If you’ve ever built a website, or you’re looking for a suitable website builder, you’ve no doubt heard of Wix.
It’s renowned for its easy-to-use interface, its suitability for beginners, and it gets good reviews for its flexibility, professional-looking templates, and support.
On the downside, Wix SEO limitations often come in for criticism, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enhance your site’s SEO considerably by applying a few best practices.
This article details ten SEO best practices that can improve your Wix website rankings.
Before getting into that, though, let’s describe the pros and cons.
Pros and Cons of Wix
Wix is a web development platform with many advantages. First, you don’t need any coding knowledge and it uses simple drag and drop features to build a fantastic looking website.
Then there’s the Wix SEO tool. It helps you optimize your site for search engines by offering information on page names, meta descriptions, keywords, and more.
With some light guidance, anyone can create a website and get it up and running fast, and uncompetitive niches can rank on Google’s front page.
Additionally, Wix:
- is incredibly customizable
- has a wide range of features
- has a simple drag and drop interface
- offers ample templates to choose from
- is free
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However, Wix has its disadvantages too.
Although a drag and drop interface makes web design straightforward, it can limit creativity and create a generic look.
Also, Wix SEO isn’t as simple as it could be, and the free version has limited features. It does, however, have some tools to assist in overcoming this.
Another disadvantage is that you must upgrade your plan to remove advertisements. Entry-level plans still display ads on your site, and premium websites are costly.
How Popular is Wix?
Wix is hugely popular with an audience of approximately 200 million, availability in 190 countries, and more than 1000 plus features.
The platform is especially popular among:
- small businesses
- entrepreneurs
- startups
- freelancers, like photographers, designers, and writers
You can use Wix to create great-looking portfolios and landing pages too.
10 Best Practices for Wix SEO
If you’ve done any research, you know that Wix’s SEO gets a bad rap, but that shouldn’t be the case anymore.
Wix has worked to improve SEO and offers advice to website owners who want to work on this aspect of website promotion. In addition, the platform includes an SEO tool, which I describe below.
1. Use Wix SEO Wiz
To get started with optimizing your site, use the Wix SEO Wiz. It’s free and allows you to optimize your content.
The SEO Wiz consists of a step-by-step plan detailing areas of improvement and giving advice for enhancing SEO.
In addition, it gives you:
- easy-to-follow tutorials
- tracking capabilities
- access to numerous SEO articles
You can find the Wix SEO Wiz by going to “Marketing & SEO” and then “Get Found On Google” from your site’s dashboard.
- Discover the power of intentional advertising.
- Reach your ideal target audience.
- Maximize ad spend efficiency.
2. Use Longtail Keywords
You know all about keywords and keyword research. These are a crucial part of SEO, but you shouldn’t overlook longtail keywords.
Longtail keywords are more specific keywords with low search volume that use longer phrases. For example, “running shoe” is a head keyword, while “best running shoes for narrow feet” is a longtail keyword.
There’s no shortage of free tools available to find longtail keywords for your Wix SEO strategy, including Ubersuggest, Google’s Autocomplete, and wordtracker.com.
3. Make It Mobile-Friendly
A mobile-friendly (responsive) website is accessible from any device, and it makes a website simple to use regardless of how a visitor is accessing a page.
Responsiveness is vital because Google uses mobile-friendliness as a ranking feature, and more people are using mobile devices.
How do you make your website responsive? By:
- creating a layout that adapts well for any screen size and orientation
- using responsive design techniques where possible
- optimizing images for smaller screens using tools like Photoshop or Photopea
- creating content that considers the constraints of smaller screens such as videos, photos, and text length
Wix also advises on how to make your website more responsive.
4. Boost Your Local SEO
Local SEO is a form of internet marketing to rank highly in search engine results for keywords relevant to a physical location. For example, using local SEO is especially beneficial to small businesses and physical storefronts, such as restaurants or beauty salons.
Local SEO includes two categories: on-site and off-site.
On-site involves optimizing your website and online business to rank for local searches. Off-site includes building backlinks and getting reviews and mentions in blogs and directories related to your industry or niche.
Fortunately, it’s not difficult to enhance your site’s local SEO.
One way to improve your site’s ranking is by using geographic keywords in the title of your page and the content.
You should also include city names, states, counties, and zip codes on your page each time they are relevant; this will make it easier for Google to find you.
Another way you can improve your site’s ranking is by including a map on the web page with pins on it. This will allow people to view locations more easily through Google Maps or an embedded map on the web page.
5. Create a Sitemap
Sitemaps are critical for any website because they allow the user to know what to expect when they visit and give the webmaster a way to see how visitors interact with their site.
Additionally, a sitemap provides navigation for visitors, which is essential considering how many visitors may land on your site every day.
Sitemaps are an integral for two reasons:
- They allow you to see your website’s structure at a glance.
- They help search engines index your site more efficiently.
Further, a sitemap helps you understand where your visitors are going on your site so you can optimize content for them more effectively. You can also identify any broken links that might be preventing visitors from finding what they want.
You don’t need to worry about getting your Wix site map picked up by Google.
When you connect your Wix account to Google, it gets submitted to the search engine. Wix also has a tutorial on how to do this manually.
6. Use Wix SEO Tools
Wix SEO is about more than following a plan. It gives you plenty of other tools to improve your rankings, including:
- analytics, to make sure you’re on the right track
- a professional-looking blog for posting high-quality content and gaining organic traffic
- a solid infrastructure to aid organic search
- customizations of slugs, meta tags, and structured data
7. Set Up Google Search Console and Analytics
Google Search Console is a free service offering insights about your website’s performance in Google search results.
You can use it to monitor a wide range of things, such as:
- which keywords people are using to find your site
- what errors or warnings Google has detected
- the number of times users have clicked on links from your site that lead to pages on other sites
- providing insights into how users interact with your content
- sharing data on where people are coming from and going to when they visit your site
To add a site to Google’s Search console:
- Go to the Search Console and log in.
- Select “Add a new property.”
- Open the drop-down list.
- Select the property type.
- Verify your site.
8. Optimize Your Wix SEO Throughout the Site
To further optimize your Wix site, look beyond keywords. There are many other areas you can work on, including:
- managing the navigation menu
- using SEO-friendly URLs
- optimizing content by choosing relevant topics that will interest readers
- optimizing design by making sure it is consistent with your product
Further, you can optimize your website images to make them load faster.
For example, you can reduce the width of the images to the size that Wix requires, which is at least 2560 X 1440 pixels.
Finally, use a text editor for simpler HTML code and fewer unwanted tags.
9. Keep Posting Content for Wix SEO
It’s important to post quality content on your blog to generate traffic.
You can use these posts to build backlinks which will also help you rank higher in the search engines.
However, the importance of posting regular quality content on your blog isn’t just about getting traffic or backlinks. It’s also about building your search results for readers who find your site via Google Search.
Consider creating a content calendar to streamline production and keep content fresh and relevant.
10. Add Links
Google values both internal and external links as they give context and meaning, thus improving the quality of search results for readers who find your site via Google Search.
Internal links are links that point to pages on the same website. External links are links that point to other websites, and they’re equally important.
Finally, you can add a line of code within the webpage’s HTML tag at the top of the web page code, so they have an internal link directly from their home page.
External links, on the other hand, are a great way to bring value to your site.
You can get external links from different sources such as:
- guest blogging
- content syndication
- networking events
- press releases
- email outreach to influencers within your niche industry