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SEO 20 min read July 29, 2022

SEO For Wix Websites: Myths and Best Practices

SEO For Wix Websites: Myths and Best Practices
SEO For Wix Websites: Myths and Best Practices
If you scroll through our posts from time to time, we may assume that you are a sophisticated reader who is familiar with such a platform as WIX. In short, it's a well-known website builder that allows users to design and publish different types of websites: business websites, blogs, online e-commerce websites, and many others.

In today's article, we will dive deeper into the benefits of the WIX web-builder and discuss a lot of interesting points about SEO issues that arise when mastering CMS.
Traditionally, our article will include tips from experienced specialists who participated in one of our Twitter Chats. Feel free to get acquainted with them:
Mordy Oberstein
Head of SEO Branding
at WIX
Olena Prokhoda
Social Media and Community Specialist at Serpstat
Yıldırım Sertbaş
Founder & Owner
at Yıldırım Sertbaş
Joseph S. Kahn
President
of Hum JAM
Jonas Sickler
SEO Manager at Terakeet
Remco Tensen
Digital Marketing Consultant & Founder
at RemcoTensen.nl
Taylor Murchison
SEO Specialist at Tipalti
As was already mentioned, WIX is a user-friendly website-building platform. It is a Content Management System (CMS) with intuitive technology and powerful built-in features that allow users to design professional websites.

You may be curious about the benefits WIX may offer. Among the most considerable ones:
availability to get a Personalized SEO Plan;
possibility to review useful SEO Analytics;
traffic calculation for a site;
depicting a site with Beautiful Email Marketing and many more.
Sounds pretty great, right? Being one of the most comprehensive CMS systems, WIX provides users with a wide variety of benefits.

But can we feel confident that CMSes are reliable? More on this below.

1. How important are reliability & security when working with a CMS?

Having reviewed the statistics from Web Technology Surveys, we can say that web builders like WIX combine to support over 75% of all CMS-powered websites currently online. Obviously, their popularity makes them common hacking targets on the web.

How can that be explained? Since most CMS platforms are open source, they are vulnerable. In addition to a collaborative environment, open source content management systems also provide the benefit of sharing and modifying source code.
So what can we do to protect ourselves from CMS vulnerabilities? We would suggest the following techniques users can apply to defend their systems from attacks:
create a regular schedule to update CMS;
delete default admin usernames and use strong passwords;
use a plugin for strong authentication, or two-factor authentication (2FA) for an additional layer of protection;
stick with your core capabilities;
use parameterized queries to prevent attacks like SQL injection;
install SSL on your web server;
backup the CMS and its database on a regular basis.
Our experts discussed in detail this issue, answering the following questions: 

  1. How important are reliability and security when you work with a CMS?
  2. How does it affect your work as an SEO?
This question highlights the overall purpose of SEO — to bring traffic, conversions, eyeballs, whatever the goal — as you can't bring traffic if the site is down!
Mordy Oberstein
Mordy Oberstein
Head of SEO Branding at WIX
Security is extremely important. SEO Rankings can be acquired for your properties and DA leveraged on hacked pages. Having the ability to troubleshoot this is advanced, but highly important and necessary.
Joseph S. Kahn
Joseph S. Kahn
President of Hum JAM
One should understand that it's vital to protect a website since it's a tool for generating leads, acquiring new customers, and ensuring the functionality of a business.
Providing a great user experience through cyber SEO is less direct than things like quality content or backlinks, but is just as important.

The lack of security measures can hinder your efforts to build a site that complies with Google's guidelines.
Olena Prokhoda
Olena Prokhoda
Social Media and Community Specialist at Serpstat

The Psychology Behind Engaging User Experience

Here is what Yıldırım Sertbaş points out, highlighting the importance of CMS security
You should stay updated with the latest security patches.

Disable unnecessarily Web Server functions, disable all unnecessary plugins and implement a WAF. These are the first things that come to my mind :)

Thus, I don't think it will be a problem if the plugin, theme, and core updates are not neglected.
Yıldırım Sertbaş
Yıldırım Sertbaş
Founder & Owner at Yıldırım Sertbaş
Security I see as a tiered system. How high it needs to depend on the niche and its related budget requirement. The security theater, what's around the systems, is at least as important as the site environment system, but underestimated & purposely ignored.

If your CMS is like Fort Knox, but you put unhappy staff/temps on work stations & service lines, or if your office uses unmanned entryways, or an unsafe network, or if your partner has an unguarded facility, etc., your site and data STILL won't be secure.

If the environment around a system isn't secure, the system isn't secure. The question is: HOW secure does everything need to be for us — in our niche? What are the rules around that? What do we need to spend on it? 100% safe is impossible. It's a tier system.
Remco Tensen
Remco Tensen
Digital Marketing Consultant & Founder at RemcoTensen.nl
I’ve seen what happens if your CMS isn’t secure. You get hacked and discover spam articles and links. Security is critical.
Jonas Sickler
Jonas Sickler
SEO Manager at Terakeet
We are moving on to Wix's bot log reports and their necessity in the site optimization process.

2. Wix's bot log reports: how to use this data to optimize a site?

A site's technical health plays an essential role in its search visibility. Without proper maintenance, your pages may not be crawled and indexed by Google ultimately. As a consequence – fewer potential customers.

You can avoid this and optimize your site using server logs. Log data reports can help you solve problems that may be hindering Google from crawling your site effectively.

Wix's users can access bot log reports that include requests from bots, indicating what they need to do to resolve technical SEO issues.
Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO Branding at WIX, shows what their bot log reports look like:
WIX reports
WIX reports
WIX reports
Here's how to use each report for SEO:

Bot Traffic over Time

Here you can see whether a search engine crawled your site (or a specific page) recently.

Bot Traffic by Page

In this report, you can see which pages on your site are getting crawled the most by search engines and how often they crawl them.

Response Status over Time

Review this report to identify missing pages and see whether redirects are working correctly on your site.
I use these reports to check the homework assignment I give the bots. Not likely to happen at Wix, but a few weeks ago I needed evidence of a poorly functioning measure triggered at the host by Google bots, (these ignore the delay time you set). Log intel is handy in SEO & PPC.
Remco Tensen
Remco Tensen
Digital Marketing Consultant & Founder at RemcoTensen.nl

Dispelling the Most Common Myths About SEO: Wix Edition

Our agency doesn't use Wix sites, but we do like looking at log files and analyzing them for things that GA or GSC doesn't find. You can see security attacks in there sometimes when they weren't seen by other tools.
Joseph S. Kahn
Joseph S. Kahn
President of Hum JAM
Highlighting the topic of checking the site for technical errors, we'd like to recommend Serpstat Site Audit Tool.

Find errors that hold your site back in one click using this tool:

  • find issues divided into three groups, depending on their severity: high, medium, and low priority;
  • estimate the level of site optimization by different criteria and our Serpstat Domain Optimization (SDO) Score;
  • keep track of site optimization growth dynamics;
  • learn how to speed up your website's pages on computers and mobile devices.
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Want to know how to use Serpstat Site Audit Tool to fix on-site issues and boost your Google rankings?

Request a demo of our service and our expert will provide you with all the info needed!
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3. How does CMS affect SEO and what you can do about it?

Content Management Systems play a vital role in SEO as they control all the pages, words, and links on your site.

CMS platform affects SEO in several ways:
it enables you to make the content of the website more visible to Google bots;
it determines how much you can optimize your content;
it allows expanding the limits set by the built-in optimization features.
Here's what our experts have to say about the CMS's influence on the site optimization process:
I think CMS opens up all sorts of doors for experts to write content — as in some content agency out in Kansas is not an expert on a topic by literally going to Google and copying (but slightly better) what's already out there. A biz owner is a topical expert.

A CMS has the potential to allow these biz owners to create content and be able to rank it. VERY important to Google IMHO because it solves the gap in quality content that exists today.

I'll say it's not enough for a CMS to improve for SEO — they have to help educate their user base to better understand how to write content for the web — literally one of the focus points of my work at @Wix. It's one of the best parts of the job, to be honest.
Mordy Oberstein
Mordy Oberstein
Head of SEO Branding at WIX
In my point of view, success depends on how quickly new important SEO features are implemented to a CMS.

At the same time, the question is, "Will website builders replace web developers?" Everything is possible, let's see :)
Olena Prokhoda
Olena Prokhoda
Social Media and Community Specialist at Serpstat
The mission of SEO is to make the web better. Right now the web looks like a third-world country in terms of technology, content, and UX. When these people get better, the web gets better. It's all about optimizing the web, not just getting rankings.
Joseph S. Kahn
Joseph S. Kahn
President of Hum JAM
We're moving more and more to no-code, like it or not. Is it better for SEO? Well, you have to innovate with the market, if you want to win at competing. If the interest in a platform declines, the investment stops, improvements stop, and eventually it'll lag.
Remco Tensen
Remco Tensen
Digital Marketing Consultant & Founder at RemcoTensen.nl
I like the idea that it can/will reduce tech SEO knowledge requirements. Thereby enabling topic experts to focus on producing their content, and being able to compete, without expertise in tech.
Taylor Murchison
Taylor Murchison
SEO Specialist at Tipalti

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4. Google and Wix partnership: benefits for site owners

The Wix platform has been recognized for its achievements within the Google Cloud ecosystem, helping customers achieve better results by integrating Google Cloud and Google Workspace.

By partnering with Google Cloud, Wix can provide business owners with advanced tools to optimize their online presence and succeed in today's online marketplace.

The following Google integrations are already built into Wix:

  • Google Analytics
  • Google Tag Manager
  • Google Search Console
  • Google Workspaces

The possibilities of these platforms solidify Wix as a strong consideration for any business wanting to go online and gradually level up.
"We are proud to be recognized as the Google Cloud Expansion Partner of the Year for the second year in a row ... In the past year, we've significantly scaled our partnership with Google Workspace to expand and support larger businesses on the Wix platform, unlocking new enterprise opportunities and revenue streams. We look forward to continuing to work with Google Cloud to provide our users with advanced tools to help business owners efficiently manage and grow their online presence."
Liron Raz, Head of Finance & Corp Dev at Wix
"Wix has demonstrated substantial technical capabilities across Google Cloud products and solutions, and has significantly scaled their work with customers over the last year ... We're proud to recognize Wix's growth with Google Cloud and their continued commitment to helping an increasing number of customers succeed."
Kevin Ichhpurani, Corporate VP, Global Ecosystem and Channels at Google Cloud
Google and Wix have a partnership that instantly indexes your homepage when you connect to GSC via Wix. I'm pretty sure that it leads Google to crawl other pages on the site more quickly.

In a recent round of resubmissions in GSC of unindexed pages, after a few were picked up, dozens more were picked up by Gbot in the process.
Taylor Murchison
Taylor Murchison
SEO Specialist at Tipalti
The process of the crawl schedule is dynamic, which means that it can be manipulated. Otherwise, prioritization would be random & serve no point. Does Wix get dibs? Well, it happens in multiple visits ...
Remco Tensen
Remco Tensen
Digital Marketing Consultant & Founder at RemcoTensen.nl

5. SEO-friendly CMS: what does it mean?

Content performance and SEO depend heavily on finding the right CMS. It should be the one that allows you to effortlessly update your website's pages and posts without writing any code.
I would define SEO-friendly CMS in 3 ways:

1. Does it take care of all the various kinds of site owners.
2. Does it allow SEOs to do their thing.
3. Does it care to constantly improve because there is no end of the road that is "ultimate SEO friendliness."
Mordy Oberstein
Mordy Oberstein
Head of SEO Branding at WIX
SEO-friendly CMS should have the following features:

  • SSL security certification
  • XML sitemaps
  • 301 redirect capability
  • Customizable page elements
  • URL settings
  • Blogging and internal linking tools
  • Taxonomy and tagging features
  • Responsive themes
  • Analytics reporting
Olena Prokhoda
Olena Prokhoda
Social Media and Community Specialist at Serpstat
It needs to strike a healthy balance between what the target user can do, versus what the platform can offer — as it relates to who or what needs to be able to use and understand the website, in order to make it an SEO success.
Remco Tensen
Remco Tensen
Digital Marketing Consultant & Founder at RemcoTensen.nl
With your CMS, your team can create and edit content, set up workflows, and publish info to your website. To achieve your marketing goals, you must carefully select the Content Management System and check whether it complies with your plans.

Wrap Up

We may sum up that choosing the right CMS can have a significant impact on your SEO success. And SEO-friendly CMS like WIX can play a huge role in achieving organic ranking success.
That's all for now. We will be glad to see you participating in our next Twitter Chat. Serpstat team is always willing to discuss only captivating topics!
In our private Facebook group Serpstat Insights, you can get read follow-ups with all the info discussed in Twitter Chat!
Serpstat, SEO, marketing, and everything related to this area are discussed in depth here. 

Learn, succeed, and share your experiences in this group: discuss workflows, network with other Serpstatmates, and contact our dedicated customer support representatives.
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The opinion of the guest post authors may not coincide with the opinion of the Serpstat editorial staff and specialists.

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