You’ve decided to start your own Wix website and are eager to begin building it, but there’s just one thing you’re concerned about, and that’s SEO. As a new website owner, you know that you need to rank high but have heard that Wix has a bad ranking reputation – so what should you do?
In case you weren’t familiar with the term search engine optimization (otherwise known as SEO), it is essentially a marketing strategy that is important for all online businesses, as it is one of the main tools that helps bring more traffic to a website.
In most cases, SEO is able to generate something that is known as organic traffic, which is a term that is used to describe visitors that have come exclusively from search engines, rather than marketing advertising schemes or paid promotions.
While Wix has had its fair share of criticism over the years, its ability to optimize for search engines has improved dramatically and can’t be discredited, which is one of the reasons why it’s still one of the most popular CMS site builders to this day.
However, choosing the best website builder isn’t the only way that you can gain an awesome place on search engines! Besides a reputable CMS builder, your SEO success greatly depends on your overall strategy, and that’s where we come in.
Below, you’ll find our top 5 SEO-focused tips that will help your website begin climbing the ranks of Google’s search engines, as well as some helpful insights along the way. So, without further ado, grab a pen, your favorite notebook, and read on!
Tip #1: Research and Use Keywords
One way that you can optimize your site’s search engine ranking is by incorporating the use of keywords throughout your site’s content! Let’s take a look at what they are and how you can use them to optimize your website:
What are keywords?
Keywords are topics, words, and phrases that are able to encompass what your content is about. So, when it comes to SEO, these keywords are what people are entering into search engines to find the relevant content, and these are also known as search queries.
As a Wix website owner, it’s important to make sure that the keywords on your website reflect directly what your target audience is searching for (as well as even a wider audience) as this means that people who are making the search queries stand a better chance of coming across your content and, in turn, clicking through to your site.
In other words, keywords work to ‘link’ words and phrases people are searching for, with the relevant content that will be able to fulfill their needs.
Therefore, it’s your goal as a website owner to ensure that you aim to drive as much organic traffic to your site as possible via search engine result pages (SERPS) by filling your site with keywords that are both specific to your target audience and relevant to your content.
Sounds simple enough, right? Well, here’s where it can get a little tricky. It’s important to keep in mind that the way you describe products or services on your website might differ slightly from the way people are searching for them.
So, to meet in the middle and make sure all that traffic is driven to your website, you’ll need to make sure that you are using the type of language that they use, and that’s where keyword tools come into the mix.
Keyword tools are available on google, and many of them are completely free of charge.
Not only do many of them allow you to identify popular keywords and phrases that your audience uses, but many also include long-tail keywords, as well as other helpful data that can help maximize your marketing strategy.
Here are some of our favorites that you can begin using today:
Though each site will offer a slightly different service, all keyword research sites are built to offer the same purpose, and that’s helping you identify popular keywords surrounding your niche or brand.
Armed with this knowledge, you’ll then be able to go away and work it effectively into the content you are producing on your site.
Tip #2: Choose the Right Domain Name
The next thing you can do to optimize your website is by choosing the correct domain name. Not only is it recommended for all serious business owners to have their own custom name, but it is also SEO best practice.
As you’ve gone with Wix, you have the ability to create your very own personalized domain name, all you’ll need to do is purchase your secure domain name via Wix’s website, and you’ll be ready to go. Here are three things to keep in mind when choosing your website’s domain name:
Make it catchy: The first thing to keep in mind when creating your custom domain is to make the name short, sweet, and catchy. This will make internet browsers more inclined to want to click on your website.
- Include your area of expertise – You should also try to make sure that you include your area of expertise or the name of your business, as this will help to alert visitors as to what you do.
- The main keyword – While deciding the right domain name for your website, you should also try to include the main keyword, as this will help to increase your chances of appearing in the search results for the word you have chosen.
Tip #3: Install Wix SEO Wiz
Another surefire way of boosting your search engine ranking prospects is to make good use of the included SEO Wiz tool. Wiz has created it to be used alongside their CMS Site Builder, so it’s super easy to get it set up and working. Follow the steps below to activate this SEO tool on your site:
- Open up your Wix website.
- Head into the Settings menu, and click on Get Found on Google.
- After you have pressed the Get Found on Google button, Wix will then prompt you to answer a series of questions.
- Once you have answered the questions, Wix will create your own custom SEO plan that you will be able to begin working through to optimize your search rankings, including a checklist of taste that will help you achieve your goals in realistic segments.
This is especially ideal for beginners, or for those who do not have much experience with SEO, as the SEO Wiz is able to create an SEO strategy that has been tailored to your website and niche, so all you will need to do is simply work through the checklist Wix creates for you.
Tip #4: Incorporate Google Tools
The next way you can boost your rankings is by connecting Wix to the Google Search Console, which will allow you to gain access to important insights about your site’s SEO performance.
It’s a free service offered directly by Google that will help you to be able to monitor, maintain and troubleshoot your website’s ranking within Google Search Results.
One of the best parts about Google Search Console is that it is completely free and doesn’t require you to sign up, although you can choose to upgrade to Google Search Console Premium, which will allow you to gain access to additional features that will help you to understand and improve the way that Google views your site.
If you already have Google Search Console’s premium plan, then all you will need to do is press on the ‘Connect to Google’ button in the settings area of Wix’s homepage.
Once you have done this, Wix will automatically integrate itself with Google straight away and begin accessing your site’s SEO data. However, if you’ve decided to stay with the manual plan, you will need to integrate the Google Search Consoles into your Wix’s site manually.
Follow the steps below to make sure that you do it correctly:
How to install Google Search Console:
- First things first, head over to Google Search Console and proceed to type your Wix website domain into the URL box you will see across the screen.
- After you have entered your Wix website domain, hit continue, and you will then be prompted to verify your site by using an HTML tag.
- Once you have created the HTML tag, copy it (highlight, right-click and press copy from the drop-down menu).
- If you haven’t already, open up your Wix website in a separate tab and open up your Wix dashboard.
- Locate the SEO tab within the Settings area of your dashboard and press on it.
- Once you have clicked on it, Wix will navigate to the SEO settings area, where you should be able to see a button called Advanced SEO settings, as well as an option to create header code meta tags.
- Beneath both you will see a text box, go ahead and insert the HTML tag that you copied from Google Search Console there.
- Once you have done this, all you will need to do is hit Publish to save the settings, and then hit verify to activate it. It’s as easy as can be!
Side note: The above steps show you how to gain access to Google Search Console’s basic SEO information, however, if you have a custom domain (which we strongly recommend doing for SEO best practices) you’ll also be able to add something known as Google Analytics, which is another tool provided by Google, that will allow you to keep track of your website’s traffic in real-time.
Google Analytics is a super helpful tool that is used by many businesses to help them shape the success of their brand, and that applies to both blog and eCommerce sites. It will work by using the addition of a block of JavaScript code across the pages of your website.
By doing that, it means that whenever your website gets a new visitor, the JavaScript code will be able to then reference that information to a JavaScript file, which is then able to begin the tracking process for your website’s Analytics.
This will help you to understand your traffic better and, in turn, better optimize your marketing strategy. Follow the steps below to install Google Analytics on your custom domain:
- Head over to Google Analytics, and follow the on-screen instructions to create your tracking code.
- After you have created your tracking code, head back over to your Wix website.
- Open up the Wix dashboard and head over to the marketing integrations menu.
- There, you will see an option that will allow you to then connect Google Analytics to your Wix website by entering the tracking code.
- Once you have hit Publish and connected the two platforms, you should then begin to see your website’s traffic stats begin to be tracked in Google Analytics.
Tip #5: Include Meta Descriptions and Optimized Title Tags
The final tip we’re going to be sharing with you is the benefits of including meta descriptions and optimized title tags across your site pages.
Generally speaking, every page and piece of content on your site should come with its own meta description and title tag.
Why? Well, a title tag is important because it’ll be able to inform both search engines and potential visitors what content is on your site, which will help to improve your chances of being boosted in Google’s search engines.
If you’re not sure where to start, or would simply like some inspiration to get you started, then we recommend taking a look at this helpful guide here.
In addition to title tags, you should also be sure to include meta descriptions for all of your site’s pages and blog posts. If you weren’t aware, meta descriptions are the little descriptions located underneath the page title in Google’s search results.
Though they are not used by Google as a ranking factor, they help to engage the reader and improve the chances of them clicking through to the site.