alternatively, you can choose the” max-snippet “tag to limit the length of the meta description.
It’s very simple; you can set it in the SEO Settings for all pages in the folder or use the SEO Panel to do it for individual pages.
Also, set the maximum image preview to large so that when you appear in Google Discover, your result includes that large, highly clickable image. “
Lightboxes Are Not For Important Content
Naomi Gallula, Wix SEO Domain Expert, said:
“Don’t put important content into lightboxes. Wix will not render this content in the HTML DOM on the bot stream, which means this content will likely not be indexed.
Lightboxes are mainly used for promotions, newsletter registration, and so on – thin content that generally doesn’t need to be indexed.
In Wix, lightboxes will appear after a user action (like clicking a link, for example) or automatically if you set it up in the Wix editor (as shown below): “
Grab User Journey Insights From Wix Analytics
SEO specialist Kyle Place elaborated:
“In the Behavior report within Wix Analytics, you can see the journey users are making on your site.
This data will help you answer questions like:
From there, you can optimize your internal link:
Track the user’s journey using Wix Analytics.
Multilingual And Hreflang Tips For Wix
Assaf Cohen, Wix SEO domain expert, explained:
“Working on a multilingual website? There is no need to waste time adding hreflang; Wix does this automatically.
Furthermore, we apply the tags with a logic that takes into account whether the pages have a noindex, a canonical tag, etc., so that everything runs smoothly and without errors.
Incidentally, you can also automatically translate the site, although we always recommend that you review the translation and add a nuanced wording specific to that language. “
Don’t forget that while a multilingual Wix site used to use subdomains in the past, you can now choose between subdomains and subdirectories.
Keep An Eye On Things
I know the title of this post says “5 tips”, but I’ll add a sixth here – keep an eye on things.
With platforms like Wix, things are constantly evolving as features are added, updated and, even sometimes, removed. This is especially true of our SEO offering.
Let me briefly share where much of our development focus for SEO is currently, so you know what to expect and what to look for.
Many of the most important articles are already there.
You can edit your robots.txt file, redirect bulk uploads, and even change folder names within URLs for blogs and product pages.
Much of what’s going on is creating ways to make your job as an SEO more efficient when optimizing Wix sites.
So, expect some of the workflows discussed above to become more established so you can get things done even more efficiently.
Making SEO work as easy as possible is one of our main goals.
As always, if you have any questions or feedback (or just want to say hello), please contact me!
Featured Image: Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock
