WIX? is it any good for SEO
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Hi people. I have just built my website www.bellagiolimousines.com.au using WIX.
I am in the process of optimising for SEO, and after reading a couple of older posts i.e 2012; I read that some SEO consultants do not like WIX.
However with their recent upgrades, I was hoping if anyone else has had any recent experience with WIX?
I have spent a considerable amount of time building this site, and I don't want to waste anymore time in optimising it, if I am not going to receive a top 3 organic SERP.
Hope to hear from someone real soon!
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Whilst some of it is better than it was, the way it deals with pages is still flawed.
For example most pages are using the url format .au/#!chauffeur-hire-perth/c1ay9
#! is a "hashbang" it means it's being dealt / served through javascript and as such isn't readable via search engines - in addition to this all pages have a canonical of the homepage and so would never rank anyhow...
As much as it may not be what you want to hear, its never likely to rank well - i certainly don't forsee it ever ranking in the top 3... sorry
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Being transparent: I have never been one to support the likes of WIX or others of a similar nature. The templates they use are built to cover so many bases that it will never really please anyone completely. Also the way in particular WIX deals with pages is concerning in particular - others do it too i should add.
sorry to be the messenger of bad news.
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Hi Andy I appreciate your reply.
Would you recommend weebly?
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Don't use WIX or you'll be wasting your time if you want good SEO.
Consider wordpress if the site is going to be substantial because it's a widely used CMS so anyone can hop in and knows how to use it.
If it's a small simple site and a CMS is not needed you can download a free template, there are tons of free template sites on the web. Remove any sponsored links in the footer if you're using one of those though.
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Thankyou Irving. I really appreciate your advice
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George,
I can assure you that all your pages will be indexed properly along with their content. You will see it the next time Google will index your site
Le't look at this example, search Google for site:urbanhikersf.com and you will see all pages are indexed correctly. You can read their success story here http://www.wix.com/talks/your-stories/alexandra-kenin-entrepeneur/
The technical details: Wix is using Ajax Crawling solution. Ajax Crawling allows sites to serve dynamic content to the end users, while providing great user experience, and at the same time serve search engines the same content in a special version of the page. You can read it all in Google's documentation https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/getting-started , There is no problem with the #! in the urls, the canonical tags or the javascript code the users see.
Wix serves millions of clients and we see good results in search engines. We are constantly monitoring the performance and follow the latest changes in the SEO industry. Please let us know of any issue you find. The best address is our support team.
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People often pick on the hashbangs by default without even testing it for 30 seconds. And i just cannot see why they do this, making an automated fool of themselves.
Wix has an escaped_fragment version of your page which it serves to search engines and as far as our testing and use of it has gone, it works JUST FINE, in fact quite well compared to so many other options out there. Google does see and index every single page and sub-page you create in their html5, and so does bing.
Anyone who says wix is bad for SEO because of hashbang situation is just picking on the wrong reason to base that suggestion on.
But if you asked me, I would tell you that wix CURRENTLY is still not 100% SEO-okayed.
CURRENTLY missing features that severely diminish wix's value when it comes to SEO:
1. Full metatag management is not there, minimalistic controls give, too many unexplained limits and restrictions imposed for character limits and type of characters allowed for urls, titles, meta desriptions, meta keywords, etc.
2. 301 redirects are a fantasy here so far, change a page url and all SEO value created is gonner, as if you deleted it and created a new one. or wix has not really explained this point at all what happens when you alter your deeplink url from within wix after it has been established and ranked, does it work a magic 301, nada so far on this front. Whatever it is, as of now, it is on paper or in trial somewhere in their worldwide network of offices and operatives.
3. canonical tag control is not for user to decide. Wix has stated in other posts (go down the comments) that it might fix this and 301 situation in order of priority... now that is a whole topic in and of itself... i never get their order of priority anyway
4. no SEO friendly and solid blog solution, flimsy and backward workarounds.
aside from these, I personally see NO real reason to avoid wix solely based on its SEO performance.
I am making an example mention of another few fellows whom i know use wix on the other side of the pond so to speak, Brown Owl Interactive. their homepage gets a page authority of 40 which is pretty dam good for a small company in existence for under 1 year and it has a domain authority of 28 which is not impressive, but still ok. After all, in some niche markets, we have clients with solid 50+ FIRST spot rankings on google who for the longest time (years and years) did not achieve anything better than these before we took over them, and still maintained their position without much gimmick.
So, if you plan on sticking with wix for the long haul or forseeable future and if you are not looking for anything too crazy (read DA of 60 and above) for your SEO (obviously if you have the money, you should consider all your options and do a SWOT analysis of which to use)
Moving into wix system from an existing and well ranked website: BAD MOVE AT THE MOMENT, you lose everything.
starting out in wix and deciding on other options later: doubt this is a problem so long as you can keep a record of all your old wix deep links for 301 redirects.
Having said all of this, I personally find that wix works quite well for SEO, requires ABSOLUTELY NO CODING (get rid of that dev you can never find who charges you on retainer... no offense to devs, some bad apples) which allows for things coming together so much faster than your typical custom built equivalence. I must also add, NO WORDPRESS template or website will ever be as customizable or as sick-designable as wix is.
I must add that wix does seem to know what they are doing when it comes to SEO and SE handling of their end, its just that SEO options are still so limited, even after html5 platform improved it significantly over flash.
one last pointer: we still have a client on a wix flash site and I can assure you those sites also get seen by Google without any penalty or issue, quite nicely. and this particular client owns a few rankings of their choice within top 3 of their various markets.
NOTE: seomoz and OSE crawlers and other third party systems generally are not equal to google and while i can personally assure you from experience that you are safe with the big G, I can tell you that you will get crippled reporting and analysis delivered by seomoz and OSE due to the wix SEO approach. so if you need solid reporting, wix may really be a bad option, unless you can create your own custom reports using various sources of info, including what is available from seomoz.
edit: most posts you find out there about wix are usually outdated or fully opinion-based biased posts. So take what you read about wix on 3rd party platforms with a grain of salt, I work with it daily and I can guarantee what I see and say about wix.
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Hello Omid
I must thank you so much for your detailed answer.
I won't reply to your post point by point, however the main point that I will raise is this....
NOTE: seomoz and OSE crawlers and other third party systems generally are not equal to google and while i can personally assure you from experience that you are safe with the big G, I can tell you that you will get crippled reporting and analysis delivered by seomoz and OSE due to the wix SEO approach. so if you need solid reporting, wix may really be a bad option, unless you can create your own custom reports using various sources of info, including what is available from seomoz.
I find with WIX I cannot track/analyse my site i.e. Google Goals, Analytics etc. Therefore it has left me with no other alternative but to re-construct our website using traditional code through Dreamweaver.
Just out of curiosity, does your company handle SEO? Do you also have your companies URL address?
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Hi Guys
Just thought I would write and let you all know that I still have my WIX site running and in the ever challenging and heavy competition industry I am in, my site is now ranked #2, with it's lowest ranking (depending on Keyword) #6.
I must admit I am surprised and as a novice at SEO, I am crossing my fingers that I will not lose this spot.
Referring to Omid's previous reply, I do wonder if WIX has taken note of some of the deficiencies in their platform and if there is any progress in releasing further SEO tools?
George
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George,
These are great news and I hope you will keep up with these rankings.
I'll address few of the issues Omid and you pointed.
**Google **Analytic should work fine. Let us know if you have any problems with it.
Full meta tags management - It is now possible to use special characters in meta title and description. We should soon have the option to manually add meta tags, such as Google webmaster verification, Google+ tags... Editing canonical tags is not planned at the moment, I hope we can get to it.
301 redirect - We will have it for sure but it takes longer than expected.
Blog - We are about to launch a new blog solution and it looks great. If it cannot wait then you can find a blog app in the Wix app market with full seo.
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Thanks for your reply.
I have problems with Google Analytics not working properly. Maybe we can setup a mutually convenient time to talk me through what I maybe doing wrong?
I will write though, having a URL such as http://www.bellagiolimousines.com.au/#!weddings/c23du is not conducive to assisting the rankings nor our customers.
Can it be edited without the special characters?
In regards to the 301 redirects; when is it anticipated that a fix will be available, and how far away is the new blog solution?
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Blog - already in production but it is still tested with small amount of users
Hashbang in urls (#!) - this sign has no problem with ranking. This is the agreed sign for search engine that the site is based on Ajax technology.
301 redirect - no time estimation for now. This feature is relevant only for users who transfer existing site to Wix.
Google Analytics - send us a private message with more details and we will continue from there.
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Will a backlink from my wix page to one of my sites be a useful link seo-wise?
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David,
A backlink from a Wix site is no different from any other backlink.
Please note that links from free wix sites are set as rel="nofollow". All the links from premium sites are set as follow
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All WIX people says they are champ and they says SEO for them work better than anyother.
But actually WIX is not so compability with SEO terms. As SEO grow much day by which need all customize code in page is not supported by WIX.
Many codes are call from cloud server which again sense of disaster.
Wix can be best for small website with less competitive keyword but won't recommended for high competitive keyword focus website.
Think again about WIX and than only go for it.
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kiranseo1,
From our extensive tests it seems like SE are reading all content and index it properly.
Can you share with us the issues you found on Wix with more details?
Thanks.
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You really have to hand it to Wix SEO team for being all over this thread. I recently joined Wix just because I saw they were onto questions in here. If you're still there guys, I have another question > can you please look into fixing the Google + share button on blog posts? It can't seem to pull up a thumbnail of from the post rob towner
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Hi Rob,
Thanks for pointing out a problem. We forward your request to the relevant teams at Wix and they will try to take care of it as soon as possible.
Best.
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It seems that Wix can't fix this problem and others:
Optimal Use of Keywords in H1 Tags
Although using targeted keywords in H1 tags on your page does not directly correlate to high rankings, it does appear to provide some slight value. It's also considered a best practice for accessibility and helps potential visitors determine your page's content, so we recommend it. Over-using keywords, however, can be perceived as keyword stuffing (a form of search engine spam) and can negatively impact rankings, so use keywords in H1 tags 2 or fewer times. To adhere to best practices in Google News and Bing News, headlines should contain the relevant keyword target and be treated with the same importance as title tags.
This is important for SEO and Content Management, I'll love to see Wix answer because I found this problem in your page and many others.
Bye.
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I've been following this question for a while now, and still - when compared to other options - would not recommend Wix... HOWEVER, that said, I came across a site the other day where the site own made mention on Facebook that 'they' had a Wix site and it was ranking well. So I went looking....
The name of their business is "Crayon Rocks", and yes, when searching for the business name you find them easily (it's the <cite class="_Rm">crayonrocks.com.au</cite> site that I'm talking about). But what about something more generic....?
So I searched 'just' Crayons. And yep, there they are - still one page 1 for my search (I'm also in Australia). Position #7.
And it's a Wix site.
Here's the thing folks; whether or not you use Wix or Wordpress or Majento or Business Catalyst - or whatever - the most important thing is your competitive keyword metrics and keyword choice, NOT the CMS of choice.
The type of content you prepare for your customers and the overall UX are far more important then H1's and H2's and whatever technical code you want to add to the conversation. Yes - the technical IS important, VERY important... but if the quality of your content in relation to the needs of your target market sucks, then it doesn't mater how damn good your site is technically, it ain't gonna help -
But... can we conclude summarily that Wix site's don't rank? No. I've seen a few now that do. But for people who don't have the money to develop a site on a (in my opinion only) a better platform, then Wix is a good starter solution.
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