By Wix is one of the most prominent website builders on the market, thanks to its ease of use and simple drag-and-drop interface. While Wix may seem like the perfect solution, some of its limitations could hurt your chances of ranking in local search results.
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In this article, we’ll explain why Wix isn't the best choice for Local SEO with seven reasons why it can damage your rankings in search engine results, plus three potential alternatives worth considering. By the end, you’ll have an understanding of why wix is bad for Local SEO and why you should consider other alternatives.
What is Wix and why is it so popular?
Wix is a popular website builder that was founded in 2006. It provides users with an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop platform for creating attractive websites and online stores. Over the years, it has become one of the most popular website builders due to its expansive range of features and ease of use.
User-friendly interface
One of the main advantages of using Wix is its user-friendly interface. Since no coding knowledge or technical experience is required to build a website, anyone can use this platform regardless of background. You can create beautiful websites almost instantly with an intuitive drag-and-drop design. This makes it easy for non-tech-savvy users to create something they are proud of in no time.
Design styles and templates
Wix provides a diverse range of templates and customization options. With hundreds of professionally designed templates, you can find something that perfectly suits your brand. Also, Wix offers different customization tools such as fonts, backgrounds, images, and more so that you can tailor your site exactly how you want it to look.
Free to use
Another attraction of using Wix is that it’s free. Several plans are available, but if you’re starting, you don’t need to pay anything upfront, making it an attractive choice for beginners and small businesses just starting their web design journey.
However, the free version of Wix is quite limited in what it offers; users have access to fewer features, such as limited storage space and the inability to add specific plugins. While businesses can access more advanced tools, such as marketing automation, these require purchasing additional plans. Because all websites created on Wix use a custom template system, users don’t have complete control over their website’s design and functionality.
The importance of Local SEO for small businesses
Local SEO plays a significant part in online business, especially for small businesses, to get online visibility in local search results. With good hyperlocal targeting and SEO, your clients could reach potential customers who have a specific intent to purchase within their immediate area.
Some tips for optimizing your client’s website for local SEO include:
- If you haven’t already, claim each account and online listing for your clients, including their Google Business Profile, Yelp, and Facebook.
- Create content targeted at the local level, such as promotions for events or activities happening near your community.
- Perform an SEO audit that analyzes your client’s keywords, citations, social engagement, and more.
By following these best practices, you’ll have an easier time getting found by potential customers in the areas where your business operates—helping boost visibility, trustworthiness, and sales.
7 Reasons why Wix is bad for local SEO
Building and managing websites through Wix may seem like a convenient option, but it can have some serious drawbacks when it comes to local SEO. Search engine algorithms are constantly changing and evolving, so businesses need to keep up with the latest best practices to stay competitive in their industries.
1. Customization restrictions
Since Wix is a more simplified website builder, you are limited in terms of what you can customize when creating and managing your websites, compared to using an open-sourced, code-intensive builder. Since the majority of Wix’s websites come pre-built with templates, more advanced users can’t add custom code aside from an HTML code element which can be limiting when trying to add custom features.
If the customization options available through Wix don’t suit your needs, it could adversely affect the user experience you’re looking to provide with your client’s website, which may impact your client’s business with their customers.
2. Slow page speeds
There have been reports since 2020 alluding to Wix’s websites containing code bloat, where unused or unnecessary code is added to the site that causes web pages to load more slowly (Search Engine Journal). This can significantly impact user experience, leading to visitors leaving your site before it can even finish loading – something that search engine algorithms will also consider when ranking pages.
3. Non-responsive designs
While the responsiveness in Wix’s websites has gotten better over time, it isn’t always the case. When it comes to making a responsive website for your clients on Wix, you have to be smart about which website theme or template you pick. This means that should only pick templates with simple, minimalist, and static designs that don’t require too much to load or render when switching from desktop to mobile view.
4. Weird URL structure
The URLs used by Wix include a unique link structure that is not preferred by most SEO professionals, featuring a hashtag (#) in each link. This indicates that the link is served via JavaScript, which has previously caused trouble for websites using it when it comes to search engine crawling and indexing.
5. Content creation limitations
Although the platform offers a range of content creation options, Wix could improve its capabilities regarding blogging. It includes basic features such as tags and categories essential for SEO-friendly content, but you can’t create even private posts or backdate them. The writing interface on Wix is only limited to a plain text editor, which also limits you on formatting your content the way you want it.
Also, the lack of advanced customization tools, such as implementing schema, can limit your ability to create content that stands out from other websites in SERPs.
6. Hard to migrate data
White it’s completely possible to migrate your entire Wix website to WordPress, it takes a lot of manual work. On top of setting up your hosting and WordPress site, as well as importing your blog posts through the RSS feed method, you still need to manually copy and paste your pages from Wix to WordPress.
Not only does manually importing your pages take up way too much time, but you’ll also need to design those same web pages from scratch, which is less than ideal.
7. Lacking important SEO controls
Although the platform provides some basic SEO controls, such as page titles and descriptions, it severely needs more advanced options for optimizing your content for search engines. One of the biggest features it lacks is a seamless way for you to edit the auto-generated sitemap, which can be time-consuming compared to using a tool like Yoast.
Additionally, there’s not much you can do with how Wix generates its file names, as you can’t customize the naming conventions which can be difficult for SEO.
3 Alternatives to Wix for website building (and better SEO)
Needing a website to represent your business is becoming increasingly critical in today’s digital age. Luckily, various Wix alternatives are available for building and managing websites for businesses of all sizes.
1. Website Pro by Vendasta
Website Pro by Vendasta is an all-in-one solution for website hosting, building, and managing that lets you easily create customizable WordPress sites for your SMB clients. Not only is the platform incredibly flexible when it comes to designing websites, but also with developing them too.
Here are just some of the reasons why Website Pro is one of the most versatile website builders on the market:
Intuitive website building
Website Pro has Divi Builder by Elegant Themes built right into it, meaning you can easily create well-designed and responsive websites without having to write any code. You can easily choose from one of the pre-built themes or templates included, and editing the layout is as easy as dragging and dropping each element.
However, the flexibility of WordPress still allows you to build your site from scratch, or customize existing themes or templates for an SEO-optimized website design that’s to your own liking.
Easy third-party tool integration
Not only does the flexibility of WordPress allow you to use third-party SEO tools and WordPress plug-ins, but you also have the entire Vendasta ecosystem at your disposal. The Vendasta platform is a host to several tools you can use and resell to your clients, and integrating them with features from your client’s website is easy and seamless.
WooCommerce integration
For clients looking for an ecommerce solution, Website Pro also has WooCommerce integration right out of the box, allowing you to set up your client’s online store in just a few clicks. Additionally, the WooCommerce platform adds even more flexibility, with hundreds of extensions that you can easily add and customize to your client’s online store, and easy integration with other ecommerce WordPress plug-ins.
Google Cloud Hosting
Website performance and site speed are paramount to a search-optimized website. That’s why all Website Pro sites are hosted on the Google Cloud Platform, which offers fast and reliable hosting for all your client’s important data and information, which is especially important for providing users with the best online experience possible.
Hosting your sites on Website Pro also gives you all the benefits of Google Cloud Hosting without having to manage it yourself, including domain registration, Google Workspace integration, database storage, and more.
Centralized website management
Website Pro’s Admin Dashboard is an essential tool for managing multiple client websites and scaling your white-label managed website services. To ensure all your client’s websites run as smoothly as they can, the dashboard lets you see all your sites, and all their essential analytics, at a glance, along with how many plug-ins each site uses.
You can also view which version of WordPress each site currently uses and push regular updates to them right from the dashboard. This helps ensure your client’s sites stay fast and secure with the latest firmware updates.
2. WordPress
In many cases, WordPress on its own is a better alternative to Wix when it comes to optimizing for local SEO because it’s as flexible as website builders can get. Using WordPress by itself gives you all the flexibility you need to create and customize your client’s website exactly how you need them.
Open-source
The open-source nature of WordPress gives website creators endless customization options, making it more effective for optimizing sites for search engine results pages (SERPs). WordPress was made for customizing and editing HTML, letting you can easily format and edit your content and easily add structured data markup to the text.
Highly customizable & flexible
WordPress provides various features and tools that are not available with Wix, such as its extensive library of plug-ins that can help automate important SEO website tasks like creating a sitemap (Yoast), suggesting internal links (Link Whisperer), or optimizing images (Smush).
Support
On top of the endless tools, software, and plug-ins available for WordPress, the majority of websites online are made on the platform, and its large community of users provide developers with endless resources to learn how to create a WordPress site for your clients.
You can easily find multiple tools, how-tos, and tutorials online for optimizing your client’s website for SEO, and there’s more than one way to optimize for it.
Downsides to exclusively WordPress
- Can get too advanced for novice users. The open-source nature of WordPress can be intimidating for novice website creators. The level of customization can be overwhelming, and the amount of expertise needed to understand how to create a website from scratch on WordPress can make it inaccessible for just anyone to make and run a website on it.
- Sole ownership and operation of the site. Without a reliable hosting provider or manager, WordPress becomes like the wild west of website creation, as you’re left to your own devices to update and manage any website you create for your clients. That means you'll have to know how to manage its hosting, update its security, create backups of the site, and install updates manually.
- You’ll still have to find a hosting provider. While creating websites on WordPress is free, you’ll still have to pay out-of-pocket to find a hosting provider that'll give your clients fast and reliable website hosting. While it may be cheaper for some to create the website for free and pay for hosting, novice website creators may find better value in finding an all-in-one website hosting solution.
3. Webflow
As an alternative to Wix, Webflow makes a good case for itself as another simple drag-and-drop website builder on the market, with its large library of website templates and customizable designs. On top of that, their decent level of SEO features can give Wix a run for its money.
Wide variety of website templates
The biggest draw for using Webflow as a website builder is that it has over 100 templates for users to choose from, and 40 of those templates are free to use. Webflow offers templates for any industry or website type, meaning you can pick a design that works especially well for your client’s needs, whether it’s creating an e-commerce site or an event site.
SEO-friendly features
Surprisingly enough, Webflow has a decent amount of advanced SEO controls and settings such as creating alt text for images, setting a target keyword, and even adding and editing schema markup to your content. It even has a feature for automatically generating sitemaps for your website and a fairly robust 301 redirect management system.
Third-party integrations
Webflow also provides third-party services through Zapier that provides support and integrations for over 700 apps. Through Zapier’s library of plug-ins and software, users can connect their Google Workspace to import and export their content through Google Sheets or even automate social media posting when publishing new content for their website.
Downsides to using Webflow
- Expensive plans. While Webflow offers several pricing plans for its platform, which can go as low as $19 per month for basic sites, its most expensive plan for hosting e-commerce websites goo as far as $212 per month, and each of these plans is billed annually. And as mentioned earlier, not all the website templates available on Webflow are free.
- Lack of support. In the event that your client’s websites experience technical issues, you may want to consider other alternatives to Webflow. Webflow’s online resources provide some helpful tutorials, guides, and forums to use the platform, but reaching for direct support can be fairly difficult. It currently doesn't have any live chat or phone service, and its response team is only available from 6am to 6pm PST.
Frequently asked questions
What are the disadvantages of Wix?
When building a website, Wix can be a great solution for businesses that need an inexpensive and easy-to-use option. However, there are some drawbacks you should be aware of when using Wix as your web design platform.
There have been reports of websites created on Wix ranking lower on search engine results pages (SERPs) than websites developed with other platforms, such as WordPress or Joomla, due to its previous instances of code bloat on its websites.
Is Wix a trustworthy website builder?
Overall, Wix is a trustworthy website builder that provides quality services for business owners who want an inexpensive and easy-to-use platform for creating websites. The company has been around since 2006 and has helped millions of people across the globe launch their online presence with its simple yet powerful drag-and-drop editor.
