SEO is so diverse that you quickly lose track of everything. And not every SEO tip you find on the Internet is still relevant (or was ever). Therefore, this article only focuses on a specific area: SEO & Webflow and, in detail, on what measures you can take on your own site to (massively) increase the ranking and indexing of a Webflow website.
How good is Webflow for SEO?
Webflow is in visual code builder. The websites that are created in Webflow are therefore not modular solutions, but clear and semantic code. The code that Webflow outputs is so precise and minimalistic that hardly anyone could program a website in the quality (without help).
This is also one of the biggest differences to other CMS (such as WordPress, Wix or Squarespace). By eliminating building blocks and plugins, the code remains clear and uncomplicated. On the one hand, this has the advantage of faster website loading times (clean code = less loading time) and, on the other hand, it minimizes UX and UI errors that can result from old plugins or nested building blocks in the other CMS.
For this reason, Webflow “naturally” comes with high SEO skills and performs really well without any additional optimization.
What steps can I take as a beginner (2023) to increase my Webflow SEO?
Over 100 customer projects bring together a number of basics that can be implemented quickly and, above all, without coding knowledge. In this post, we'll go over our top 6 tips for Webflow SEO. If you want to go into more detail, you can go even deeper into the subject matter in this post 5 Webflow SEO tips for advanced users.
1. Optimize meta titles and descriptions
Make sure that every subpage of your site has unique and appealing meta titles and descriptions. These should be short and concise and contain important keywords for your business.
2. Structure your headlines
Use the H1 - H6 headings correctly to structure your website's content. Use the following scheme as a guide (simply put, the scheme is similar to that used in scientific work):
3. Optimize the images on your website
It is recommended to compress all images to the modern webp format before use to increase the loading speed of your website (which in turn has a positive effect on your ranking). This is done directly in the Webflow Asset Panel:
In addition, each of your images should have a descriptive name and be tagged with an alt tag that describes to screen readers what is on the image.
4. Short and concise URLs
Make sure your website's URLs are short, readable, and relevant, and include appropriate keywords.
5. Avoid duplicate content
In detail, avoid duplicating content on your website and optimize all texts so that they contain added value and differ from other texts. By setting the Global Canonical Tag, you can also communicate to search engines which URL is the correct one, should you have identical content on 2 different URLs.
6. Get your sitemap automatically generated
Webflow offers the convenient option to automatically generate an XML site map. This saves you the hassle of constantly having to keep them up to date and ensures that all links to your website are included in the sitemap. You can activate the automatic site map in the site settings under SEO.
Disadvantages of Webflow for SEO
The disadvantages of Webflow for SEO are manageable but cannot be denied. As of today (08.2023), there is still no native solution for integrating structured data. Other CMS are still ahead of the pack here thanks to plugins.
In addition, the full usability of Webflow is only possible if basic HTML and CSS knowledge is available. In case of doubt, Webflow therefore requires training time. However, this is certainly worthwhile after a while.