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How SEO Nursed Wix Websites Back to Health

Posted by The Wix Team | August 1st 2010

Welcome to the Wix SEO Clinic. We take real users’ Flash websites made with Wix and improve their search-ability in Google.

Last week, we took a deep look at the visibility of 3 Wix websites in Google. While the sites may have been ranking well for their own names or URLs, if you run a small business – most of your potential customers out there aren’t going to be searching for you by name before they land on your site for the first time.

Real Results in Google

During their “stay” at the Wix SEO Clinic, these sites underwent rigorous tracking by our SEO experts, to see how SEO efforts affected their rankings in Google. We searched for each site’s target keyword in Google, before any of our recommended changes were implemented. We conducted these searches every few days and marked down the # that each site ranked for its particular keyword. Sure enough, over the course of 5 weeks, some real progress was shown:

Case Study # 1: Blaine Photographers

• Main keyword = “California wedding photographers”
• Google rank before SEO:  650
• Google rank after 5 weeks of SEO:  49

Case Study # 2: Jaime Miller Photography

• Main keyword: “New jersey wedding photographer”
• Google rank before SEO: 350
  
• Google rank after 5 weeks of SEO: 70

Case Study # 3: Studio 48

• Main keyword: “Minnesota wedding photographer”
• Google rank before SEO: 150
• Google rank after 5 weeks of SEO: 25

How Did These Jumps Happen?

Magic? No. SEO efforts? Definitely.

As you can see, some real changes were made in the rankings of these 3 Wix websites. (Remember: in terms of search engine rankings – the lower the ranking, the more visible your site is to those searching for your keywords!)

These users followed step-by-step instructions given by the Wix SEO Clinic, and implemented minor changes inside their websites in order to make them more attractive to Google. These changes are known as SEO. In addition, our experts submitted these sites to some key places on the web, in order to score some powerful backlinks (a.k.a. Google food).

3 Sites, 3 SEO Treatments

1. Optimize Meta Data (Blaine, Jaime Miller, Studio 48)

This is probably the most important thing you can do for your website’s SEO. It’s also really easy with the Wix website builder. There is now a main keyword for each site in both the <Title> tag, and meta description.

2. Added Content to Home Page (Blaine)

To add some content to their site’s home page without disrupting the page’s clean look and feel, we told the folks of Blaine Photography to add footer text. This was done by creating a text box, and simply dragging it to the bottom of the main page. Using the color pickW tool in the editor, a light gray color was chosen for this text, keeping it readable yet not too distracting.

Footer text is a terrific opportunity to get in some quality content, while preserving the look of your site’s homepage. Blaine wrote a basic description of their services in their footer text. And of course, keywords were also included.

3. Added Keyword-Rich Headers (Blaine, Studio 48)

Google loves headers. To add a header in a Wix document, select the “Text” tool and select “Title”. Title texts in Wix are interpreted by Google as header tags.

Blaine was asked by one of our doctors at the Wix SEO Clinic, to add the following keyword-rich headers to various pages in their site.

Home Page Header: “California Wedding Photographers”; Page 2 Header: “California Wedding Photos”; Page 3 Header: “California Engagement Photos”; Page 4 Header: “California Wedding Photographers”; Page 5 Header: “Wedding Photographer Prices”; Page 7 Header: “Wedding Photographer Blog”

Studio 48 was told to add a keyword header on Home page = “Minnesota wedding photographer”

4. Submitted to Google Places (Blaine, Jaime Miller, Studio 48)

This is a crucial step for any small business hoping to get ranked for regional keywords. We submitted each of these websites to Google Places, and customized their profiles. The instructions for doing this are explained pretty well at the Google Places site.

5. Submitted to Wedding Photographer Directories

To gain some more backlinks (and inject some SEO juice into these sites), we looked for some good wedding photography directories. Getting listed in a directory once you submit your URL can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, but it’s well worth the wait. Especially if it’s a directory with a good PageRank. For our wedding photographers, we submitted to the following directories: www.wedplan.net, www.photographypros.com, www.freephotogallery.info,  and www.ferenc.biz.

Resources

We told these users exactly what to do in order to optimize their site’s performance in Google. If you want to do the same for your site, follow the steps listed above. Here are some helpful links to help you along the way:

• How to Choose Your Keywords
  
• How to Optimize Your Site Title and Description Meta
• How to Make Header Tags in Wix
• How to Get Ranked for Physical Locations
• How to Gain Backlinks

Note: These methods can be applied to any site created with Wix – whether a free website or premium. There’s no excuse for applying some basic, subtle SEO adjustments to your site to get the best traffic you can.

Remember: SEO is an ongoing process.  We will continue to track the position of these sites as time goes by, more pages are crawled, indices are updated – and SEO efforts continue to be made.

Stay tuned for more Wix SEO Clinic!

Tagged with: Google . Search Engines . SEO . Wix SEO Clinic