We analyzed 208,085 webpages to learn more about Core Web Vitals.
First, we established benchmarks for Cumulative Layout Shift, First Input Delay, and Largest Contentful Paint.
Then, we looked into the correlation between Core Web Vitals and user experience metrics (like bounce rate).
Thanks to data provided by WebCEO, we were able to uncover some interesting findings.
Let’s dive right into the data.
Here is a Summary of Our Key Findings:
1. 53.77% of sites had a good Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) score. 46.23% of sites had “poor” or “needs improvement” LCP ratings.
2. 53.85% of websites in our data set had optimal First Input Delay (FID) ratings. Only 8.57% of sites had a “poor” FID score.
3. 65.13% of analyzed sites boasted good optimal Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) scores.
4. The average LCP of the sites we analyzed clocked in at 2,386 milliseconds.
5. Average FID was 137.74 milliseconds.
6. The mean CLS score was 0.14. This is slightly higher than the optimal score.
7. The most common issues impacting LCP were high request counts and large transfer sizes.
8. Large layout shifts were the #1 cause of poor CLS scores.
9. The most common issue affecting FID was an inefficient cache policy.
10. There was a weak correlation between Core Web Vital scores and UX metrics.
11. We did find that FID did tend to slightly correlate with page views.
53.77% of Websites Had an Optimal Largest Contentful Paint Score
Our first goal was to see how each site performed based on the three factors that make up Google’s Core Web Vitals: Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift, and First Input Delay.
Specifically, we wanted to determine the percentage of pages that were classified as “good”, “needs improvement” and “poor” inside of each site’s Search Console.
To do this, we analyzed anonymized Google Search Console data from 208k pages (approximately 20k total sites).
Our first task: analyze LCP (Large Contentful Paint). In simple terms, LCP measures how long it takes a page to load its visible content.
Here’s how the sites that we analyzed fared:
Good: 53.77%
Needs Improvement: 28.76%
Poor: 17.47%
As you can see, the majority of sites that we looked at had a “good” LCP rating. This was higher than expected, especially when taking into account other benchmarking efforts (like this one by iProspect).
It may be that the websites in our dataset are especially diligent about page performance. Or it may be partly due to a sample size difference (the iProspect analysis continuously monitors 1,500 sites. We analyzed 20,000+).
Either way, it’s encouraging to see that only about half of all websites need to work on their LCP.
53.85% of Websites We Analyzed Had Good First Input Delay Ratings
Next, we looked at Search Console reported First Input Delay (FID) ratings. As the name suggests, FIP measures the delay between the first request and a user being able to input something (like typing in a username).
Here’s a breakdown of FID scores from our dataset:
Good: 53.85%
Needs Improvement: 37.58%
Poor: 8.57%
Again, just over half of the sites we looked at had “good” FID ratings.
Interestingly, very few (8.57%) had “poor” scores. This shows that a relatively small number of sites are likely to be negatively affected once Google incorporates FID into their algorithm.
65.13% of Sites Had an Optimal Cumulative Layout Shift Score
Finally, we looked at the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) ratings from Search Console.
CLS is a measurement of how elements on a page move while loading. Pages that are relatively stable through the loading process have high (good) CLS scores.
Here were the CLS ratings among the sites that we analyzed:
Good: 65.13%
Needs Improvement: 17.03%
Poor: 17.84%
Among the three Core Web Vitals scores, CLS tended to be the least problematic. In fact, only around 35% of the sites that we analyzed need to work on their CLS.
Average LCP Is 2,836 Milliseconds
Next, we wanted to establish benchmarks for each Core Web Vital metric. As mentioned above, Google has created their own set of guidelines for each Core Web Vital.
(For example, a “good” LCP is considered to be under 2.5 seconds.)
However, we hadn’t seen a large-scale analysis that attempted to benchmark each Core Web Vital metric “in the wild”.
First, we benchmarked LCP scores for the sites in our database.
Among the sites that we analyzed, the average LCP turned out to be 2,836 Milliseconds (2.8 seconds).
Here were the most common issues that negatively impacted LCP performance:
High request counts and large transfer sizes (100% of pages)
High network round-trip time (100% of pages)
Critical request chains (98.9% of pages)
High initial server response time (57.4% of pages)
Images not served in next-gen format (44.6% of pages)
Overall, 100% of pages had high LCP scores at least partly due to “High request counts and large transfer sizes”. In other words, pages that are heavy with excess code, large file sizes, or both.
This finding is in line with another analysis that we did which found that large pages tended to be the culprit behind most slow-loading pages.
Average FID Is 137.4 Milliseconds
We then looked at FID scores among the pages in our dataset.
Overall, the mean First Input Delay was 137.4 milliseconds:
Here are the most prevalent FID-related issues that we discovered:
Inefficient cache policy (87.4% of pages)
Long main-thread tasks (78.4% of pages)
Unused JavaScript (54.1% of pages)
Unused CSS (38.7% of pages)
Excessive Document Object Model size (22.3% of pages)
It was interesting to see that caching issues tended to negatively affect FID more than any other problem. And, not surprisingly, poorly-optimized code (in the form of unused JS and CSS) was behind many high FID scores.
Average CLS Is .14
We discovered that the average CLS score is .14.
This metric specifically looks at how the content on a page “shifts”.Anything below .1 is rated as “good” in Search Console.
The most common issues affecting the projects’ CLS included:
Large layout shifts (94.5% of pages)
Render-blocking resources (86.3% of pages)
Text hidden during web font load (82.6% of pages)
Not preloaded key requests (26.7% of pages)
Improperly sized images (24.7% of pages)
How LCP Correlates With User Behavior
Now that benchmarks were set, we then set to find out how accurately Core Web Vitals represent real-life user experience.
In fact, this relationship is something that Google themselves highlight in their “Core Web Vitals report” documentation:
To analyze Core Web Vitals and their impact on UX, we decided to look at three UX metrics designed to represent user behavior on webpages:
Bounce rate (% of users leaving a website’s page upon visiting it)
Page depth per session (how many pages users see before leaving the website)
Time on website (how much time users spend on a website in a single session)
Our hypothesis was as follows: if you improve a website’s Core Web Vitals, it will positively affect UX metrics.
In other words, a site with “good” Core Web Vitals will have a lower bounce rate, longer sessions, and higher page views. Fortunately, in addition to Search Console data, this data set also contained UX metrics from Google Analytics.
Then, we simply had to compare each website’s Core Web Vitals against each UX metric. You can find our results for LCP below:
LCP and Bounce Rate
LCP and Pages per Session
LCP and Time on Site
On the three graphs, it was clear that all three different segments (Good, Poor and Needs Improvement) are somewhat evenly distributed on the graph.
In other words, there wasn’t any direct relationship between LCP and UX metrics.
FID Has a Slight Relationship With Page Views
Next, we looked at the potential relationship between First Input Delay and user behavior.
Like with LCP, it’s logical that a poor FID would negatively impact UX metrics (especially bounce rate).
A user that needs to wait to choose from a menu or type in their password is likely to become frustrated and bounce. And if that experience carries across several pages, it may lead to them reducing their total page views.
With that, here’s how FID correlated with their behavioral metrics.
FID and Bounce Rate
FID and Pages per Session
Note: We found that a high FID tends to correlate with a low number of pages per session. The opposite was also true.
FID and Time on Site
Overall, the only instance where we see hints of correlation is when we compare FID to the number of pages viewed per session. When it comes to bounce rate and time on site, a website’s FID appears to have no influence on user behavior.
How CLS Impacts User Behavior
Next, we wanted to investigate a potential link between CLS and user activity.
It seems logical that a poor CLS would frustrate users. And could therefore increase bounce rate and reduce session time.
However, we weren’t able to find any case studies or large-scale analysis that demonstrated that high CLS scores influence user behavior. So we decided to run an analysis that looked for potential relationships between CLS, bounce rate, “dwell time” and pages viewed. Here’s what we found:
CLS and Bounce Rate
CLS and Pages per Session
CLS and Time on Site
Overall, we didn’t see any significant correlation between CLS, bounce rate, time on site, or page views.
Summary
I hope you found this analysis interesting and useful (especially with Google’s Page Experience update on the way).
Here’s a link to the raw data set that we used. Along with our methods.
I want to thank SEO software WebCEO for providing the data that made this industry study possible.
Overall, it was interesting to see that most of the sites that we analyzed performed relatively well. And are largely ready for the Google update. And it was interesting to find that, while Core Web Vitals represent metrics for a positive UX on a website, we didn’t see any correlation with behavioral metrics.
Now I’d like to hear from you:
What’s your main takeaway from today’s study? Or maybe you have a question about something from the analysis. Either way, leave a comment below right now.
We analyzed 208,085 webpages to learn more about Core Web Vitals.
First, we established benchmarks for Cumulative Layout Shift, First Input Delay, and Largest Contentful Paint.
Then, we looked into the correlation between Core Web Vitals and user experience metrics (like bounce rate).
Thanks to data provided by WebCEO, we were able to uncover some interesting findings.
Let’s dive right into the data.
Here is a Summary of Our Key Findings:
1. 53.77% of sites had a good Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) score. 46.23% of sites had “poor” or “needs improvement” LCP ratings.
2. 53.85% of websites in our data set had optimal First Input Delay (FID) ratings. Only 8.57% of sites had a “poor” FID score.
3. 65.13% of analyzed sites boasted good optimal Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) scores.
4. The average LCP of the sites we analyzed clocked in at 2,386 milliseconds.
5. Average FID was 137.74 milliseconds.
6. The mean CLS score was 0.14. This is slightly higher than the optimal score.
7. The most common issues impacting LCP were high request counts and large transfer sizes.
8. Large layout shifts were the #1 cause of poor CLS scores.
9. The most common issue affecting FID was an inefficient cache policy.
10. There was a weak correlation between Core Web Vital scores and UX metrics.
11. We did find that FID did tend to slightly correlate with page views.
53.77% of Websites Had an Optimal Largest Contentful Paint Score
Our first goal was to see how each site performed based on the three factors that make up Google’s Core Web Vitals: Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift, and First Input Delay.
Specifically, we wanted to determine the percentage of pages that were classified as “good”, “needs improvement” and “poor” inside of each site’s Search Console.
To do this, we analyzed anonymized Google Search Console data from 208k pages (approximately 20k total sites).
Our first task: analyze LCP (Large Contentful Paint). In simple terms, LCP measures how long it takes a page to load its visible content.
Here’s how the sites that we analyzed fared:
Good: 53.77%
Needs Improvement: 28.76%
Poor: 17.47%
As you can see, the majority of sites that we looked at had a “good” LCP rating. This was higher than expected, especially when taking into account other benchmarking efforts (like this one by iProspect).
It may be that the websites in our dataset are especially diligent about page performance. Or it may be partly due to a sample size difference (the iProspect analysis continuously monitors 1,500 sites. We analyzed 20,000+).
Either way, it’s encouraging to see that only about half of all websites need to work on their LCP.
53.85% of Websites We Analyzed Had Good First Input Delay Ratings
Next, we looked at Search Console reported First Input Delay (FID) ratings. As the name suggests, FIP measures the delay between the first request and a user being able to input something (like typing in a username).
Here’s a breakdown of FID scores from our dataset:
Good: 53.85%
Needs Improvement: 37.58%
Poor: 8.57%
Again, just over half of the sites we looked at had “good” FID ratings.
Interestingly, very few (8.57%) had “poor” scores. This shows that a relatively small number of sites are likely to be negatively affected once Google incorporates FID into their algorithm.
65.13% of Sites Had an Optimal Cumulative Layout Shift Score
Finally, we looked at the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) ratings from Search Console.
CLS is a measurement of how elements on a page move while loading. Pages that are relatively stable through the loading process have high (good) CLS scores.
Here were the CLS ratings among the sites that we analyzed:
Good: 65.13%
Needs Improvement: 17.03%
Poor: 17.84%
Among the three Core Web Vitals scores, CLS tended to be the least problematic. In fact, only around 35% of the sites that we analyzed need to work on their CLS.
Average LCP Is 2,836 Milliseconds
Next, we wanted to establish benchmarks for each Core Web Vital metric. As mentioned above, Google has created their own set of guidelines for each Core Web Vital.
(For example, a “good” LCP is considered to be under 2.5 seconds.)
However, we hadn’t seen a large-scale analysis that attempted to benchmark each Core Web Vital metric “in the wild”.
First, we benchmarked LCP scores for the sites in our database.
Among the sites that we analyzed, the average LCP turned out to be 2,836 Milliseconds (2.8 seconds).
Here were the most common issues that negatively impacted LCP performance:
High request counts and large transfer sizes (100% of pages)
High network round-trip time (100% of pages)
Critical request chains (98.9% of pages)
High initial server response time (57.4% of pages)
Images not served in next-gen format (44.6% of pages)
Overall, 100% of pages had high LCP scores at least partly due to “High request counts and large transfer sizes”. In other words, pages that are heavy with excess code, large file sizes, or both.
This finding is in line with another analysis that we did which found that large pages tended to be the culprit behind most slow-loading pages.
Average FID Is 137.4 Milliseconds
We then looked at FID scores among the pages in our dataset.
Overall, the mean First Input Delay was 137.4 milliseconds:
Here are the most prevalent FID-related issues that we discovered:
Inefficient cache policy (87.4% of pages)
Long main-thread tasks (78.4% of pages)
Unused JavaScript (54.1% of pages)
Unused CSS (38.7% of pages)
Excessive Document Object Model size (22.3% of pages)
It was interesting to see that caching issues tended to negatively affect FID more than any other problem. And, not surprisingly, poorly-optimized code (in the form of unused JS and CSS) was behind many high FID scores.
Average CLS Is .14
We discovered that the average CLS score is .14.
This metric specifically looks at how the content on a page “shifts”.Anything below .1 is rated as “good” in Search Console.
The most common issues affecting the projects’ CLS included:
Large layout shifts (94.5% of pages)
Render-blocking resources (86.3% of pages)
Text hidden during web font load (82.6% of pages)
Not preloaded key requests (26.7% of pages)
Improperly sized images (24.7% of pages)
How LCP Correlates With User Behavior
Now that benchmarks were set, we then set to find out how accurately Core Web Vitals represent real-life user experience.
In fact, this relationship is something that Google themselves highlight in their “Core Web Vitals report” documentation:
To analyze Core Web Vitals and their impact on UX, we decided to look at three UX metrics designed to represent user behavior on webpages:
Bounce rate (% of users leaving a website’s page upon visiting it)
Page depth per session (how many pages users see before leaving the website)
Time on website (how much time users spend on a website in a single session)
Our hypothesis was as follows: if you improve a website’s Core Web Vitals, it will positively affect UX metrics.
In other words, a site with “good” Core Web Vitals will have a lower bounce rate, longer sessions, and higher page views. Fortunately, in addition to Search Console data, this data set also contained UX metrics from Google Analytics.
Then, we simply had to compare each website’s Core Web Vitals against each UX metric. You can find our results for LCP below:
LCP and Bounce Rate
LCP and Pages per Session
LCP and Time on Site
On the three graphs, it was clear that all three different segments (Good, Poor and Needs Improvement) are somewhat evenly distributed on the graph.
In other words, there wasn’t any direct relationship between LCP and UX metrics.
FID Has a Slight Relationship With Page Views
Next, we looked at the potential relationship between First Input Delay and user behavior.
Like with LCP, it’s logical that a poor FID would negatively impact UX metrics (especially bounce rate).
A user that needs to wait to choose from a menu or type in their password is likely to become frustrated and bounce. And if that experience carries across several pages, it may lead to them reducing their total page views.
With that, here’s how FID correlated with their behavioral metrics.
FID and Bounce Rate
FID and Pages per Session
Note: We found that a high FID tends to correlate with a low number of pages per session. The opposite was also true.
FID and Time on Site
Overall, the only instance where we see hints of correlation is when we compare FID to the number of pages viewed per session. When it comes to bounce rate and time on site, a website’s FID appears to have no influence on user behavior.
How CLS Impacts User Behavior
Next, we wanted to investigate a potential link between CLS and user activity.
It seems logical that a poor CLS would frustrate users. And could therefore increase bounce rate and reduce session time.
However, we weren’t able to find any case studies or large-scale analysis that demonstrated that high CLS scores influence user behavior. So we decided to run an analysis that looked for potential relationships between CLS, bounce rate, “dwell time” and pages viewed. Here’s what we found:
CLS and Bounce Rate
CLS and Pages per Session
CLS and Time on Site
Overall, we didn’t see any significant correlation between CLS, bounce rate, time on site, or page views.
Summary
I hope you found this analysis interesting and useful (especially with Google’s Page Experience update on the way).
Here’s a link to the raw data set that we used. Along with our methods.
I want to thank SEO software WebCEO for providing the data that made this industry study possible.
Overall, it was interesting to see that most of the sites that we analyzed performed relatively well. And are largely ready for the Google update. And it was interesting to find that, while Core Web Vitals represent metrics for a positive UX on a website, we didn’t see any correlation with behavioral metrics.
Now I’d like to hear from you:
What’s your main takeaway from today’s study? Or maybe you have a question about something from the analysis. Either way, leave a comment below right now.
This is the second post in our series where we test the on-page SEO of the world’s most popular CMS systems.
In part 1 we lifted the hood on Wix (conclusion: it’s getting better for SEO). This time out we’re focusing on Wix’s main competitor in the “click and go” small business website world; Squarespace, a CMS which currently powers 1.6% of websites globally.
Read on to discover:
how well setup for on-page SEO Squarespace is out the box,
how you can configure your Squarespace site to rank higher in Google,
the technical SEO issues we found on the platform
Let’s get started with a summary.
Table of Content
In Summary: Is Squarespace good for SEO?
Like Wix, Squarespace’s main attraction for small business owners is its quick and easy, “point and click” way of setting up a website. No technical knowledge required, just click through the setup wizard and you can be online in a matter of hours.
It’s not really a CMS designed to be tinkered with. It’s designed to get your business up and running on the web. Fast. And it does that very well.
But for those of us who like to tinker — looking for the ability to optimize every element of a website — that’s a big drawback.
So let’s get this out the way:
If you’re serious about SEO optimization, Squarespace is probably not a good choice.
You can control some SEO basics. But there are either big gaping holes, or (we feel unnecessary) hurdles to jump if you want to get more advanced.
And everything that you can’t do to optimize your Squarespace site is something that a competitor on a different CMS might be able to do to gain an advantage.
SEO is war. And you don’t want to go riding into battle on a horse, when your opponent is advancing towards you in a tank.
We’re going to cover in detail how Squarespace handles control of the SEO fundamentals.
But first, here’s a summary of our findings.
How we tested Squarespace for SEO optimization
We set up a small site on a Squarespace business plan.
We chose a popular theme and loaded the site with demo content.
And we also tested two of the most popular themes listed here.
The tests included manual review, running the Squarespace sites through our own SEO audit tool, and testing using third party tools such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights and GTMetrix.
Squarespace SEO: The good, the bad, and the ugly
Before reviewing Squarespace’s control of on-page SEO factors, let’s run through some of the SEO highlights (and lowlights) of the platform.
We’ll kick things off with a positive.
Good: Squarespace’s HTML code is (comparatively) clean
It’s certainly not an SEO deal breaker. But we believe there’s an advantage to having clean, bloat free code on the front end of your website.
Visual page builders can generate some seriously ugly code. Wix is particularly bad for this.
However we were pleased to see that the HTML code Squarespace generates is relatively clean.
There’s still a bit of “DIVception” (DIVs inside DIVs for no particular reason) when it comes to layout. But for content, a paragraph is a paragraph, and a heading is a heading.
We could do without the duplicated inline style for each tag. But at least there’s no weird wrapping each paragraph in a div, and the text within it in a span like this hot mess from Wix….
Squarespace’s HTML code is not perfect. But it’s definitely not the worst we’ve seen.
Good: Simple integration with Google Search Console
Google Search Console can give you valuable insight into:
the keywords driving traffic to your site
any issues Google found while crawling it
But for non technical users, setting up and verifying Google Search Console can be a little tricky. Squarespace makes it easy.
Just head over to Analytics > Search Keywords, click the button to connect with Google, allow access, and you’re done.
Here’s the full (incredibly simple) process.
Bad: Lack of control over advanced SEO features
Want to edit your sitemap?
Can’t do it on Squarespace.
How about your robots.txt file?
Nope.
For most small business sites this might not be an issue. But we’d certainly like the option.
And generally we found the platform to be lacking when it comes to control of any (even semi) advanced on-page SEO factors.
Ugly: Squarespace sites are likely to fail Core Web Vitals
Google’s “Page Experience” update might have been delayed, but it’s in the post.
To recap, Page Experience assesses several UX and security features (HTTPS, mobile friendly, safe to browse) and measures speed and layout stability through three “Core Web Vitals” metrics.
You can read our full rundown on Core Web Vitals here.
And the bad news is that — while ticking the UX and security boxes — our test site (and the popular themes we tested) all failed Core Web Vitals big style.
While Cumulative Layout Shift may be fixable, the speed issues are likely to be harder to overcome as they are primarily caused by blanket loading of core scripts and styles, even when not utilised.
Indeed unused javascripts accounted for over 3 seconds of total load time.
Bottom line:
Out the box, Squarespace sites are slow and likely to fail Core Web Vitals. We believe that will have an increasingly negative impact on rankings over the coming months and years.
On-Page SEO Fundamentals: How does Squarespace measure up?
Now let’s turn our attention to control of some of the fundamental on-page SEO factors.
Does Squarespace cover them all?
No. There are big gaps. And on top of that, certain on-page SEO tasks are harder to do than they should be.
Here’s our summary again.
Note: having control of an SEO ranking factor is not equal to its optimization. SEO audit tools like Seobility offer advice on how to properly optimize each element, and find errors in optimization which may be holding back your site. See our SEO audit guide for more information on how to fully optimize your website.
SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions
Control in Squarespace: yes
A page’s title continues to be one of the most important on-page ranking factors. And a well written meta description can help you get more click-throughs (although Google won’t always use it).
Squarespace lets you add and amend the SEO titles and meta descriptions for each page on your site.
Just click the gear icon next to the page you want to edit, then select SEO.
You can edit your page’s title and description, and preview how it will look in search.
Tip: for more advanced previewing (including mobile preview), check out our free SERP Snippet Generator tool.
All good so far. But we do have a minor(ish) grumble.
Squarespace lets you set up templated title formats for your pages. Below you can see we have this set to “page title (%p) — site title (%s)” which is the default.
Marketing > SEO > Search Appearance > Pages
This is useful. And generally including your brand in your titles is a good idea.
So what’s the problem?
Well, you can’t overwrite this title format on individual pages. And if there’s a page where you want to go for a longer, keyword rich title, and remove your brand name to avoid truncation…
…well, you won’t be able to do it.
Which is rather annoying.
Learn more about SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions
Page slug / URL
Control in Squarespace: yes
We recommend creating short, descriptive, 2-3 word slugs, including the primary keyword (or phrase) for each page. Use hyphens to separate words.
You can set the page slug for each page on your Squarespace site in the “General” tab under settings.
Important: if you change the slug for a page, you’ll need to set up a 301 redirect to point the old URL to the new one. This guide from Squarespace covers how to do it.
Learn more about URL slugs/permalinks
Canonical URLs
Control in Squarespace: no
On smaller sites you probably won’t need to worry about this.
But if you have a series of similar pages on your site — i.e. targeting the same keywords, or with very small variations in content — there may be times when you’ll want to set a canonical (master) URL.
This helps to avoid duplicate content issues.
Unfortunately, while Squarespace will set a canonical URL for each page on your site automatically, there’s no way to edit it. Which kind of makes it a bit pointless….
¯_(ツ)_/¯
Learn more about canonical URLs
Index control (robots meta tag)
Control in Squarespace: partial
The robots meta tag instructs Google to either index (1), or not to index (2) a page:
<meta name=”robots” content=”index, follow”> – index this page please Google
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, follow”> – ignore this page please Google (but follow the links on it)
You don’t actually need the first one as (assuming your page meets their quality standards) indexing is Google’s default action. But it doesn’t do any harm to have it in place.
Squarespace lets you add a noindex robots tag to a regular page by checking the “Hide Page from Search Results” box.
But they don’t let you noindex individual blog pages…
For some reason they’ve taken an “all or nothing” approach in the blog. Your only option is to noindex everything.
Not exactly ideal.
Learn more about index control
Heading Tags (h1, h2, h3 etc)
Control in Squarespace: partial
Heading tags (h1, h2, h3 etc) help Google understand the structure, and topic(s) of your page.
They should be properly nested.
For example, an h1 tag would generally be the main topic (level 1), an h2 could be a subtopic (level 2), and an h3 could be a sub-sub topic (level 3) etc:
<h1>Pets</h1> (topic of the page)
<h2>Goldfish</h2> (subtopic)
<h3>Caring for your goldfish</h3> (subtopic of goldfish)
<h4>Clean your fish’s tank regularly</h4> (subtopic of caring for your goldfish)
<h2>Cats</h2> (subtopic)
<h3>Caring for your cat</h3> (subtopic of cats)
Squarespace allows you to set heading tags from h1-h4.
While this should cover most content, there are definitely times when you might want to go down to h5, and possibly even h6.
So the platform setting this hard limit may prevent you from fully optimizing your content.
Learn more about heading tags
Structured data (aka schema)
Control in Squarespace: kind of
Structured data (also known as schema) can help Google understand:
the type of content on a page (i.e. recipe, review, product, article),
the entity behind the website (i.e. organization),
and can also be used to show additional search features (rich snippets)
If you’re not familiar with structured data and its impact on SEO, we recommend reading our rich snippets guide.
You can add custom schema markup to a regular page on a Squarespace site. But you’re going to have to do it using their “code injection” functionality, which you’ll find under “Advanced” in page settings.
Note: you’ll need to generate the schema markup yourself. We recommend this free tool.
A little unintuitive, but at least it’s possible.
The bad news however is there’s no code injection option for blog pages. Which means you won’t be able to add custom schema (for example FAQ or HowTo schema) to a blog post.
Learn more about structured data and rich snippets
Image SEO
Control in Squarespace: yes
The three most important elements of image SEO are:
Alt text (description of the image for screen readers and search engines)
File size (smaller = faster = better)
File name (we recommend using descriptive file names)
Let’s start with a positive.
If you forget to use a descriptive filename, Squarespace will let you change it. Which is a nice touch.
When it comes to optimizing your images though, you won’t get much help. While Squarespace will automatically create various sizes for you, they won’t compress or optimize your images.
And as for adding alt text…
Well, you can do it. But they have made it a ridiculously convoluted process.
It’s not quite so bad for inline images. They’ll use the caption (which you can hide) as the alt text.
For any other type of image, you’ll need to consult this guide.
Wouldn’t an alt text field have made things a little easier @squarespace?
Learn more about image SEO
HTTPS
Does Squarespace run over HTTPS? yes
HTTPS has been a confirmed Google ranking signal since 2014.
And in 2021 there’s really no excuse for any site to still be running over HTTP. Notwithstanding any SEO benefits, it’s unsecure.
So we’re pleased to say that every Squarespace site (whether on a custom domain or not) runs on HTTPS.
Learn more about HTTPS
Robots.txt file
Control in Squarespace: no
A robots.txt file allows you to stop search engine bots from accessing certain areas of your site.
For example, you might have a section with user generated content that you don’t want crawled or indexed by Google.
Unfortunately while Squarespace will create a default robots.txt file for your site, there’s currently no way to edit it. We would like to see them add this functionality in the future.
Learn more about Robots.txt
XML Sitemaps
Generated by Squarespace: yes
An XML sitemap helps Google find (and index) all the pages on your site.
Squarespace automatically sets up and maintains an XML sitemap for your site (pages, blog posts etc), however, there is no way to edit it.
Learn more about XML Sitemaps
Is Squarespace mobile friendly?
One word answer: yes
When designing your Squarespace site, there’s a good chance you’ll be focusing on how it looks on desktop.
But mobile traffic overtook desktop traffic in 2017. And Google now prioritizes the mobile version of your site for crawling and indexing.
The good news is that Squarespace sites are fully responsive, and (speed issues notwithstanding) work well on mobile.
Just make sure to preview how your site looks on both desktop and mobile. And remember it’s the mobile version of your site that Google will index and rank. So if you have a feature that displays on desktop but not mobile, then Google won’t take it into account for rankings.
You can switch to mobile view by clicking the phone icon in the Squarespace editor.
If Google does find any issues with the mobile version of your website, they’ll let you know in Search Console.
So keep an eye out.
In conclusion: Squarespace is not recommended for website owners who wish to fully optimize their site
We don’t like to talk negatively about a platform.
But at the end of the day, technical SEO analysis (and of course recommendations for improvements) is what our tool is all about. So it would be remiss of us to recommend a CMS platform where you are unable to fully SEO optimize your site.
There are just too many holes. And certain optimization tasks (like adding alt text to images) seem unnecessarily hard to complete.
But with that being said:
If you’re on Squarespace already, while you might not be able to fully optimize at this time, there’s still plenty you can do to improve your rankings.
So our advice would be to:
run a full SEO audit (you can follow this guide),
allocate time to fixing issues and optimizing your site (where possible),
focus in on creating high quality content that helps your users and fully answers their search queries,
build your site’s authority by earning high quality backlinks (check out our recommended link building tactics here)
Over the coming weeks we’ll be reviewing the on-page SEO of three more popular CMS systems. We’ll then be comparing the SEO pros and cons of each CMS in a roundup post, where we’ll also reveal the best CMS for SEO in 2021. Sign up for our email list below to follow this series, and for loads more fresh SEO tips, tutorials, and guides straight to your inbox.
30-second summary: Third-party information is being phased out by huge tech, making first-party data important
First-party information is voluntarily supplied by users, assisting you build a customer profile
Web users are cautious about offering their information however will do if rewarded
Tracking pixels, CRM platforms, surveys, and encouraging interaction and registrations are all effective ways to record first-party data
First-party information need to be utilized responsibly, repaying the trust put in a company by customers
When operating online, data is arguably the greatest currency of all. By obtaining trustworthy data about your target audience, a efficient and bespoke marketing strategy can be designed. This will persuade consumers that you comprehend their unique needs, desires, and pain points.
Sadly, not all data is developed equal. As the influence of the internet grows, and the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica scandal continues to resound, customer privacy is more crucial than ever. Any online organization requires to build a consumer profile in an ethical, trusted way. This makes the collection of first-party data vital.
What is first-party data?
First-party data is customer information collated directly by your company, based on user behavior. This information can be used to develop a profile of your target market, customizing your marketing and user experience appropriately.
What is the difference between first-party, second-party, and third-party information?
As talked about, first-party data is user info collected directly from your website. We will talk about how you can acquire first-party information soon. Let’s clarify the difference in between this approach and second- or third-party data, though.
Second-party data is basically the first-party data collected by another business. This may be shared in between two websites for a concurred typical excellent. Second-party data stays private. It will not be offered to the general public and can not be acquired.
Third-party information is that which you purchase, normally from a data management platform (DMP) or consumer information platform (CDP). These platforms collect data from users based upon their online practices. These are referred to as tracking cookies. It is important to note that third-party information is not acquired through any individual relationship with consumers.
Using third-party information is slowly being phased out. Web users are growingly increasingly security-conscious and are seeking to form online personal privacy policies. Google has revealed that they will be removing third-party cookies from 2022, while the Firefox and Safari browsers have all already done so. With Google Chrome accounting for some 65 percent of worldwide web internet browser traffic, the impact of this will be keenly felt.
In essence, third-party data is a dying art, and second-party information eventually belongs to someone else. This means that first-party data collation ought to be a top priority for any online organization, now and in the future.
How does first-party data assist a service?
As intimated previously, first-party information is utilized to develop a customer profile. Think of this as marketing research straight from the horse’s mouth. By keeping track of how users communicate with your web presence, you can offer them more of what they desire– and less of what will not interest, and even alienate, them. There is little to get by marketing a steakhouse restaurant to somebody that solely reveals interest in a vegan lifestyle.
Maybe the most reliable example of marketing through first-party data is Amazon. We’ve most likely all purchased something from Jeff Bezos’ empire at one time or other. Even if a conversion was not finished, you might have browsed the items on offer. Amazon utilizes this data to build personalized recommendations on your next visit.
It’s not just a tool for direct interaction on a site, though. First-party information is also indispensable for marketing. By finding out about the practices of a user, tailored marketing can reach them on social media. This is an effective type of incoming marketing that stimulates customer interest.
Consumers that have previously been solely thinking about red circles might be lured to try out a blue triangle, but they are likelier to adhere to type. By welcoming first-party information, you can satisfy client needs before they ask. This is a foundation of success, especially in the competitive world of online commerce. After all, 63 percent of customers now expect at least some procedure of customization from any service provider.
Innovative methods to record first-party information
Catching first-party data is a delicate art. With customers careful about just how much the tech market knows about them, this data may not be supplied freely. You’ll require to use something in return. 90 percent of customers will voluntarily use first-party information if you make it worth their while.
Most importantly, you’ll need to be transparent about how first-party information is caught and used. Customers beware by default, and you’ll need to earn their trust. An open acknowledgment of the data you collect, and how it will be utilized, is the first step to attaining this faith.
Seven fantastic opportunities to catch first-party data
Let’s talk about some ways to help your organization acquire first-party information that will help raise your service to the next level.
1. Add tracking pixels to a website
Tracking pixels are small– typically no larger than 1 x 1– pixels that users hardly ever notice. These are set up in sites through coding and collate first-party data about user routines.
This could include what pages are seen, the adverts that garner interest, and individual info such as whether the user checks out a mobile or desktop appliance.
This all sounds like cookies, but there is a crucial distinction. Cookies can be disabled or cleared, as they are saved within the web browser of the server. A tracking pixel is native to your site, so it will capture information from every go to, regardless of what settings the user allows.
2. Utilize a CRM platform
Client relationship management (CRM) software application is growing progressively popular with online organizations. Chatbots are perhaps the very best example of this. Chatbots are not for everyone– numerous consumers still prefer to communicate with a human– but 90 percent of businesses claim that chatbots have enhanced the speed and performance of problem resolution.
What’s more, chatbots effortlessly catch first-party information. They may grow weary of waiting on hold on the phone for 15 minutes and hang up if a user has an issue or issue. That lead is now possibly lost forever, and you’ll never know what they were looking for. Even if a chatbot can not encourage a user to transform, you’ll have a concept of what they were interested in. This will help in targeted marketing and user customization in the future.
3. Reward users for sharing their data with you
As pointed out previously, customers want to be rewarded for their exchange of data. Ideally, this will be an instant, tangible benefit such as a discount. At least, provide evidence that you are customizing your service to distinct customer needs.
Not every service will be able to provide instant financial inspiration to every user. There are other ways to reward consumers, though. Month-to-month free gifts are a fine example, especially when marketed and handled through social media. Motivate individuals to share a post and like, guaranteeing to supply an incentive to one lucky winner at the end of the month.
This is quickly dismissed as a negative marketing ploy, so you’ll require to follow through on your promise. More importantly, you’ll require to make it clear that you have actually done so. If consumers think that they remain in with a shot of something for nothing, though, they are likelier to consider making use of their data a reasonable exchange.
4. Motivate interaction
Buzzfeed might not the first place many search for compelling journalism, however it took pleasure in stellar traffic for many years. Why? Since it encouraged interaction through silly online quizzes that provided easy ways to harvest customer data.
This isn’t necessarily a model for every single website to follow. You require to protect your brand track record. Inviting individuals to learn which pizza topping specifies them best might do more harm than great. Comparable workouts surrounding your company may motivate interaction. A quiz about your service sector, promising a benefit for conclusion, will draw in interest.
Any qualified SEO services firm will inform you that quizzes and other interactive aspects on a page can also have the benefit of helping with SEO. This is due to the fact that an essential metric for Google when assessing the quality of your website is “time invested in page”. If Google can see that your visitors are spending numerous minutes looking at a page, then this is a positive signal that the page is engaging and interesting to visitors.
Another strategy could be unlockable social media posts. Customers will be interested about what you are using behind a guard. Paywalls are likely to hinder, but appealing content-centric rewards if individuals share their information can be effective– if the outcome is worth the sacrifice.
5. Conduct surveys
The march of innovation makes sure that all customers now have a voice. They anticipate this to be heard. Never lose sight of the truth that customers hold the power in the 21st Century. Negative reviews of product or services can cost a business approximately 80 percent of prospective conversions.
The simplest way to accomplish this is by issuing studies to your existing customers, and even potential leads. Do not anticipate a 100% return rate, particularly if you do not use a reward for the time of customers. Some will leap at the possibility to reveal their viewpoints though, providing you with valuable first-party insights.
6. Encourage registration
Conversions are the most crucial bottom line of all if you run an ecommerce site. This implies that numerous businesses will, naturally, offer services that increase the possibility of making a sale. This could consist of guest checkout, a policy preferred by half of all online consumers.
The problem with visitor checkout is that it catches less data than signing a customer up. Many customers pick guest checkout as it’s faster, provides more privacy (specifically when paying with an e-wallet instead of a charge card), and– theoretically– secures their inbox from unwanted marketing communication.
As we have developed though, numerous customers will supply information if you provide something in return. The most popular example of this is a discount rate on the first purchase. Couple this with a pledge of personalized offers and an improved shopping experience and you’re likelier to see more sign-ups.
Simply beware about what data you are asking for. Make sure to describe why information is necessary. Unless a credit check is necessary, for example, lots of clients might be reluctant to share their date of birth. If you promise to use special deals around their birthday, however, your argument will be much more convincing.
7. Host occasions
Younger consumers worth experience over outcomes. The days of getting unstinting loyalty through providing goods or services at an inexpensive rate are over. The increase of social networks, and its omnipresence in the lives of Millennials and Generation Z, indicates that an individual connection is needed.
Live occasions can provide this. Host an AMA, where a senior figure of your service responses questions about your practices. This can likewise be a great method to reassure consumers that you run in a sustainable, socially conscious manner– something hugely essential to many modern consumers. A live item launch can be another way to attract users.
How does this advantage first-party information? Participating in the occasion will need registration. Even if the number of sign-ups is not mirrored by the ultimate guests, you have acquired important information. You will likewise catch insights from those that do go to the occasion, especially if you encourage interaction.
Mistakes to avoid when capturing first-party data
As we have actually been at pains to mention, customer data is a sensitive subject. First-party data is indispensable, but it must be obtained without betraying the trust of consumers. Here are some essential risks to avoid in your information collection method.
Do not ask for free ride. Information sharing needs to be a quid pro quo exchange
Avoid getting too individual– only look for information that pertains to your organization model
Be clear about how the data will be utilized, providing consumers the chance to opt-out if this is their preference
Yell from the rooftops about your personal privacy policies. Users can never be made to feel too safe
Use the data properly, using value to customers and not abusing the details you have actually gained. Trust is tough to gain and simple to lose. As Google found, dishonest usage of data that breaches trust can likewise be extremely pricey
Is your website making the best usage of first-party information? Do you have any extra imaginative ideas of how this details can be fairly sourced? These are the concerns that will specify the success of your business moving forward. Make sure to hop onto the first-party data train now. It has actually already left the station and is rapidly picking up speed.
Joe Dawson is Director of tactical development agency Creative.onl, based in the UK. He can be discovered on Twitter @jdwn.
Wix has long had a bad rep for SEO. But in 2021 is that bad rep still justified?
This is the first post in a new series where we’ll be digging into the “out the box” on-page SEO of the world’s most popular CMS systems.
We’re primarily going to be focusing on what you can (or can’t) do in each CMS (which is directly comparable), and any inherent SEO problems or benefits we uncovered.
We’ve tried to keep each CMS as close to a clean install as possible. However, where there are widely adopted plugins (for example YOAST for WordPress, which is active on over 5 million sites) we’ve set up our tests sites with these “standard” plugins in place.
In our first CMS review we’ll be focusing on Wix, a CMS that continues to be popular with small businesses, and according to w3techs has a current market share of 2.5%.
Read on to discover:
how well setup for on-page SEO Wix is out the box,
how you can configure your Wix site to rank higher in Google,
the technical SEO issues we found on the platform
Let’s get started with a summary.
Table of Content
In Summary: Is Wix good for SEO?
The attraction of Wix — and the reason it’s so popular with small business owners — is that it’s ridiculously easy to set up a website. Sign up, click a few buttons on a wizard, pick a theme, and you can be up and running in an hour or so.
But it’s that inherent simplicity that makes Wix much less appealing to SEO professionals.
While the SEO basics (titles, meta tags, etc) are controllable, the platform (and the front end code it generates) is relatively rigid. Which makes deeper optimization and tinkering more challenging.
Speed is a particular problem. And one that’s going to become increasingly hard to ignore as Core Web Vitals comes into play this year.
We should point out however that Wix’s speed issues are primarily caused by:
code bloat, and
the blanket loading of scripts and styles (even if unutilised) sitewide.
This is a problem that’s shared by many leading WordPress page builders. So it’s not just a Wix issue.
And overall, Wix has come a long way in the past few years. It’s no longer the complete SEO bin fire that it has long been considered.
There’s a reasonably intuitive SEO wizard that will help with setting up some SEO basics, and you’ll be able to get your site indexed by Google pretty much instantly without having to leave the platform.
Bottom line:
We wouldn’t go as far as to say that Wix was “good” for SEO. But in a relatively uncompetitive niche, you should be able to optimize a Wix site sufficiently to rank on page one.
We’re going to cover in detail how Wix handles control of the SEO fundamentals.
But first, here’s a summary of our findings.
Now let’s look at how we tested Wix, then get the bad stuff out of the way.
How we tested Wix for SEO optimization
We’ll start this section with a caveat.
We’re not Wix pros. And if you are, you may have solutions to some of the page speed and code bloat issues we identified.
So if you’re reading this and your mind is screaming “that’s easy to fix!” then don’t be shy. Leave a comment or drop us an email and we’d be glad to add your insight.
But we are experts in web development and SEO. And let’s be honest, most business owners who choose to use Wix for their website are going to be using it for the drag and drop, beginner-friendly functionality — so that’s what we’ve focused our findings on.
For testing, we set up a small Wix site on a custom domain using the Wix Business Unlimited plan.
The demo content loaded in was sufficient for testing, but we also messed around with layouts etc to see what we could:
break
improve
In addition, we also tested two of the most popular Wix templates (here).
The tests included manual review, running the Wix sites through our own SEO audit tool, and testing using third party tools such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights and GTMetrix.
Wix SEO: The good, the bad, and the ugly
Before reviewing Wix’s control of on-page SEO factors, we’re going to cover some of the biggest SEO drawbacks we found on the platform. And we’ll also cover one of the major pluses we found.
Ugly: Speed matters in SEO, and Wix is lagging behind
Speed has been a confirmed SEO ranking factor since 2010 for desktop, and 2018 for mobile.
And with Core Web Vitals soon to be part of the algorithm, it’s going to become increasingly important.
Unfortunately — at least out the box — Wix’s loading speeds are less than ideal.
The homepage of our Wix test site scored just 37 on Google’s PageSpeed Insights. And it failed the Core Web Vitals “lab” measurable metrics Largest Contentful Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift.
A Time to Interactive of 13.9 seconds is particularly poor.
The cause?
Primarily a boatload of render-blocking Javascript.
Note: this was with minimal “apps” running on the site. The only ones we installed were “bookings” and “blog”. We’re pretty sure that if we added more apps things would get even worse.
The homepage of our test site does have a few things going on which could slow things down (for example an image carousel). So let’s see how an extremely plain blog page does.
Not much better, but at least it passed Cumulative Layout Shift…
And we’re not exaggerating when we say the blog page is extremely plain. It really is just a white page with some text.
Which makes the Time to Interactive of 11.3 seconds… well… horrendous.
So that’s our test site. Let’s see how two of the most popular Wix templates performed.
In a nutshell:
S…L…O…W….
With a flexible CMS, particularly a self hosted one, there are many actions you can take to speed up a website. We covered 39 of them in this pagespeed guide.
But with Wix, it seems the majority of the scripts are part of the core, and there’s not a huge amount you can do about them.
Most Wix page speed guides we found (including Wix’s own speed optimization guide) focused on basics like:
optimizing images
minimizing animations
reducing styles and fonts
All good advice. But when your scripts are taking 2-4 seconds to load, it’s a bit like trying to chisel away at a mountain with a toothpick.
So it appears that Wix has some serious speed issues. But again, if you know of solutions then hit us up in the comments.
Bad: Wix’s page builder generates a ton of unnecessary code
Page builders are helpful.
They allow website owners without technical and coding skills to quickly create complex, visually appealing layouts.
Wix’s page builder is reasonably intuitive and offers a solid selection of pre-built templates.
But like many page builders, it also generates a ton of unnecessary code on the front end (aka code bloat).
And all this extra code adds weight to a website, slowing it down.
Example?
Look at the following section from our test homepage.
It’s a heading (H2) and a paragraph.
So code wise, all we need is:
<h2>Seobility Yoga</h2>
<p>We are so glad…</p>
But here’s what Wix generates:
<div id="comp-kmap0icq3" class="_1Z_nJ" data-testid="richTextElement"><h2 class="font_4" style="text-align:center;line-height:1.25em;font-size:72px"><span class="color_11"><span style="text-transform: uppercase;">SEOBILITY YOGA</span></span></h2></div><div id="comp-kmap0icq4" class="_1Z_nJ" data-testid="richTextElement"><p class="font_9" style="text-align:center;line-height:1.875em;font-size:15px"><span class="color_11">We are so glad...</span></p></div>
(At this point we were getting serious Microsoft FrontPage flashbacks…)
Breaking that down:
The h2 is wrapped in a div, and the text within the H2 is wrapped in 2 spans.
The paragraph is wrapped in a div, and the text within it is wrapped in a span
We also have inline styles (style=”text-align:center…)
It’s ugly. Completely unnecessary. And it’s what Wix’s page builder does for every element on a page.
You can imagine how quickly all this code bloat builds up.
The clean solution
Here’s how we’d do it if we were looking to generate clean, minimal, and importantly, reusable code for a:
green background section
white, center aligned text
a header transformed to uppercase
an max inner container width of 800px (responsive)
HTML
<section class="green-panel"><div class="inner-container"><h2>Seobility Yoga</h2><p>We are so glad....</p></div></section>
We could reuse the green section in multiple locations on our site. And if we ever wanted to change how it looked, all we’d need to do is update the CSS and it would change site-wide.
Does code bloat impact on SEO?
Well, it certainly impacts speed. And we know speed matters.
But in our opinion (and it is an opinion) clean code may also help Google better understand the structure and content of a page.
Either way, the more code bloat, the slower the site. And Wix has a TON of code bloat.
In defence of Wix (kind of)
Once again, we’re going to stress that this is not a problem that’s unique to Wix.
Most (but not all) WordPress page builders also generate similar, messy, bloated, unoptimized code.
But multiple wrongs don’t make a right.
Wix’s code is messy. And it doesn’t really have to be. We hope that’s something they’ll address in the near future.
Good: Wix’s SEO wizard: The jewel in Wix’s SEO crown?
Wix are proud of their SEO wizard, calling it a
“step-by-step plan designed to help you improve your site’s SEO.”
Our view?
It’s useful to a degree (will help to highlight some basics you may have missed), but generally we prefer to go in page by page and optimize.
And we’d run an SEO audit — using Seobility of course — to make sure we hadn’t missed anything.
Because Wix’s SEO wizard focuses on just a few SEO fundamentals (for example title tags), and really just makes sure you have them in place. You won’t get much feedback on how well they are optimized (and what you should do to improve them), or on other on-page SEO factors which may be holding back your site. So best you use our SEO audit tool to fully optimize your website.
But what we do like about the wizard is the simple integration with Google Search Console, and the (almost) instant indexing.
You’ll find the Wix SEO wizard under Marketing & SEO > Get Found on Google.
Before you can connect to Google you’ll have to set up your home page’s meta description and title.
You’ll need those orange exclamation marks in the image below to turn into green checks.
Wix’s SEO wizard will give you some suggestions. The title suggestions are not bad if a little dry.
However, the recommended meta description was rather annoying as it wouldn’t let us proceed without including the business name in the description.
As the business name was already in the title we didn’t think this was necessary. And we know a thing or two about crafting SEO optimized meta descriptions.
But egos in check, and for the sake of testing, we submitted to the machine, and added the business name as requested. And we were now able to connect our site to Google.
Just a few clicks…
…and we were done.
Search Console was all set up.
And within about ten minutes our homepage was indexed in Google.
This isn’t exactly earth-shattering.
But for a non-technical small business owner, it’s certainly going to save some time figuring out how to verify and index a site.
So we’re giving some SEO props to Wix here.
On-Page SEO Fundamentals: How does Wix measure up?
Now let’s turn our attention to control of some of the fundamental on-page SEO factors.
Does Wix cover them all?
Pretty much. Although not always to the level we’d like to see.
Here’s our summary again.
Note: having control of an SEO ranking factor is not equal to its optimization. While Wix will let you set (control) most of the important on-page factors, SEO audit tools like Seobility offer advice on how to properly optimize each element, and find errors in optimization which may be holding back your site. See our SEO audit guide for more information on how to fully optimize your website.
SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions
Control in Wix: Yes
A page’s title continues to be one of the most important on-page ranking factors. And a well-written meta description can help you get more click-throughs (although Google won’t always use it).
Wix gives you full control over SEO titles and meta descriptions for each page on your site.
Note: we’re working in the Wix Editor (rather than the ADI) for a little more control.
Just click the three dots for more options on the page you want to edit, then select SEO (Google).
You’ll be able to edit the page’s title and meta description and preview how it will look in search.
Tip: for more advanced previewing (including mobile preview), check out our free SERP Snippet Generator tool.
You can also set default title and meta description formats (with custom variables) for pages in Marketing & SEO > SEO Tools > SEO Patterns.
The default format will be used if there is no custom title/description in place for a page.
It’s a useful fallback. But we recommend crafting an SEO optimized title and description for each page on your site.
Learn more about SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions
Page slug / URL
Control in Wix: yes
Wix used to create some seriously ugly URLs.
But these days, the platform gives you full control over the URLs (or slugs/permalinks) for each page on your site.
You can edit the slug on the same panel as the SEO title/meta description.
We recommend creating short, descriptive, 2-3 word slugs, including the primary keyword (or phrase) for each page. Use hyphens to separate words.
In the example above, we changed the slug from offerings to yoga-classes. This should help Google understand that the page is a good fit for the keyword “yoga classes”.
Important: if you change the slug for a page, you’ll need to set up a 301 redirect to point the old URL to the new one. This guide from Wix covers how to do it.
Learn more about URL slugs/permalinks
Canonical URLs
Control in Wix: yes
On smaller sites, you probably won’t need to worry about this.
But if you have a series of similar pages on your site — i.e. targeting the same keywords, or with very small variations in content — there may be times when you’ll want to set a canonical (master) URL.
This helps to avoid duplicate content issues.
Either way, it’s good to have the option. And Wix lets you set the canonical URL for any page (or indeed disable it altogether) in the Advanced SEO tab.
Learn more about canonical URLs
Index control (robots meta tag)
Control in Wix: Yes
Have a page you don’t want Google to index?
Wix makes it easy to add a “noindex” robots meta tag.
All you need to do is switch off the “Show this page in search results” button on the SEO (Google) panel…
…and Google should remove the page from their index the next time it’s crawled
Note: by default (when the button is on) Wix will include a robots meta tag set to “index” on each page. You can see a full list of Wix’s default SEO settings here.
Learn more about index control
Heading Tags (h1, h2, h3 etc)
Control in Wix: yes, but limited in blog editor
Heading tags (h1, h2, h3, etc) help Google understand the structure, and topic(s) of your page.
They should be properly nested.
For example, an h1 tag would generally be the main topic (level 1), an h2 could be a subtopic (level 2), and an h3 could be a sub-sub topic (level 3) etc:
<h1>Pets</h1> (topic of the page)
<h2>Goldfish</h2> (subtopic)
<h3>Caring for your goldfish</h3> (subtopic of goldfish)
<h4>Clean your fish’s tank regularly</h4> (subtopic of caring for your goldfish)
<h2>Cats</h2> (subtopic)
<h3>Caring for your cat</h3> (subtopic of cats)
In Wix’s page editor you can set heading tags from H1 to H6.
However, when editing a blog post it appears Wix limits headings to H2 and H3.
Why do they do that? Well, In this blog post Wix state:
“Wix uses only <H1> through <H3> to make things easier for users, and to keep your source codes neat and tidy.”
It’s certainly the case that users who don’t properly understand heading tags might use them for style rather than semantics/structure. But this is a big negative for us.
Why? Because it limits the ability of Wix users to fully SEO optimize their content.
At Seobility we regularly go down to the H4 level in our blog posts and sometimes hit H5.
Structure is important for SEO — it allows Google to determine topics and subtopics. And with the recent release of Google’s passage ranking algorithm that importance is only likely to increase.
So we hope this is something that Wix will address in the near future.
Learn more about heading tags
Structured data (aka schema)
Control in Wix: yes
Structured data (also known as schema) can help Google understand:
the type of content on a page (i.e. recipe, review, product, article),
the entity behind the website (i.e. organization),
and can also be used to show additional search features (rich snippets)
If you’re not familiar with structured data and its impact on SEO, we recommend reading our rich snippets guide.
Wix allows you to add custom JSON-LD schema to any page through the editor.
You can use this free tool to generate relevant schema markup for a page.
For blog posts, Wix will automatically generate BlogPosting schema.
Learn more about structured data and rich snippets
Image SEO
Control in Wix: yes
The three most important elements of image SEO are:
Alt text (description of the image for screen readers and search engines)
File size (smaller = faster = better)
File name (we recommend using descriptive file names)
Wix handles the first two elements well.
You’ve got full control of alt text.
And when you upload an image Wix will create (and serve) a WebP version — a lightweight image format that’s recommended by Google.
How about the file name?
The good news is that The WebP version retains the original file name.
So if you uploaded cat-on-the-moon.png, the WebP version generated by Wix will be cat-on-the-moon.webp.
The not so good news? Wix changes the file name of the original image you uploaded (in this case a PNG file) to a hot mess of letters and numbers.
In the image below you can see the PNG file name generated by Wix (first red box) and the WebP file name (second red box).
Does this matter?
Possibly not as Google images supports WebP. But we’d still rather they didn’t mess around with our optimized file names.
Grrrrr…
Still, it’s more an irritance than a flaw. And we’d say that Wix is relatively well set for image SEO.
Learn more about image SEO
HTTPS
Does Wix run over HTTPS? Yes
HTTPS has been a confirmed Google ranking signal since 2014.
And in 2021 there’s really no excuse for any site to still be running over HTTP. Notwithstanding any SEO benefits, it’s unsecure.
So we’re pleased to say that every Wix site (whether on a custom domain or not) runs on HTTPS.
Learn more about HTTPS
Robots.txt file
Control in Wix: yes
A robots.txt file allows you to stop search engine bots from accessing certain areas of your site.
For example, you might have a section with user-generated content that you don’t want to be crawled or indexed by Google.
Wix gives you full control of your robots.txt file in Marketing & SEO > SEO Tools > Robots.txt File Editor
Learn more about Robots.txt
XML Sitemaps
Generated by Wix: yes
An XML sitemap helps Google find (and index) all the pages on your site.
Wix automatically sets up and maintains XML sitemaps for the various sections of your site (pages, blog posts, etc)…
…and when you use their SEO wizard, will also handle submitting the sitemaps to Google through Search Console.
So all good here.
Learn more about XML Sitemaps
Bing Webmaster Tools verification
When discussing SEO we generally talk about Google. But of course, Google isn’t the only search engine.
So we also recommend setting up Bing Webmaster Tools and verifying your site.
Wix makes it easy to add your Bing Webmaster Tools verification tag (Marketing & SEO > SEO Tools > Site Verification).
And you can also verify your site with Yandex Webmaster, or add custom code if there’s another search engine not listed.
Is Wix mobile friendly?
One word answer: yes
When designing your site, there’s a good chance you’ll be focusing on how it looks on desktop.
But mobile traffic overtook desktop traffic in 2017. And Google now prioritizes the mobile version of your site for crawling and indexing.
The good news is that Wix sites are fully responsive, and (speed issues notwithstanding) work well on mobile.
Just make sure to preview how your site looks on both desktop and mobile. And remember it’s the mobile version of your site that Google will index and rank. So if you have a feature that displays on desktop but not mobile, then Google won’t take it into account for rankings.
You can switch to mobile view by clicking the phone icon in the Wix editor.
If Google does find any issues with the mobile version of your website, they’ll let you know in Search Console.
So keep an eye out. But generally, Wix is pretty strong here.
In conclusion: Wix SEO is getting better, but there’s still room for improvement
As we said in the summary, Wix has come a long way over the past few years, and they now cover control of most of the SEO basics reasonably well.
But speed and code bloat are major issues we hope they’ll address in the future.
And we think they just might do that. Because from their recent announcements, it seems like they’re serious about improving the platform’s SEO.
For example, back in February they revealed their new SEO advisory board on social media.
I’m incredibly excited & honored to announce the formation of the Wix SEO Advisory Board:@areej_abuali @Optimisey @Suzzicks @MichelleRobbins @NickLeRoy @simoncox
Over the next 6 months, the board will work w. the @Wix SEO product team offering their guidance & feedback. pic.twitter.com/MgE487aeF2
— Mordy Oberstein (@MordyOberstein) February 9, 2021
And just a few weeks ago they announced that Wix users will soon be able to manage their Google My Business profile from within the platform.
As local businesses make up a large part of Wix’s user base, that’s a HUGE announcement.
Finally, we’ll say that we do find many Wix sites are poorly optimized on a technical SEO level. But it seems that’s perhaps less a failing of the platform, and more an issue of website owners failing to use the tools available to them.
Sure, you can’t tinker quite to the level we’d like. And there are still issues. But we’re SEO geeks, and for most small businesses there’s plenty you can do to improve your technical SEO.
So our advice if you’re on Wix and looking to increase your search traffic is to:
run a full SEO audit (you can follow this guide),
allocate time to fixing issues and optimizing your site,
focus in on creating high quality content that helps your users and fully answers their search queries,
build your site’s authority by earning high quality backlinks (check out our recommended link building tactics here)
Over the coming weeks we’ll be reviewing the on-page SEO of four more popular CMS systems. We’ll then be comparing the SEO pros and cons of each CMS in a roundup post, where we’ll also reveal the best CMS for SEO in 2021. Sign up for our email list below to follow this series, and for loads more fresh SEO tips, tutorials, and guides straight to your inbox.
A traffic drop doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong – in most cases, it is natural
All sites have experienced a decline in traffic throughout their lifetime which can be explained by seasonality, loss of PPC budget, and many other factors
When it comes to organic search traffic decline, it is often caused by stagnant content, the emergence of new competitors, or loss of backlinks
To diagnose a traffic drop, identify which traffic source is declining, then find which pages have lost traffic
It is important to avoid hasty decisions, take your time exploring whether you lost any positions and which pages replaced yours
Try to evaluate why this shift has happened and how you may fix it
Have you ever checked your analytics and saw a sudden or gradual decline in organic traffic? Who hasn’t? If there’s one common thing in just about any marketing strategy: All of us have dealt with organic traffic decrease on many occasions. Any website out there has seen traffic dips, often even regularly.
How to deal with organic traffic decline when you see something like this inside your Google Analytics?
Image source: Screenshot made by the author (April, 2021)
Here are four well-defined steps to take when diagnosing a traffic drop:
Step 1: Check which traffic source was effected
This is an obvious one but too many people automatically assume it’s Google organic traffic that has dropped.
So make sure it hasn’t been PPC traffic that has exhausted your budget. This happens more than you think!
So assuming, it is organic traffic, let’s go on checking:
Step 2: Which page has dropped?
To quickly find out which pages dropped, navigate to your Google Analytics account Acquisition -> All Traffic -> Channels. Click “Organic” there and in the date range, check “Compare to” and in the drop-down select “Previous period”:
Source: Screenshot made by the author (April, 2021)
Now scroll down and click the “Landing pages” tab to see all your pages and how their traffic of this week compares to the previous week.
Source: Screenshot made by the author (April, 2021)
No need to scroll a lot here. If you see a traffic dip, chances are, your higher-ranking page or pages were affected. So look at the top of the list.
Now, most importantly, if all your pages took a hit, that’s a good reason to worry. This may be an indicator of a site being affected by a recent Google Update or even a penalty (the latter is much less common these days). This article lists a few good ways to research whether there was an update and how to evaluate whether you may have been affected.
A more common scenario is that you will see some pages dropping. Others will remain intact or even start gaining in traffic. This is a good indicator you shouldn’t be worried about any possible action from Google. Most pages go up and down search engine result pages all the time.
Now, you grab the list of declining URLs and research them further.
Step 3: Was there any impact on rankings?
It is not such a rare thing: We see a gradual decline in traffic without any obvious impact on rankings. This can be explained by two possible reasons:
People just don’t search for that query that much anymore. This was very common in 2020 when searching patterns shifted dramatically. And this can still be the case for seasonal queries (think “costumes,” “ski gear”, “swimsuits,” etc.)
Search engine result pages have added a new search element that steals attention and clicks.
So how do you diagnose if your rankings drop?
This question is harder to answer these days. If you are monitoring your rankings, an obvious step here would be to go check there.
Google’s Search Console is another platform to check but it is not easy to quickly diagnose the ranking drop there. The tool is a little behind in showing data. Still, if you give it some time, you can analyze your rankings thereby using “Compare” tab within the “Performance” section of the reports:
Source: Screenshot made by the author (April, 2021)
Once you choose your date range, scroll down to your data and filter it by the “Position difference” column.
Mind that all you need to note here is lost or declined first-page ranking because your second-page rankings wouldn’t have driven traffic to lose anyway. So again, breathe.
Source: Screenshot made by the author (April, 2021)
Instead, you can filter Search Console data by “Previous positions” to see, for example, lost #1 rankings:
Source: Screenshot made by the author (April, 2021)
Another – probably smarter – way to diagnose hit queries is to judge by traffic. Search console shows the number of clicks each query is sending and how it compares to what it used to send. If Google is not the only search engine you are concerned about, using Finteza you can spot search queries that are sending less traffic than they used to:
Source: Screenshot made by the author (April, 2021)
Finteza’s default search keyword report consolidates data from all search engines you appear in. You do need it running for some time to accumulate this data. It is easy to integrate.
Finteza is paid (costs $25 per 100,000 unique users a month) but it is the only web analytics solution that still offers reliable keyword data.
For a better understanding of what is going with your organic traffic, I suggest using all of the above (and more) methods. Again, with search personalization and localization, it is very hard to understand where you are gaining (or losing) from, so combining data from multiple sources is the key.
Step 4: Identify why these ranking dropped
Here comes another tedious part in our analysis. More often than not, your rankings may fluctuate or drop due to Google finding a better page to rank. This may happen because:
Your query deserves freshness and there is a fresher page that was boosted on top of yours. If this is the case, you’d have got used to fluctuations by now.
Your competitor created a better page that has better backlinks.
You have lost some important backlinks which has led to losing some equity
Your position monitoring solution may give you some clues as to which page has overcome you in SERPs. Most rank monitoring platforms come with “SERP tracking” feature that grabs a snapshot of your important SERPs on a regular basis.
You can monitor your target SERP movements for you, for example:
Source: SE Ranking
For high-search-volume queries, SpyFu is keeping a record of key SERP movements:
Image source: Spyfu
To make it easy to spot your lost backlinks that may have accounted for declined positions, use link monitoring tools. They keep a record of when exactly each link was lost, and so make it easy for you to evaluate if this is what may have had an impact on your rankings and organic traffic:
Source: LinkChecker.pro
When you know which page is replacing you in search results, try to find why. There can be an array of reasons, including the most common ones (as well as the combination of such):
Conclusion
Keeping your traffic in control is beyond your powers. What you can do is to keep an eye (building a dashboard would make it easier and more consistent) as well as create a well-set routine for analyzing a possible dip.
When you see organic traffic decline or dip, it doesn’t usually mean that your site is under any kind of filter or penalty (which is most often assumed). In most cases, this is a perfectly natural on-going SERP fluctuation. Stay calm and carefully analyze what has changed (and why). Don’t rush to take any action or fix anything until you check various data sources and take time to come up with a strategic plan. And most importantly: Just breathe!
In 2020, bulk of the 181.7 billion U.S. dollar revenues came from advertising through Google Sites or its network sites
Even though they will be getting rid of the third-party cookie from 2022, the search giant still has a wealth of first-party information from its 270+ services, platforms, and items
The Trade Desk’s 20 percent stock rate drop is evidence of Google’s monopoly and why it should not enjoy it anymore
Google professional, Susan Dolan draws from her abundant experience and details the current search scape, insights and forecasts future crucial themes that will emerge out of the 3p cookie death
Envision search as a jungle fitness center, you instantly envision Google as the kingpin player on this ground. This has been a truth for years now and all of us know the drawback of autonomy which is why the market now acknowledges a need for regulation. Google announced that it would get rid of the third-party cookie from 2022. However a lot can happen in a year, 2020 is proof of that! Does this mean that cookies will entirely bite the dust? Reconsider. I dive deep into years of my experience with the web to share some thoughts, observations, and insights on what this truly indicates.
For when, Google is a laggard
Given the monopoly that Google has actually delighted in and the list of suits (like the anti-trust one and more) this move is a regulative step to create a “net-vironment” that feels less like a net and is driven towards transparency and search scape equality.
However Firefox and Safari had actually currently beaten Google to the punch in 2019 and 2020 respectively. Safari had actually released the Safari Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) update on March 23, 2020. Firefox had launched its Enhanced Tracking Protection function in September 2019 to empower and secure users from third-party tracking cookies and crypto miners.
Google’s option to regard user privacy
Google recently announced that it will not be using identifiers. Google is establishing a ‘Privacy Sandbox’ to make sure that consumers, publishers, and advertisers find a fair happy medium in terms of data control, access, and tracking. The concept is to safeguard anonymity while still providing results for marketers and publishers. The Privacy Sandbox will don the FLoC API that can assist with interest-based advertising. Google will not be utilizing finger prints, PII graphs based on individuals’s e-mail addresses that other web browsers use. Google will move towards a Facebook-like “Lookalike audience” model that will group users for profiling.
Did that raise eyebrows? There’s more.
Do not be tricked– They still have a lavish spread of first-party data
Google is currently rich with clusters of historical, private distinct data that they’ve kept, examined, predicted, and mastered over the years and across their services and platforms. These data provide you a clear sense of the gravity of the circumstance:
Google has 270+ services and items (Source)
Among the leading search engines, the worldwide market share of Google in January 2021 was nearly 86 percent (Source)
In 2020, bulk of the 181.7 billion U.S. dollar revenues originated from marketing through Google Sites or Google Network Sites (Source)
There are 246 million distinct Google users in the United States (Source)
Google Photos has more than one billion active users (Source)
YouTube has more than 1.9 billion active users each month (Source)
According to Google data, Gmail has more than 1.5 billion active users (Source)
A less-known fact, there are more than 2 million accounts on Google Ads (Source)
There are more than 2.9 million business that use several of Google’s marketing services (Source)
As of Jan 2021, Google’s branch off into the Android system has actually won it a massive 72 percent of the global mobile phone operating system market (Source)
Google sees 3.5 billion searches daily and 1.2 trillion searches each year worldwide (Source)
Google has an almost-never ending spectrum of products, platforms, and services– Here’s the complete, exhaustive list of Google’s enormous umbrella.
Source: Matrics360 Google currently has access to your: Location Browse history Credit/debit card details shared on
Google Pay Data from services (more than 2.9 million!) that use Google services
Your gadget microphone
Mobile keyboard (G-board)
Apps you download from the Google Playstore and grant access to
Device video camera, which’s not even the idea of the iceberg
Google’s choice to remove the third-party cookie dropped The Trade Desk’s stock by 20 percent
No one needs to have monopoly and this incident serves as noteworthy evidence. Google’s decision to drop 3p cookies stunned The Trade Desk’s stock rates causing a 20 percent depression in their stock value. The Trade Desk is the largest demand-side platform (DSP) and Google’s choice eliminates the demand for The Trade Desk’s proprietary Unified ID 1.0 (UID 1.0)– an unique property that chopped out the requirement for cookie-syncing process and delivered match rate accuracy as much as 99 percent.
Google’s declaration on not utilizing PII also jeopardizes the fate of The Trade Desk’s Unified ID 2.0. which already has more than 50 million users.
Here’s what Dave Pickles, The Trade Desk’s Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer had to state,
“Unified ID 2.0 is a broad industry cooperation that includes publishers, marketers and all players in the advertisement tech ecosystem.”
“UID offers an opportunity to have discussions with customers and supply them with the sort of transparency we as an industry have actually been trying to attend to a really long time.”
Adweek’s March town hall saw publishers and marketers haunted by the secret that surrounds Google as Google denied to participate in the event. The industry is growing precarious that Google will utilize this as a new way to develop market dominance that feeds its own interests.
We enjoy cookies (just when they’re on a plate)
Cookies are irritating because they leave crumbs all over … on the internet! Did you understand, this is how individuals feel about being tracked online:
72 percent of individuals feel that nearly everything they do online is being tracked by marketers, innovation companies or other business
81 percent state that the prospective threats of information collection exceed the advantages for them
These stats were originally sourced from Pew Research Center, however the irony, I found these stats on among Google’s blog sites.
On a hunt to escape these cookies or to understand the world’s biggest “cookie container” I checked out YouTube which seemed like a great place to start given that it has more than 1.9 billion regular monthly active users. You might visit this link to see how advertisements are customized for you– the list is long!
My YouTube interest further landed me on this page to see how my cookies are shared (you can pull out of these). Even my least used account had 129 websites on this list, imagine how many websites are accessing your information right now.
Back in 2011 when I was the very first to split the Page rank algorithm, I could currently notice the power Google held and where this giant was headed– the playground simply wasn’t huge enough.
Bottom line is, the cookie death is opening up conversations for advertising openness and a web-verse that is user-first, and privacy compliant. Here’s what I anticipate taking place in search and the digital sphere:
Ethical customer targeting
Adtech business teaming up to find manner ins which appreciate their audience’s personal privacy
A more personal, personalized web
More conversations around just how much and what data collection is ethical
More user-led options
Rise in the usage of alternative internet browsers
Incentivizing users to voluntarily share their information
Much better use of technology for good
What do you consider the current climate on the internet? Join the discussion with me on @GoogleExpertUK.
Susan Dolan is a Search Engine Optimization Consultant first to break the Google PageRank algorithm as verified by Eric Schmidt’s office in 2014. Susan is likewise the CEO of The Peoples Hub which has been developed to assist individuals and to love the world.
The story of SEO and UX began almost 20 years ago with both making a foray into the market in the 1990s
After years of analyzing data, I found that UX is a critical ranking factor for SEO
If you’ve exhausted all your SEO techniques but still don’t see a considerable movement on your website or rankings – you’re probably losing at user experience (UX)
Adobe Research’s Sr. Web Engineer, Atul Jindal condenses years of his experience and observations into this SEO guide to help you win at SEO and search experience
I’ve worked with many SEO and CRO campaigns as well as fortune 50 companies over the years. This gives me access to valuable data that helped me understand what is working and what’s not. Over the years by analyzing data I found that UX is a critical ranking factor for SEO.
The story of SEO and UX began almost 20 years ago with both making a foray into the market in the 1990s. While SEO was widely used as a marketing technique, UX (user experience) concentrated on giving the users an enhanced engaging experience on the website.
If you have exhausted all your SEO techniques but still don’t see a considerable movement on your website or rankings. Then probably you’re losing at User experience.
But it is quite difficult to find UX-related issues on your website. When you’re only looking at your website from an SEO perspective! You need to take a look at your website with your user’s (customer’s) eyes.
In this guide, I’ll explain UX and guide you on how to implement it into your SEO campaigns to get results.
What is UX?
User experience (UX) is the experience of a user with your website/application. An easy-to-use website will provide a pleasant user experience but an unplanned website will have a bad or poor user experience.
UX focuses on the site architecture, visitor journey, desktop, and mobile layouts, user flows. In short, user experience is driven by how easy or difficult it is to navigate through the user interface elements that the website designers have created.
User interface (UI) focuses on the graphical layout of any application. It includes several factors such as fonts and design styles, text entry fields, transitions, images, and animation interface. In short, anything visual comes under the umbrella of UI.
It is important to note that UI and UX are two different functionalities. While UI revolves around design layout, UX is the experience of the user on the website while they are navigating the web pages.
Since we have a better understanding of the two, let us further understand how we can successfully implement UX into an SEO campaign.
Why does UX matter in SEO?
In recent years, Google has changed its ranking criteria. There was a time when Google was looking for the keyword reparations in your content or the number of backlinks that your website has.
But now the scenario has been completely changed. Google is becoming more user-centric day by day. They are using artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), and other kinds of latest technologies to understand, evaluate and provide the best of the best results.
Google has introduced the EAT concept as well as metrics like search intent, page speed, mobile-friendliness, dwell-time are ranking factors to rank on Google. All these factors are part of a rich user experience.
A rich user experience is a factor that creates the difference between the first and second positions. Providing a rich user experience is always helpful for visitors and encourages them to stay longer and engage more on your website. That sends positive quality signals that show your website the best result to Google. And as a result of that Google rewards you with top spots.
How to implement UX into an SEO campaign?
As mentioned above, SEO and UX share common end goals – audience engagement. SEO will answer a person’s query, while UX will take care of their navigational queries once they reach the webpage.
Today, it has become imperative to include the two while designing SEO campaigns or any digital marketing strategy. Google is constantly evolving its user experience and merging effective SEO strategies to give the audience a more meaningful experience.
An excellent example of UX and SEO design is IKEA. We all know what IKEA stands for, but their website forms a story at every step. It guides the user to the correct landing pages and keeps them engaged. The color palette, their tags, and categories make a user stay longer and engaged on the website.
Source: IKEA designed on Canva
Empathy plays a vital role in optimizing your web pages with the right combination of keywords. Those days are no more with us when the exact keyword matches were enough to rank well. Today, it is about putting yourself out there and thinking from a bigger perspective.
Google has done a great job over the past five years of getting away from ranking signals that can be spammed easily such as links and keyword stuffing.
In other words, understanding your audience’s buying intent and analyzing their search queries will lead to refined and sustainable results.
Let us understand the three most critical factors that influence the SEO + UX ranking.
Understand your audience
It is probably one of the trickiest parts of running any successful campaign – Understanding the target audience.
Most companies spend a considerable amount of time researching the audience before concluding who will be their right target. It is why we have spent a sizable amount of time highlighting its importance.
We have often heard of marketers, businesses, and content creators emphasizing the importance of the right target audience. While sometimes it is more or less commonsensical to grasp the audience’s pulse, there are times when you need to explicitly ask:
Who is my target audience?
What do they want?
What they are searching for?
How are they looking for the information?
Did my searcher bounce right away?
Was there any action taken on the link?
These are key questions, Google’s algorithm takes into consideration to understand whether search results are aligned to the searcher’s intent.
For example, Airbnb works on an inclusive design model that concentrates on improving readability across all platforms. Their target audience is clearly defined – travel enthusiasts, people looking for holiday home options, and people looking for holiday hosting solutions. Their focal point has been improving the user experience by leading them to the right landing pages. They coupled it with catchy CTAs that probed the user to take an action. Whether you are a host or someone seeking an extraordinary travel experience, their comprehensive holiday solutions pave the way to make booking a holiday faster and easier.
Source: Airbnb. Designed on Canva
Once you understand your audience completely, it can lead to a page getting clicks and some action taking place if you are on the first of Google search results.
UX helps the audience stay glued to the page while SEO honors their intent to click on the page’s keyword and land. Everything you do, your focal points are always around the satisfactory experience of the users. From addressing their color preferences to the layout and messages, you have to build everything that caters to your customers.
Another critical factor in understanding the audience is the user’s intent. It would help if you addressed it while carrying out a detailed audience persona such as informational, navigational, transactional, or commercial purpose. In each case, the queries have to be predefined to understand the user’s need.
Keyword research
Understanding the intent of potential visitors landing on your web page through search is another crucial factor that makes up for an effective UX and SEO strategy. If your website is not fully optimized with the right set of keywords, there is a bleak chance of it ranking on Google or even leading to any action.
For example, imagine searching for the keywords – “How to wear a bowtie?”
The most logical conclusion is that your search will lead you to a tutorial or a video, right? If the same set of keywords are used by an ecommerce site selling the bowtie, your query will remain unanswered. You may conclude that the website using this keyword is not worth visiting in the future because they apply ‘click-bait’ words to lead a consumer to their website.
But if the person lands on the right page with the instructions clearly outlined, they stay to learn, thus increasing the dwell time and may browse the website for more information. Here your keyword has played a vital role in leading the consumer straight to the tutorial.
Google keyword planner, Moz keyword explorer, Keywordtool.io, Ahrefs Keywords explorer, or SECockpit are some practical tools used widely to search for the right keywords.
The best way to select the right keywords to fit your SEO strategy is to iterate the keywords you need ranking. Search relevant topics based on your business to portray and understand how the user intent affects keyword usage.
In short, keyword research, before setting up SEO campaigns and merging them with UX, help you evolve with changing market trends.
Site architecture
Designing a website without optimizing it for search engines is a waste of time and vice versa. Both these aspects work together and need to be carefully considered right from the beginning.
The site’s architecture is how the pages flow on your website. From the SEO point of view, good website architecture means Google will easily find and index your page. Simply, links should help Google to navigate smoothly from high to low authority pages. Google Search Console has improved a lot since its early days and became highly informative to SEO technicians, helping them to understand how a website is indexed and appeared to Google.
Using H1, H2 tags, headings, taglines, catchy CTAs, and informational menu labels, decide whether your audience will interact with your website or not. Remember- your homepage should not be more than four clicks away.
Mobile responsiveness
Mobile-responsive design has gained significant importance for both the user experience and SEO. Over 50 percent of all traffic is now driven by mobile search and sites that are not mobile-responsive will compromise the user experience.
According to Google’s page experience document, mobile-friendly websites have priority access to appear above in search results. Enhancing the readability of your readers by incorporating the right font family and text size is a must-have to consider improving the mobile experience. Having a responsive website with the ability to load faster has on varying screen sizes has become a standard these days.
You can check a site’s mobile responsiveness by using Google’s Mobile-friendly testing tool.
Conclusion
Bad SEO + UX ruins the entire motive of brand building. It pays well to give importance to the fine attributes today. It includes domain name, informational content, internal links, optimizing meta tags, meta descriptions, image alt tags, headings, and page titles to make the entire experience worthwhile.
Implementing SEO with UX design may seem a little daunting initially; however, it is critical to boost rankings and build a great brand.
Atul Jindal is Sr. Web Engineer at Adobe Research.
What’s the cost of SEO? Or, to be more specific: How much does it cost to get a top ranking for a given keyword? Chances are that you faced this question before.
If you ask an SEO expert, they will most likely respond with “it depends…”. Although this answer is always correct 😉 … it’s not really helpful for beginners who are just getting started with SEO. However, especially for them, a rough orientation would be particularly valuable: What is the cost that I can expect, and what are the chances of getting a top ranking?
That’s why we wanted to answer this question. The result is a free tool that we developed for you: How Much To Rank.
How Much To Rank allows you to calculate the estimated cost of a top 10 ranking for any search term. You can use it to get a quick estimate of how much you will have to invest to get on Google’s page 1, and what you actually have to do to get there. (Please note that the tool assumes that a new page is created. We do not check your already existing website.)
Try out How Much To Rank
You want more details? Keep reading! In this post, we’ll explain how exactly the tool works and what data we use for the calculations.
Table of Content
How does How Much To Rank work?
How Much To Rank is very simple to use: Just enter the search term you want to rank for and choose a country version of Google (e.g. Google.com or Google.co.uk). If you run a local company and aim for a top ranking in a specific city, you can choose this city to get localized results.
How Much To Rank then shows you the estimated cost of a top 10 ranking by displaying a simple dollar amount. In addition to that, it determines the success probability of getting into the top 10 for that keyword.
You’re wondering how we come up with these values?
How Much To Rank analyzes the top 10 websites ranking for the keyword you entered and includes various SEO metrics into the calculation, such as:
search volume of the term
intensity of competition
average number of referring domains of the top 10
content of the top 10
Google Ads CPC
All of these metrics are used to determine the estimated cost. The success probability is calculated independently of that value and is based on search volume, CPC, and competition.
But How Much To Rank not only provides you with an estimate of the effort you will have to invest. It also generates a list of specific recommendations, so you know what to focus on during the optimization process.
These recommendations also indicate how the cost displayed above is put together. As you can see, they include the most important SEO tasks such as on-page optimization, content creation, link building, and local SEO.
Examples
Now you know how the tool works. Next, we’re going to show you a few examples of the results and how the calculated values can be explained in each case.
In the example above, How Much To Rank displays an amount of $790. This value is quite low which can be explained by the fact that the recommendations won’t cause too much effort:
The analysis of Google’s top 10 has shown that content with at least 500 words will probably be sufficient to beat the competition. Also, the top 10 pages only have a few backlinks, so we assume that building two backlinks will be enough. Another part of the cost are reviews in order to get an average rating of at least 4.5 stars.
It’s also important to note that this is a local search query which is why the competition is low. This causes the success probability to be relatively high (70%) and the costs to be low.
Note: The metric “competition” actually refers to paid results via Google Ads but it’s also helpful to assess a keyword’s attractiveness and competitiveness in general and for organic search in particular.
Let’s have a look at another example.
The keyword “green eating” (search engine: Google.com, no localization) gets us the following result:
In this case, the cost is a little higher as we’re not dealing with a local search. Therefore, there’s not an easy way to get on Google’s page 1 through local results.
Nevertheless, this is still a relatively low value. The recommendations below show us why:
Although the recommended content length is higher than in the example before, the effort is still rather low as you only need 3 backlinks according to our analysis. Also, there are no costs for local SEO.
Finally, here is an example where the costs are significantly higher:
When entering the keyword “phone review” (without localization) the estimated budget is $27,000 and there’s a success probability of only 40%. This can be explained by the fact that the competition for this keyword is extremely high. Also, the top 10 on Google have an average of 106 referring domains, so a lot of link building work will be necessary which increases the cost.
Now you should have a clearer understanding of how the tool works. But how realistic are these values actually?
How realistic are the results of How Much To Rank?
When we launched How Much To Rank on Product Hunt in March, we got a lot of positive but also critical feedback. We appreciate all the constructive feedback we received and we are already working on making How Much To Rank even better for you. So if you still have any suggestions, please let us know about them!
We know that there are still some outliers in the data and that there’s room for improvement. That’s why we would be extremely happy if you give the tool a try and let us know about your feedback in the comments! 🙂
However, please note that How Much To Rank is not able to deliver exact values that you can rely on with 100% certainty. The main purpose of the tool is to provide a first impression of the estimated SEO costs and of the effort to optimize your website for a specific keyword.
How Much To Rank thus provides an alternative to the widely used metric of keyword difficulty. As the results are presented in the form of a simple budget, they are less abstract and easier to interpret for SEO beginners.
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Background information: What is the cost of SEO (in general)?
You want more details about the cost of SEO? In this section, we provide some general information about this topic.
Let’s start with the basics: In general, the cost of SEO varies greatly depending on the keyword and the type of website you run. But the basic cost components are usually the same. These include (without aiming for completeness):
Costs for an SEO audit of your website
No matter if you do SEO yourself, work with an agency, or use an SEO tool – your first task should always be a comprehensive SEO audit of your website. This enables you to assess the status quo of your website in terms of on-page optimization, backlink profile, and rankings. In our SEO Audit Guide, we explain how to conduct such an audit step by step.
Costs for on-page SEO
After you found the errors and optimization potentials of your website through an SEO audit, your next step should be on-page SEO. This includes improvements to your website’s technical foundation, structure, and content. SEO tools like Seobility can help you with this task. If you’re not a tech expert, you may need a web developer for some optimizations, which may cause additional costs.
Costs for content
If you want to rank for a certain keyword, you have to provide high-quality content on your website which is relevant to that keyword. The content creation process includes several tasks such as research and copywriting, image design, and content optimization. All of these steps take time and cause additional costs.
Link building costs
Building backlinks usually requires a lot of time and effort, depending on the link building tactics you choose. Typical tasks include researching websites that could link to you, contacting them, and writing guest posts if necessary.
Costs for local SEO
Local SEO is a very extensive topic and we’ll provide you with more information about it here on our blog soon (You better sign up for our SEO newsletter at the end of this article so you don’t miss it!). The basics of Local SEO include setting up and managing a Google My Business profile, managing reviews, building Local Citations, and more.
What influences the cost of SEO?
There are a few factors that influence the extent of the costs explained above. The most important ones include:
intensity of competition for the target keywords
Industry/niche: some industries are more competitive than others
How strong are your main competitors? Do they provide high-quality content? How many backlinks do they have?
Status quo of your website: Is it a new website or an old and trusted domain?
You should also keep in mind that SEO costs are typically highest at the beginning of the optimization process. Once you have a technically optimized and authoritative website with great content that ranks for your most important keywords, it gets easier to rank for new keywords. But even then, you should keep working on your website to avoid being overtaken by your competitors. Also, Google updates its search algorithm on a regular basis (for example, Core Web Vitals will become an official ranking factor in May), so you always have to keep up with the changes and adapt your website if necessary.
SEO costs for different types of websites
In addition to the factors mentioned above, it plays a critical role what kind of website you run when it comes to SEO costs. Therefore, we will compare the costs for three different types of websites in the next section:
eCommerce sites
local businesses
blogs or content sites
Special costs of eCommerce sites
Depending on the product range, eCommerce sites often have a very high number of sub-pages. For these sites, a good structure is essential to ensure that Google can crawl and index all relevant content. In addition, many other on-page SEO tasks are particularly important for eCommerce sites, such as optimizing meta tags, product descriptions, URLs, images and page speed, as well as avoiding duplicate content. That’s why the costs for on-page SEO can be significantly higher for eCommerce sites than for other types of websites.
In addition, eCommerce sites should invest in content marketing (e.g. by running a blog) to build trust, to provide further information about their products and for link building purposes. You can find more information about this in our article about SEO Content for Online Shops.
Special costs of local businesses
Basically, local businesses have the same costs as any other website (on-page SEO, content, link building). But obviously, local SEO is especially important here. This includes additional tasks, such as managing the Google My Business profile, collecting reviews, adding structured data for opening hours, addresses, etc., or mobile optimization, which is especially important for local searches.
Special costs of blogs and content sites
If the main purpose of your website is to publish content on a regular basis, you will be faced with constant costs for content creation and optimization. Writing articles that actually provide value to your readers and that make you stand out from your competitors can take a lot of time and money. Therefore, content creation will probably make up the biggest part of your costs.
With regard to on-page SEO, it’s especially important to optimize your meta tags, headings, internal links and images. Also, link building (e.g. via guest posts) is essential in order to get your content to rank.
Conclusion
Even though there are individual differences depending on the keyword and website, the most important SEO cost components are always the same. That’s why you can use How Much To Rank regardless of the type of website you run to get a quick impression of the estimated SEO costs. If you have any questions about this topic, let us know in the comments!
Google recently rolled out the “Full Coverage” function for mobile SERPs
Will this effect SEO traffic for news sites, SEO best practices, and material techniques?
Here’s what internal SEOs from The LA Times, New York Times, Conde Nast, and prominent agency-side SEOs foresee
Google’s “Full Coverage” update rolled out earlier this month– but what does it actually suggest for news-SEOs? In-house SEOs from The LA Times, New York Times, Conde Nast, and popular agency-side SEOs weigh in.
As a news-SEO individual myself, I was eager to get my peers’ opinions on:
If this feature will result in greater SEO traffic for news websites?
If editorial SEO best practices and content methods will develop since of it?
If it will result in closer working relationships between SEO and editorial teams?
Or, will everything stay “business as normal”?
ICYMI: Google’s brand-new, “Full Coverage” function in mobile search
Google included the “full protection” feature to its mobile search performance previously this month– with the aim of making it easier for users to explore content related to establishing news stories from a diverse set of publishers, perspectives, and media inclines.
Just listed below the “Top Stories” carousel, users will now begin seeing the option to use “Full Coverage”/”More news on …” for developing newspaper article. The newspaper article on this page will be organized in a range of sub-news subjects (versus one running list of stories like we’re utilized to seeing), such as:
Top news
Local news
Beyond the headings, and more
Take a look at in-action, here:
Source: Google While the principle of Google “Full Coverage”was established back in 2018, it pertained strictly to the Google News site and app. The innovation, temporal co-locality, works by mapping the relationships in between entities– and comprehending individuals, places, and things in a story right as it evolves. And then, organizes it around storylines all in real-time to supply “complete coverage” on the subject looked for.
The launch of Google’s new “Full Coverage” feature in mobile search, particularly, is exciting because it takes its innovation a step further; able to identify long-running news stories that span many days, like the Super Bowl, to lots of weeks or months like the pandemic to serve to users. The feature is presently readily available to English speakers in the U.S. and will be rolled out to additional languages and places over the next couple of months.
What 5 news-SEO specialists consider “Full Coverage” in mobile search
Source: Linkedin 1. Lily Ray, Senior Director, SEO & Head of Organic Research at Path Interactive Lily Ray is a Senior SEO Director at Path Interactive in New York. She’s a popular voice within the SEO community( with +15 K followers on Twitter), and has actually been chosen for several search marketing awards throughout her profession. She is popular for her E-A-T expertise. Here’s what she needed to say:” Full Coverage seems another brand-new tool in Google’s arsenal for showing a diversity of viewpoints and viewpoints on recent news and events. Since it represents another chance to have news content emerged organically, it’s a great thing for publisher websites. It may likewise serve as a method for specific niche or local publishers to acquire more presence in organic search, given that Google is specifically aiming to reveal a wider variety of viewpoints that may not constantly come across with the major publications.
Hopefully, Google will permit us to be able to keep an eye on the efficiency of Full Coverage through either Search Console or Google Analytics, so we can segment out how our short articles do in this area compared to in other locations of search.”
Source: LinkedIn 2. Louisa Frahm, SEO Editor at The LA Times Louisa Frahm presently functions as the SEO Editor at the Los Angeles Times and is also pursuing a master’s degree in communication management at the University of Southern California. Prior to the LA Times, Frahm was an SEO
strategist at other prominent digital publications including Entertainment Weekly, People Magazine, TMZ, Yahoo!, and E! Online. Here’s her take:”I’ve always liked that element of Google News. It take advantage of readers(like me!)who are consistently starving for more information.
Operating in the journalism field, I’m always in favor of readers using a varied array of news sources. I’m glad that this brand-new update will take advantage of that. I’m interested to see which stories will fall under the “establish over a period of time” requirements. I could see it working well for prolonged themes like COVID-19, but huge breakout themes like Harry and Meghan might also possibly fit that costs.
A wide variety of story subjects have resulted from that Oprah interview, and fresh angles keep flowing in! As we’re in the thick of 2021 awards season, I could likewise see the Golden Globes, Grammys, and Oscars playing into this with their respective news cycles in the past, during, and after the occasions.
The long-lasting element of this update inspires me to ask for more updates from authors on repeating styles, so we can get in touch with the kinds of topics this specific function likes. Though pure breaking newspaper article with brief traffic life cycles will always be necessary for news SEO, this feature enhances the additional significance of more evergreen long-term material within a publisher’s content strategy.
I might see this update supplying a traffic increase, given that it offers another method for stories to get in front of readers. We constantly want as numerous eyeballs as possible on our content. Happy to add one more aspect to my news SEO tool package. Google constantly keeps us on our toes!”
Source: Linkedin 3. Barry Adams, Founder of Polemic Digital Barry Adams is the founder of SEO consultancy, Polemic Digital. He has made many search marketing awards throughout his career and has actually likewise spoken at several industry conferences. His company has assisted news and publishing business such as– The Guardian, The Sun, FOX News, and Tech Radar to name a few. This is his opinion:”
The introduction of Full Coverage directly into search results will theoretically imply there’s one less click for users to make when looking for the complete breadth of reporting on a news subject.
Whether this in fact leads to substantially more traffic for publishers is skeptical. The users who are interested in checking out a broad range of sources on a news story will currently have embraced such click behaviour via the news tab or straight through Google News.
This removal of one layer of friction between the SERP and a larger number of news stories appears more intended as a way for Google to stress its commitment to revealing news from all kinds of publishers– the reality remains that the initial Top Stories box is where the huge majority of clicks happen. This Full Coverage choice will not alter that.”
Source: Linkedin 4. John Shehata, Global VP of Audience Development Strategy at Conde Nast, Founder of NewzDash News SEO John Shehata is the Global VP of Audience Development Strategy at Conde Nast, the media company known for brands such as– Architectural Digest, Allure, Vanity Fair, and Vogue. He’s also the creator of NewzDash News SEO– a News & Editorial SEO tool that helps publishers and news websites enhance their exposure and traffic in Google Search. This is
his opinion:”Google has been appearing more news stories on their SERPs over the previous few years, first Top Stories were two-three links then it became a 10-link carousel. Google then began grouping associated stories together broadening Top Stories carousel from one to three including up 30 news stories. They likewise presented local news carousels for some local queries, [and now, this brand-new feature] It is obvious that Google keeps screening with different formats when it concerns news. Among our top news trends and prediction for 2021 is Google will continue to introduce multiple and different formats in the SERPs beyond Top Stories post formats.
As of the impact on traffic back to publishers, it is a bit early to forecast but I do not expect much boost in traffic. Do not get more incorrect, this feature supplies more chances for more publishers to be seen, the question is the number of search users will click. And if users click, Google surfaces over 50 news links plus tweets which makes it a lot more competitive for publishers to get clicks back to their stories.
I did some quick analysis When Google Search Console began supplying News tab information, back in July of last year. I discovered that News Impressions are less than 5 percent of overall web impressions. Not quite sure how is the brand-new “Full Coverage” feature CTR will be and the number of users will click! The “complete coverage” link placement is better than the tabs, so we might see greater CTR.”
Source: LinkedIn 5. Claudio Cabrera, Deputy Audience Director, News SEO at The New York Times Claudio Cabrera functions as the Deputy Audience Director of News SEO at the New York Times. He is an award-winning audience advancement journalist, professional, and teacher. Prior to working at The New York Times, he was Director of Social and Search technique at CBS Local. Here are his thoughts:
“It can be taken a look at in numerous ways. Some brand names will take a look at it as an opportunity to get more visibility while some will feel their strong grip may be lost. I believe it just encourages much better journalism and even much better SEO due to the fact that it forces us to believe outside of our playbooks and change on some level to what we’re seeing Google supply users.
From a website traffic perspective, I can’t truly talk about whether this has actually impacted us or not but I do understand there are numerous other areas where sites have done major research study and testing into like Discover where audiences can be and grow gotten if you do see a drop-off. I don’t believe the very best practices of SEO change excessive however I believe the relationship between search experts and editors deepens and becomes even closer due to the changes in the algo.”
Conclusion
Google’s new “Full Coverage” function in mobile search rolled out earlier this month and is an extension of the complete coverage function established for Google News back in 2018. The aim of this brand-new feature is to help users get a holistic understanding of complex news stories as they develop– by organizing editorial content in such a way that it goes beyond the top headings and media outlets. In essence, offering users the “complete coverage” of the occasion.
News-SEO experts appear to be in agreement that this new feature will make it simpler for users to check out– and gain a holistic understanding of– trending newspaper article. As far as what this brand-new feature implies for SEO traffic and technique, specialists can only speculate up until more establishing newspaper article emerge and we can analyze impact.
Elizabeth Lefelstein is an SEO specialist based in Los Angeles, California. She’s dealt with a variety of prominent brand names throughout her career and is enthusiastic about technical SEO, editorial SEO, and blogging. She can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter @lefelstein.
Source: Screenshot made by the author (April, 2021)
Source: SE Ranking
Image source: Spyfu
Source: LinkChecker.pro
