Top 10 SEO Best Practices for Webflow Sites

Webflow offers its own tips and tools on SEO over on its blog, but for those who want more, this guide will offer plenty of insights. In the modern digital age, SEO is probably one of the most important factors for a business, still, and will continue to be for some time. Of course, with the rules and best practices constantly evolving and changing, it can be hard to keep pace. Not only that, but some site builders have different “best practices” based on their editors, features, and other elements. 

So, what about Webflow? Well, in this guide, we’ll cover their own best advice and provide you with additional tips on how to make sure that your SEO is on point and your audience is getting the content they deserve. First, though, let’s talk a little more about search engine optimization and why it’s so important to get those elusive first page rankings as often as you can. 

Search Engine Insights: By the Numbers

Did you know that 91.5% of all search engine queries end up choosing a result on the first page of results?

Or how about the fact that the very first search result gets as much as 32.5% of all traffic?

Here are a few more numbers to keep in mind: 

• 53% of website traffic comes from organic searches
• 90.63% of all pages get no organic Google traffic (usually due to poor or no SEO)
• 1 in 3 mobile searches are location-specific
• 76% of people who search for something on their smartphones locally will visit within a day of the search 
• 39% of purchases have been influenced by a related search result
• There are 40-60 billion searches that take place on Google in the U.S. every month 

If those aren’t some numbers that get your attention, we’re not sure what will. The fact of the matter is that search engine optimization is essential. Using it correctly, of course, is the most essential part. 

The good news is that Webflow is already set up to make it even easier. You'll find features like:

• Native tools for descriptions, meta titles, custom permalinks, and image alt texts
• Convenient editing features for contextual links, headers, and more rich text tools
• Easy XML sitemap generation and Google Search Console integration
• Intuitive design features and tools for creating the ideal browsing and navigation experience
  

Keep reading for the 10 best practices for SEO on a Webflow site so that you can bolster your rankings and boost your SEO success for improved ROI, increased customers, and so much more. 

Tip #1: Make sure your pages have SEO-friendly titles and meta descriptions

Titles and meta descriptions exist for a reason. These nuggets are what catch people’s attention in the search results and if yours aren’t optimized, they aren’t going to rank well. Not only that, but they might not convey the appropriate message to let your audience know what they’re getting when they come to your site. Webflow makes it easy to optimize title tags, meta descriptions, and other elements of your website to ensure that things are as SEO-friendly as possible. Take advantage of those tools, as well as any others that you find along the way. 

Search engines generally display only a certain number of characters, so you have to be short and sweet in getting your point across with meta descriptions and titles. Choose keywords carefully, make sure your titles match search intent, and avoid any keyword stuffing. Here’s an example from HubSpot:

Tip #2: Optimize image alt text 

Image optimization is one area where so many brands drop the ball without even realizing it. You have to choose the alt text carefully and incorporate keywords where you can without overdoing it. You'll also want to pay careful attention to the file format and compress images where you can. This will ensure that your site loads as quickly as possible. 

Make sure that you don’t make the mistake of keyword stuffing in things like alt text. Just use one keyword or phrase and leave it at that. If you can’t work anything in logically, just choose something else. 

Tip #3: Optimize URLs for SEO 

You can’t find success without SEO-friendly URLs. This isn’t just for your main site and pages, either. You want to make sure that every blog post, landing page, and other pages on your site has an SEO-friendly URL. After all, Google is far more likely to tag your blog for SEO when it looks like this:

www.blog.com/dog-training-tips.html

As opposed to when it looks like:

www.blog.com/post-1254-854.html

If your URLs are bulky and not optimized, they’ll also be a turn-off to your human audience, who like the simplicity and easy identification of optimized and customized URLs. 

Tip #4: Check your navigation and design

No matter how good your SEO is, if your users can’t actually get around the site, it’s not going to matter. Make sure that you take the time to check out the navigation features of your website and ensure that they’re easy to follow. Stick with basic header navigation for easy access and make sure that your mobile site offers the familiar drop-down that people are used to seeing. 

If people can’t find their way around, they’re not going to bother sticking around. That's going to increase your bounce rate, which will decrease your SEO. Plus, even if your SEO is on point, people aren’t going to stick around and that means that your efforts will go unnoticed because no one is looking for long. 

Webflow even has a handy gallery to showcase great designs and themes that have been built on the platform to inspire your own flawless design and functional navigation:

Tip #5: Connect your site to Google Search Console 

Of course, you can’t do anything with SEO if the search engines don’t even know to come looking for your site. Once you build and publish a website, you also need to create an XML sitemap and then add the Google Search Console features to your Webflow site. It’s a simple process outlined by Webflow, and we’ll even cover it here to save you the trip:

• Login to the Search Console tool with your Google information
• Choose to add a new “property” from the dropdown (website)
• Pick the URL prefix, then add your site and choose the HTML tag option
• Copy your Verification ID and paste it in your SEO settings under the Verification tab
• Save all your changes and click “Publish”
• Return to the Search Console main dashboard and click “Verify”

This will generate a bunch of useful reports about your site and also ensure that search engines know to index your site so that you can appear in the rankings. 

Tip #6: Check the advanced publishing options 

Webflow has a host of advanced (hidden) SEO features, and many people don’t even know they exist. If you navigate to:

Project > Settings > Hosting > Advanced Publishing Options

You'll find sliders that allow you to toggle features on and off for SSL, Secure Frame Headers, and being able to minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. These features allow you to ensure that you get good rankings based on your site setup and accessibility. For example, minifying code removes a lot of the bloat so that your site can load faster and easier. It also makes it easier for search engines to crawl your website. 

Tip #7: Make sure your blog post structures are SEO-friendly

When it comes to blogging, there’s more to it than just posting useful content. You also have to make your blogs search engine friendly. Your goal is to publish content that readers can use but you also have to make sure that search engines can find it. This is done through several optimization efforts, including others on this list. However, there are some things that you’ll want to cover to make sure the search engines measure up. 

• First, keep your copy structured with lists and headers to make it bot-friendly 
• Use keywords to help identify content 
• Create posts that deliver digestible, engaging, and useful content 

Basically, you’re trying to create the ideal user experience here, which is what the bots are looking for, too, to rate your website. When your blogs are structured for the reader and the search engine crawlers, everyone wins. 

Tip #8: Optimize your page speeds

If your site isn’t loading quickly or if there seems to be something that is lagging, you can use page speed tools to test how your site ranks. You can even find tools to perform a site audit that will tell you exactly where your performance is lacking and what you can do to improve it. Take the time to use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights and others to see how your site ranks. 

If you’re still not finding solutions or if your research leads to learning that you’re doing everything that you can, the issue might be with your website hosting provider. If that’s the case, the next tip is for you. 

Tip #9: Choose a good website host

Webflow is happy to help you boost your SEO efforts, but they can only do so much. Even you, on your own, can only accomplish so much for the sake of getting better search rankings. If you have a hosting provider that has poor uptime or slow page load speeds, you’re not going to impress the search engines with your efforts. You have to choose a great host with good performance statistics in addition to optimizing the rest of your Webflow site for SEO. 

There’s a lot that Webflow’s website builder tool can do for you, but it can’t guarantee that you’ll get the best performance from hosting unless you also choose a quality provider. This is going to be up to you. Feel free to use page audit and site speed test tools to see where your website stands and then start researching what you can do or which hosting providers you can turn to for the best page speeds available. 

Tip #10: Find out what your audience wants

When you really want to capitalize on your SEO strategy, go straight to the source. Google ranks pages because of the way that Internet users view them and use them. If you want to create a site with high-quality content that ranks well for SEO, find out what your customers want, get the most common questions from them, and use that insight to create your website. Add an FAQ page for their feedback, and consider using their insights for blog topics, landing page improvements, and more. 

How should you go about getting this information? In the easiest, and often the most preferred way, of course: live chat. When you integrate a live website chat like the solutions offered by the virtual agents at Smith.ai, you’ll be able to generate all kinds of feedback and find out exactly what your audience wants to see. There’s no better way to improve your search engine optimization than by asking people what they expect or need from your brand. 

Expect better results with less work when you partner with Smith.ai 

You can get great results from live chat customer interactions, and you can do it all without having to put in the work or worry about one more thing. We know what it takes to provide the ideal customer experience and be there to answer every live chat, call, and email, no matter what time of day or night. 

In addition to improving your SEO and customer service, the live chat agents and virtual receptionists at Smith.ai can help streamline your operations and handle everything from new client intake and scheduling to after-hours call answering, Facebook message answering, and so much more. Plus, we know what it means to make sure that your customers don’t just feel heard, but also valued and understood and we will ensure that with each live chat and call that we answer on your behalf. 

Learn more by scheduling a consultation to discuss how our live chat agents can get valuable insights that your brand can use for SEO and more, as well as how else we can help you improve your operations. You can also reach us at hello@smith.ai or (650) 727-6484.