Author: Mordy Oberstein
Last updated: September 26, 2022
SEO is a far-reaching topic that applies to most sites on the web. Having a well-optimized site with strong content is the foundation of acquiring organic traffic from search engines.
Wix does an incredible amount to offer you the optimal defaults and infrastructure needed to perform well organically. At the same time, we present you with the option to customize your site’s optimizations.
While there have been many articles written about Wix SEO, both on the Wix site and by third-parties, there has not been one definitive guide to doing SEO on a Wix site—this is that guide.
Here is our complete Wix SEO guide with everything you need to know about our SEO features and capabilities, along with how you can use them to optimize your site.
Wix SEO guide contents
A word on Wix’s SEO outlook
Getting familiar with the technical details of doing SEO on the Wix platform will help you work more efficiently and effectively, but understanding our overall “SEO philosophy” can also help orient you.
Our goal is to offer you the best SEO defaults possible while opening up the platform to as much customization as possible. In addition, we aim to foster the users that are not extensively familiar with SEO and provide them with a strong technical foundation so they can focus on running their business and creating useful content. At the same time, we seek to offer SEO professionals and experienced site managers as much control over their optimizations as possible.
For those reasons, you’ll notice that we often create various out-of-the-box options but tend to offer a way for you to customize the defaults we’ve established.
This is important to know as you may encounter the default initially. In these cases, know that there is, more often than not, a path towards customization.
Crawling & indexing
In this section, we’ll explain how Wix handles your sitemap, the ability to prevent Google (and other search engines) from crawling specific pages, and the unique ability to connect to Google Search Console via Wix (among other things).
Connecting to Google Search Console
Wix offers a one-click connection to Google Search Console, a free tool that can help you monitor and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search. A minimal amount of SEO setup (such as adding a title tag to the homepage, etc.) is required before you can connect your site to Google Search Console.
This direct connection to Search Console is part of a formal partnership between Wix and Google that was announced at Google I/O 2018. The partnership not only streamlines your connection to Search Console but offers instant indexing of all Wix homepages that have a custom domain.
Verifying your site
Clearly, there are other search engines aside from Google. While Wix does not offer the same immediate indexation and connection to other search engines, we do make verification a straightforward process.
In the SEO Tools section of your Wix dashboard (in the left-hand navigation, within the Marketing & SEO tab), there is a verification center where you can paste the verification tags you have acquired from various search engines.
Wix will immediately tell you if there is an error with the verification tag. So if, for example, you copied the verification tag incorrectly, as soon as you paste and save the tag, you will see an error.
We currently offer this process for Google Search Console, Pinterest, Bing, Naver, and Yandex. If you want to connect to another search engine, just use the Custom Code option located at the bottom of the main panel.
Sitemaps
Wix sitemaps are automatically submitted to Google once you connect the site to Search Console.
Wix sitemaps are broken up by page type. This means that we automatically create a separate sitemap for your product pages, blog posts, etc.
We don’t include URLs that have been noindexed, that are canonicalized to other URLs, or that reflect gated content. Also, once a sitemap reaches 10,000 URLs, a new one is created automatically.
At the same time, we create an image sitemap for the images found on Wix product, events, and forum pages.
Note that while Wix does make finding and viewing sitemaps accessible, they cannot be edited.
Robots.txt files
Wix enables you to edit your robots.txt file. To do so, head to the SEO Tools section (in the left-hand navigation, within the Marketing & SEO tab) of your Wix dashboard.
By default, Wix allows all bots to crawl all of a site’s pages. Should you accidently make changes to the file, you can return to the default setting by clicking on Reset to Default below the editor.
Noindex and nofollow tags
There are a variety of ways you can keep your pages out of Google’s index when using Wix. The most straightforward way is to use the Wix SEO Panel. The SEO Panel is available wherever you can edit a page or post. For your site’s static pages, that panel is found within the Wix Editor itself when bringing up the setting options for each page (as shown below).
For vertical pages (like blog posts or product pages), the SEO Panel can be accessed where each specific type of dynamic page is managed within the Wix dashboard. For example, the SEO Panel for your products is accessible when editing a product page within the Wix dashboard (as shown below).
Within the SEO Panel’s SEO tab is a toggle labeled “Let search engines index this page.” This option allows you to stop the page from showing in Google’s search results. Disabling this toggle will apply a noindex tag to the page.
You can accompany the noindex tag with a nofollow tag, which instructs search engines not to follow the links on a given page, via the Advanced SEO tab within the SEO Panel, found in either the Editor or dashboard (depending on the page type).
To do so, expand the Robots Meta Tag section and check off the nofollow box (the option to add the noindex tag exists here as well).
Additional robots meta tags
Along with the noindex and nofollow tags, you can also use the Advanced SEO settings to add a variety of meta tags to a page in a single click.
Here are the tags you can add and a brief explanation of what they tell search engines:
noindex - Do not list this page in search results.
nofollow - Do not follow links on this page.
nosnippet - Do not show a text snippet or video preview for this page in search results.
noarchive - Do not show a cached link for this page in search results.
noimageindex - Do not index images on this page.
max-image-preview - The maximum size of an image preview for this page in a search result.
max-snippet - The maximum number of characters for search engines to use in a text snippet for this page in search results.
max-video-preview - The maximum number of seconds for a video snippet for videos on this page in a search result.
Lastly, if the need arises, you can add custom meta tags to a Wix page via the Additional Tags section of the Advanced SEO tab. There, you will see the Add New Tag option.
Applying robots meta tags at scale
If there is a specific page type (such as all your blog posts, for example) that you don’t want Google to index, you can use the SEO Settings within the dashboard to prevent indexing of all of these pages with a single action.
For example, if you wanted to prevent Google from indexing all of your forum pages, you could do so by toggling the switch labeled Let search engines index your forum’s posts within your SEO Settings, as shown below.
Additionally, you can set any of the meta tags mentioned above to apply at the page-type level as well.
Performance and infrastructure
As a closed CMS, there is much that Wix does foundationally to ensure sites function and perform optimally. This ranges from how Wix handles image optimization all the way to how Wix pages are rendered. In fact, rendering is where we’ll start here.
Rendering
There is a lot of misinformation around how Wix renders its pages. Much of this is due to Wix originally being based on Flash when the platform first launched, over a decade and a half ago.
Today, Wix uses server-side rendering so that bots are served with the fully rendered page.
Along these lines, Wix employs its own network of CDNs that are optimized to ensure that your files are served as quickly as possible. For example, we automatically select the best performing server for the site visitor based on their location at the time they access the site.
Image optimization
Wix handles a lot of the image optimization process for you. For example, we automatically compress all images without sacrificing image quality. Of course, the original file type plays a significant role here: A large PNG image will not be compressed to the same size as the exact same image in JPEG form. So, select your image file type accordingly for the best results, and if you’re unsure, stick to JPEGs for better performance.
Wix also automatically converts images to WebP when the browser supports the format. Additionally, we implement lazy loading, which works hand-in-hand with our implementation of low-quality image placeholders (LQIP).
It’s worth noting that images are hosted on Wix’s servers. There are advantages as well as disadvantages to this: On the positive side, Wix has a world-class CDN that allows for images to be delivered quickly. However, as images are hosted on Wix’s servers, the URLs of our images contain parameters that cannot be fully controlled by the site owner.
That said, you can add the desired keywords to the image URL by including them in the file name, prior to upload. While this won’t remove the additional elements added to the URL as a result of Wix hosting it, it will afford you the ability to add keywords to the end of the URL.
Alt-text
You can add alt text to your images on Wix. Once an image is added to a page, access the settings for the image and enter the desired text.
In this particular situation, running an accessibility audit can be very helpful. In doing so, Wix will scan your site for a variety of accessibility issues, one of which will be missing alt text. You can add missing alt text within the accessibility audit results as well.
There are instances where Wix will automatically create alt text for you. For example, when you have multiple product image thumbnails, we automatically create the alt-text for the thumbnail.
Caching
To improve page load performance, Wix automatically caches all pages on a site. Moreover, Wix tracks when a page has been updated and subsequently clears that page’s cache in order to re-cache the current version. This is done for both static and vertical pages.
That said, there are cases where we don’t automatically cache a page. When we detect custom code and are unsure of its logic, we don’t cache the page. This is done to prevent the caching of pages where doing so would be detrimental to the purpose of the page and the content on it (imagine a page with a weather widget for the current weather in various locations, for example). As such, a page that utilizes Velo (Wix’s dev tool) is not automatically cached. There are instances where a page with a trivial amount of Velo code on it will be automatically cached. As a best practice we recommend manual caching on all pages where you have added Velo code.
In cases where custom code is present on the page but you feel caching does not present a problem, you can set caching up manually in most instances. This is done via the Wix Editor by accessing the advanced page settings.
Mobile-friendliness
Wix pages, by default, meet the threshold of Google’s mobile-friendliness standards. And, sites created with EditorX support a fully responsive design.
The Wix Editor, however, uses an adaptive design. This means that image and text size are automatically adjusted to fit the confines of a mobile device.
However, as the main Editor is not fully responsive, you may need to make formatting adjustments in some instances.
Making changes to the mobile version of a Wix site is very straightforward as all you need to do is click on the mobile device icon at the top of the editor. Here you can drag and drop elements of the page, move entire sections up or down, or even hide certain sections of a page. Changes made to the mobile version of the page are not applied to the desktop version.
As we’re on the topic of setting your site up for mobile devices, Wix also enables you to add a favicon so that your site appears with one when presented on the mobile SERP.
You can create or update your site’s favicon within the website settings found in the Wix dashboard.
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)
Wix supports AMP for blog pages. You can locate the option to enable or disable AMP within your SEO Settings for blog posts.
Enabling AMP is as simple as flipping a switch. However, be aware that doing this will apply to all of your blog pages at once.
Activating AMP is a relatively easy way to improve the speed of your blog pages. That said, AMP is not for all, and there are some considerations to take into account before enabling AMP.
Core Web Vitals
Optimizing a Wix site for Core Web Vitals (CWV) requires a combination of efforts by the platform and its users. With the aforementioned infrastructure related to images, rendering, caching, along with a high performance cloud infrastructure, Wix provides the foundation for strong CWV performance. In fact, since 2020, Wix has increased the ratio of its sites in the Google CrUX report with good CWV scores by tenfold without users having to do a thing.
At the same time, how you approach everything from image file types to fonts can impact performance. Accordingly, Wix enables you to decide when and how to implement things like font types, animations, video placement, image galleries (as opposed to the entire set of images being displayed).
The ability to produce a page that passes Core Web Vitals, while dependent on the Wix infrastructure, relies heavily on how you decide to construct your pages.
Structured data
The way Wix handles structured data epitomizes our SEO philosophy, as there is a substantial amount of out-of-the-box implementation while still offering a large degree of customizability.
Out-of-the-box structured data
In order to help all you become eligible to have your content appear as rich results, Wix adds various types of structured data markup right out of the box.
The out-of-the-box markup we create applies to many of our vertical pages. This includes:
Wix also automatically adds Sitelinks Search Box structured data markup to your homepage when you have installed the Wix Site Search app.
This does not mean that every possible variable and option within each type of markup is implemented. For example, the product markup Wix automatically generates for every product includes schema properties for:
Page type
Name
Page Description
SKU
Image
Thumbnail
Brand
Offer Type
Offer URL
Price Currency
Price
Availability
Seller Name
There may be specific variables that you would like to include beyond these—we’ll cover that in the next section.
This isn’t the only way Wix saves you time when it comes to structured data. For example, when Google updated the requirements for event rich results to include offers.priceCurrency markup, Wix users didn’t have to do anything as the out-of-the-box markup already included it.
Similarly, if new requirements were to be established to add attributes currently not included, Wix would update the markup it creates. As such, you may not have to update what could be thousands of pages—it would be done for you.
Customizing Wix’s out-of-the-box structured data
The out-of-the-box markup Wix adds to pages is fully customizable. Moreover, the changes you can make are scalable—specifically, you can customize the out-of-the-box markup created as well as update all existing pages of a specific type (e.g., all product pages) in one fell swoop.
To do this, select the page type you wish to customize within your Wix dashboard’s SEO Settings. Next, select the option to edit structured data markup:
Here, you can convert the default markup to custom markup.
Once selected, you’ll be able to edit and add any code you would like. What’s more, Wix will immediately indicate if there are any errors in the custom markup you implemented.
It is also possible to set custom markup on individual vertical pages. To do so, go to your Wix dashboard and select the desired vertical. Then, navigate to the specific page and go to the Advanced tab within the page’s SEO Settings.
Next, access the markup settings and select Exclude from page to exclude automated markup for that particular page. Finally, select Add New Markup and add your structured data to the field that pops up. You can use this method to add more than one instance of structured data markup to a page.
Setting custom structured data on static pages
You can add custom structured data markup to all of your static pages via the Wix Editor. Inside the SEO Panel’s Advanced SEO tab is a field for you to add your JSON-LD formatted markup (Wix does not support microdata for implementing schema markup).
Multiple instances of markup on a Wix page
Wix enables you to add multiple instances of structured data markup to site pages. This can be done via the Wix Editor for the site’s main pages. All you need to do is open the Advanced SEO tab within the Page Settings and expand the Structured Data Markup section. Next, you will see an option to Add New Markup, where you can add multiple instances of markup to a single page.
Adding multiple markups can be done at the page-type level as well via the SEO Settings. Simply select the page type you would like to add markup to and you'll see the option to add new markup.
You can also use this method to add custom markup to all static pages at once, too.
Metadata & Canonical tags
Getting your site’s metadata “right” is one of the most basic and foundational aspects of SEO. Let’s explore how you can update your metadata using Wix (both at the page and page-type level), as well as how Wix handles canonical tags.
Title tags and meta descriptions
To update your title tags and meta descriptions at the page level, you’ll need to access the SEO Basics tab. (As mentioned earlier, the SEO Basics tab is accessible from wherever you can edit a page, be it the Editor or within the Wix dashboard).
Within the tab, you’ll see fields to enter the page’s title tag and meta description. Above the fields is a preview of what your page might appear like in search results.
