According to a Study by Netcraft suggests that there are around 644 million active websites available in the internet universe which clearly means no matter what your business is, how different you are, somewhere around the world, there will be a website similar to yours and the moment you push the publish button, you will have the competitor in the internet space.
With so many active websites and major competition, if you are not going the extra mile in attracting your audience, you probably will be lost in the whirlpool of web pages, and will never be seen or discovered again.
Myth: Google supports and prefers websites that are built on certain CMSs. What they really mean is that in order to get better visibility and attention of your audience towards your website, it is important to have a website in WordPress, OpenCart, Magento and more.
Reality: There is no such thing in Google’s core algorithm that distinguishes or differentiates websites based on their CMS.
No matter what your CMS is, until and unless you are following the guidelines provided by Google to make your website as friendly as possible for visitors as well as for search engines, you are good! If you believe CMS plays a part in Google organic rankings and visibility, this study will shock you!
Look at the 1 million top websites — Squarespace and Wix are consuming more than 50% of the market share.
But, that’s not the only confusion people have in their mind when it comes to Wix and SEO. So, in the rest of the post I am going to discuss myths and will bust it with facts and realities.
Site Builders Like Wix Are Not Google-Friendly
At the Google, I/O 2018 developer conference, Mariya Moeva, Developer Advocate, Google busted the major myth surrounding Wix websites. Moeva, particularly, appreciated the role that the optimization plugin, Wix SEO Wiz plays.
She pointed out, “For the Wix users, this is a pretty cool experience because they can see their page in the Search results immediately after they have created it. There is no waiting, there is no wondering, ‘Am I on Search or not?’ Within seconds, they’re on Google.”
Clearly, if you are designing the website keeping the Google Guidelines in mind (which Wix will be doing for you from the technical standpoint) and creating the content that is both relevant and valuable for your audiences and accessible to search engine bots.
Google will not only crawl and index you within seconds, but it will also rank you with other competitors within your niche and there is an equal chance for you to outrank your competitors in SERP result pages as any other website with custom development.
Wix’s URLs Won’t Rank
How clean your URL is, might be one of the 200+ ranking factors and I am not ready to believe the fact that Google will drop a website just because of the messy URLs. If you are working hard on your content, acquiring great links and taking care other guidelines, you still have the huge chance of outranking your competitors in search engines.
Also, hashbangs and long URLs with Wix is the thing of the past. Wix removed long URLs and hashbangs in 2016 and offers customizable URLs now. Hence, earning bonus points and working well for SEO.
Titles & Meta Descriptions Don’t Matter
What about Titles & Meta Description? Aren’t they important?
Yes they are. In fact, I would recommend you not using any site builder or CMS platform which does not give you the control to fully edit and update your metadata for each page manually.
Not only because the page title is one of the major ranking factors, but titles and meta descriptions are the first impression to your audience in search results.
If you have less control over title and meta descriptions, you will not be able to brand yourself better and attract your customers.
When it comes to Wix, this is not even a problem. It was in the initial launch phase, Wix didn’t give users the control of their meta title and description window, but now it does.
Wix gives you full control to edit the meta title and description as in the case of other website builders.
Wix’s Blog Can’t Be Optimized
I went through the Google guidelines for search engines twice and I assure you this is just a myth.
Google loves content and quality is the primary requirement of it. There might be some correlation study but there are times when blogs on the Wix’s site have outranked websites that are made on custom developed WordPress blogs.
If you are creating original, relevant and valuable content, for your audience and incorporating keywords in it, there is no way Google will stop you from ranking in SERPs for the targeted keywords and attract the eyeballs of the target audience who are using keywords that matches with your site’s content.
Wix or WordPress, no matter what the CMS is, when it comes to blogging and SEO, they are no different in the eye of Google and both have equal opportunities to rank in search engines accordingly.
Structured Data Can’t Be Added
Structured data or schema markup or microformats are are bits of code that tell browsers what a piece of data is about. For example, it could be a product price, name, or description. Once the microformats are implemented correctly, the search engine can better understand your product or service or business etc.
So, usually with many CMS websites, you have to generate the code based on your service or business or product that you are offering and update the structured data code accordingly. Then using the structured data testing tool to check if the code is implemented correctly or not.
With Wix, you have an edge. Wix has SCHEMA.ORG microformats build into it by default. This gives it extra points over multiple other website builders. In simple words, this feature offered by Wix works to swell your odds of ranking better in the search engines.
Wix Has A Slow Load Time
There was a time when things use to be slow with Wix and it literally took many seconds before the website appeared, but as site speed is becoming more and more important, Wix is improving their product quality and today, there are low to no site speed issues in their templates.
We know that 40% of the folks abandon websites that take longer than three seconds to load. And Andy Kinsley, SEO consultant, talks about randomly testing the slowness of Wix websites. Andy came up with no complaints, only occasionally finding an advert that negatively impacted the page load speed for a second or two.
Kinsley concluded that it is easy to conquer this concern by upgrading from a free website to the Wix version without adverts, particularly, in the case of business people.
If you think Wix sites have page load time issues, the answer is no and you should give it a try.
Wix Is Not Mobile-Friendly
Google made mobile friendliness a ranking factor along with a major update that is popularly known as mobile first indexing. All of that and more are making mobile more and more important in the eyes of Google.
And, why not? The number of mobile users has officially overtaken desktop users. Moreover, individuals spend 66% of their e-commerce time on smartphones. On top of that, more than 50% of the mobile users are either researching a product or are planning to purchase after calling the business directly.
When it comes to WordPress or other major CMS, you either need a developer to make your website mobile friendly or you choose a design theme that is mobile friendly at first.
Whereas, Wix websites are optimized for mobile search. The designs are mobile friendly as well as adaptive.
Is Wix mobile-friendly? The easiest and answer to this question is, YES!
If you have a Wix website and are thinking about shifting it to custom or another CMS only because you care about SEO and you want better rankings in Google, the good news to you is that you don’t have to if you don’t want to.
“Some people believe that it’s hard to rank with Wix, but it’s actually really not,” said Carlos from Thrive. “It’s all about having a set plan in place and knowing what targets you want to hit.”
Keep focus on creating valuable content, build relevant and authority links and take care of all other technical SEO factors and you will see an improvement in your online visibility and SEO!
Interested in learning more about Wix and SEO? Contact us today!
