How do Google view website builders like Wix for small businesses?
A senior Google executive has given an answer this week on why they might not attract the traffic you expect.
Google’s John Mueller has this week given a rare insight into how Google’s search engine views “self-build” websites like Wix.
Asked in a Google Search Central SEO hang-out on October 8th about how small businesses should get started with Search Engine Optimisation, he said:
“Small businesses, when they go online, they don’t create HTML pages any more – they go into WordPress, or into Wix, or into any of the other common hosting platforms, and they create their pages by putting text in, and dragging images in, and all of these things, and they don’t really realize that in the back, there’s actually an HTML page.”
He went on to describe the difficulty of trying to apply SEO principles when so many of the important settings were hidden or inaccessible.
This backs up analysis done by David McSweeney of seobility who in April said that Wix had always been “a complete bin fire” when it came to SEO. He said their speed issues are primarily caused by:
“code bloat, and the blanket loading of scripts and styles (even if unutilised) sitewide”
and that these slow loading times
“means that ‘Out of the box’ Wix sites are likely to fail Google’s Core Web Vitals test”.
This isn’t an issue that’s unique to Wix. In general terms the easier a web design tool is to use the more there is happening in the background to make it work, which naturally makes the load times much slower. This in turn means the site’s ranking on Google is severely punished (due to their Core Web Vitals test, introduced this year).
So what can you do?
If you are already customer of Wix or any similar self-build website provider, there are guides available on making the best of what you have by navigating to some of the harder-to-find fields available. While this will never fix what’s going on “under the hood”, it should improve your rankings a little.
If you are still deciding on a website provider and want your new site to actually attract business, the best return on your investment may be to avoid these self-build sites altogether and opt instead for a site built from the ground up by a Web professional and hosted on fast infrastructure. If you choose the right designer, you should find that they consider SEO at every level of the site, and ensure that only necessary scripts and plugins are used to keep the load speed fast for those all-important Google speed tests. The challenge with this can be the up-front costs of a Web developer’s time, which can be significant for a small business (though this is never an issue with Enterprising IT of course).
If you are an Enterprising IT customer, you are already in good hands. Our “Ethical SEO” approach is built into every level of our platform and processes (you will have noticed that the first questions we asked you were about your intended site visitors, before we’d even discussed design). Our proprietary site structure was designed to be as lean as possible while ensuring your visitors get the maximum visual impact. We have no startup fees. We exclusively host on fast UK-based servers. And we report to you regularly not just analysis of your visitors but also your site’s availability, speed, and search position. Does YOUR website provider do these things? If not, now might be a good time to get in touch!
