Welcome to the Wix SEO Clinic. An examination of selected users’ Wix websites.

If you are new to the Wix SEO Clinic, you might want to first check out Chapters 1 (Patient History & Diagnosis) and 2 (SEO Treatment) before reading this post. Otherwise, read on for some heartwarming recovery stories straight from the bedsides of our first crop of SEO patients.

Case Study # 1: Blaine Photographers

• Main keyword = “California wedding photographers”
• Google rank before SEO: 650
• Google rank after 5 weeks of SEO: 49
• Google rank after 7 weeks of SEO: 7 (!!!)
  

Score! Consider this a perfect example of successful, organic SEO. A couple of months ago, Blaine Photography was buried deep within the black hole of Google (try, the bottom of page 64!). Now, this husband-wife team enjoys a spot on the very 1st page of Google search results for their main keyword, California wedding photographers.  Talk about high visibility!

Case Study # 2: Jaime Miller Photography

• Main keyword = “New Jersey wedding photographer”
• Google rank before SEO: 350
• Google rank after 5 weeks of SEO: 70
• Google rank after 7 weeks of SEO: 11

Top of 2nd page Google results!? Not too shabby. If this wedding photographer continues her SEO efforts (see “No Check-Out” below), moving up a measly 1 rank to achieve a spot on the 1st page of results is definitely feasible.

Case Study # 3: Studio 48

• Main keyword = “Minnesota wedding photographer”
• Google rank before SEO: 150
• Google rank after 5 weeks of SEO: 25
• Google rank after 7 weeks of SEO: 5 (!!!)
  

If you’re getting married in Minnesota, the chances of you getting exposed to Studio 48 is pretty darn high. With a ranking like this, it’s pretty safe to say that Studio 48 has experienced a very successful SEO treatment.

No Check-Out

There is no such thing as “checking-out” of an SEO effort. There are new sites popping up all the time, so in order to secure your place at the top, you need to maintain your site’s SEO. Refresh your content, add new pages and continue your link-building campaign. Wix’ free website builder makes it easy to keep your site’s content fresh without going through programming hoops.

Takeaway Messages

Using these inspirational success stories to encourage you on your own path to SEO success. Remember:

1. Keywords are called that for a reason. Make a list of yours in the beginning, and stick to it.
2. Get good backlinks. It’s all about “who you know” when it comes to getting your foot in the door. Having a link to your site from a popular, reputable source is great. Having that link use anchor text with your keywords is like gold.
3. There’s no check-out of SEO. Just because you’ve achieved 1st page ranking doesn’t mean you can sit back and relax
4. Be patient. You saw that it took our case studies weeks to get the results they have today. It can take months for a new website to get noticed by Google at all. But as long as you make all the necessary efforts, you will observe real results.

Good Luck!

Staff at the Wix SEO Clinic

Last week, we opened up the Wix SEO Clinic. We took a deep look at the websites of 3 wedding photographers. While the sites may have been ranking well for their own names or domains, the odds are you want your business or website to rank well for your keywords, or words used in a search in Google. Refer back to Chapter 1 of the Wix SEO Clinic, to see the condition of these sites’ SEO before they were checked in and given a full check-up by our team of SEO “doctors”.

Real Results in Google

While conducting SEO for these websites, we tracked the progress made, by searching for each site’s main keyword in Google. We marked down this # every few days. Sure enough, over the course of 5 weeks, some real progress was shown:

Case Study # 1: Blaine Photographers

• Main keyword = “California wedding photographers”
• Google rank before SEO:  650
• Google rank after 5 weeks of SEO:  49

Case Study # 2: Jaime Miller Photography

• Main keyword: “New jersey wedding photographer”
• Google rank before SEO: 350
  
• Google rank after 5 weeks of SEO: 70

Case Study # 3: Studio 48

• Main keyword: “Minnesota wedding photographer”
• Google rank before SEO: 150
• Google rank after 5 weeks of SEO: 25

How Did These Jumps Happen?

Magic? No. SEO efforts? Definitely.

As you can see, some real changes were made in the rankings of these 3 Wix websites. (Remember: in terms of search engine rankings – the lower the ranking, the more visible your site is to those searching for your keywords!)

We provided step-by-step instructions to these users in terms of what they had to do on their end, inside their sites. We supplemented this by submitting these sites to some key places on the web.

Here’s exactly what we prescribed for these 3 case studies:

1. Optimize Meta Data (Blaine, Jaime Miller, Studio 48)

This is probably the most important thing you can do for your website’s SEO. It’s also really easy with the Wix website builder. There is now a main keyword for each site in both the <Title> tag, and meta description.

2. Added Content to Home Page (Blaine)

To add some content to their site’s home page without disrupting the page’s clean look and feel, we told the folks of Blaine Photography to add footer text. This was done by creating a text box, and simply dragging it to the bottom of the main page. Using the color pickW tool in the editor, a light gray color was chosen for this text, keeping it readable yet not too distracting.

Footer text is a terrific opportunity to get in some quality content, while preserving the look of your site’s homepage. Blaine wrote a basic description of their services in their footer text. And of course, keywords were also included.

3. Added Keyword-Rich Headers (Blaine, Studio 48)

Google loves headers. To add a header in a Wix document, select the “Text” tool and select “Title”. Title texts in Wix are interpreted by Google as header tags.

Blaine was asked by one of our doctors at the Wix SEO Clinic, to add the following keyword-rich headers to various pages in their site.

Home Page Header: “California Wedding Photographers”; Page 2 Header: “California Wedding Photos”; Page 3 Header: “California Engagement Photos”; Page 4 Header: “California Wedding Photographers”; Page 5 Header: “Wedding Photographer Prices”; Page 7 Header: “Wedding Photographer Blog”

Studio 48 was told to add a keyword header on Home page = “Minnesota wedding photographer”

4. Submitted to Google Places (Blaine, Jaime Miller, Studio 48)

This is a crucial step for any small business hoping to get ranked for regional keywords. We submitted each of these websites to Google Places, and customized their profiles. The instructions for doing this are explained pretty well at the Google Places site.

5. Submitted to Wedding Photographer Directories

To gain some more backlinks (and inject some SEO juice into these sites), we looked for some good wedding photography directories. Getting listed in a directory once you submit your URL can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, but it’s well worth the wait. Especially if it’s a directory with a good PageRank. For our wedding photographers, we submitted to the following directories: www.wedplan.net, www.photographypros.com, www.freephotogallery.info,  and www.ferenc.biz.

Resources

We told these users exactly what to do in order to optimize their site’s performance in Google. If you want to do the same for your site, follow the steps listed above. Here are some helpful links to help you along the way:

• How to Choose Your Keywords
  
• How to Fix Your Site’s Meta Data
• How to Make Header Tags in Wix
• How to Get Ranked for Physical Locations
• How to Gain Backlinks

Note: These methods can be applied to both a free website, and a premium site with its own domain. There’s no excuse for applying some basic, subtle SEO adjustments to your site to get the best traffic you can. Remember: SEO is an ongoing process.  We will continue to track the position of these sites as time goes by, more pages are crawled, indices are updated – and SEO efforts continue to be made.

Good Luck, and stay tuned for the next Wix SEO Clinic chapter!

5 Ways to Share Your Wix on Facebook

1. Share a Link on Your Wall

Type your website’s URL in the “What’s on your mind?” box on the homepage News Feed. You can also access this window on your profile page. Click “Share”. You’ll see a thumbnail image of your website with text.

2. Add Website to Contact Info

Click the “Edit My Profile” link from either the homepage or your profile page. Under “Contact Information”, scroll down to the Website box. Enter your URL and click Save Changes.

3. Add Link to Info Box on Profile Page

This is a convenient way to direct visitors to your website, as soon as they land on your page.

1. Click the small info box under your profile picture
2. Add the URL of your Wix site, starting with http://
3. Facebook will automatically create a clickable link to your Wix

4. Embed Your Site on Facebook

Have a fully interactive version of your website appear on an inner page of your Facebook profile. Widgets, links, slideshows, players, etc. will all work.

1. Click here to add the My Stuff application to  your Facebook profile
2. In another window, go to your Wix website
3. Inside the editor, click Publish > Embed >      Facebook
4. Copy the Embed Code of your Wix site
5. In your Facebook profile, click on your My Stuff page, and click the Add link
6. Paste your Embed Code

5.   Post an Update

When updating your Wix website, have a post   come up on your News Feed wall with some text and a link to your updated site.

1. Make an update to your website and click Save
2. Click the Publish button > Next > Next >       Publish
3. Click “Post to Facebook”

For more on Facebook marketing to promote your website, check out this SEOmoz post.

Spread the Word

You can’t force Google to visit your website. But you can invite it to come and make it easy to locate your site. Getting a backlink from Facebook – one of the most active networks on the internet – is a highly effective way to point Google toward your site, to get it to index you more often, and update its stored memory of your website.

Happy linking!

Getting Cached…and Re-Cached

Every time a search engine crawler arrives at your site, it takes a snapshot, known as a cache. This is Google’s perception of your website. If you enter in a search cache:yourwebsite.com,  you’ll see the version of your site as it appears to Google. Until your site gets crawled again, this snapshot won’t change, and the way your site appears in Google will remain the same as well.

We’ve written a few posts on the subject of getting Google back to your site, to take a new cache. Backlinks, or links to your site, are paths that search engines use to crawl from site to site. The more backlinks you have from quality websites, the more likely Google is to index your site. There is another tool for getting search engine crawlers to notice your website and keep coming back for more…

Add New Pages to Your Website

Search engines are endlessly hungry for new, quality content. This is how they provide users with the best, most relevant information out there. Otherwise, we’d all still be using our Encarta CDs, or even (gasp!) hardcover encyclopedias.

Adding new pages to your website with new content is like giving your website a big red flag to hold up, signaling to the search engines that your site has been updated. Your new content will also cause people to revisit your site, sending out additional signals to the search engines that there’s something worthwhile going on. You may even score some new backlinks.

Content Tips & Resources

1. Use the post How Do I Know Google Has Seen My Website? if you need help figuring out the last time you were crawled.

2. Here’s a video tutorial showing how to add pages to a website

3. Break up large sections of content into paragraphs. Use subheadings and layout separators. The easier your content is to read, the more likely your site visitors will come back.

4. Do not create pages with spam-like content – for instance, creating an out-of-the-way page and filling it with keywords. The search engines, especially Google, have developed sophisticated ways of detecting spammy websites, and if caught, you run the risk of getting your site removed from Google’s index entirely.

Ideas for New Pages

• Testimonials. Many of the free website templates found at Wix have Testimonial pages – make use of them!  Include some testimony from current or past clients, that demonstrates the value you offer users.

• Clients. Add a Clients page to your site, where you go into a little more detail about a particular client or patron of yours. Write a short story about how your business worked wonders for someone.

• News. Add a page for any important changes, and keep visitors updated as to the very latest in what’s going on with your business or website. Sort of a mini-blog inside your website.

• How To’s. This type of content can really get the SEO juice flowing. Provide something unique like a tutorial that users will appreciate.  Make sure it’s related to your product/services.

You don’t have to go crazy adding a new page every day, but make a schedule and spend some time enriching your site’s content on a regular basis. We’re all suckers for novelty; Googlebot is no different.

Does your website tell visitors (and Google) where you are physically located, in the real world?

We’ve seen tons of Wix sites with absolutely no geographical information – not even “vague” regional search terms. Many of you are small business owners: photographers, designers, restaurant owners, marketing agencies, medical facilities and so on. Drive more relevant traffic to your website, and attract people who will actually take action and give you business!

There are a few reasons why you should add info about your location to your website:

1. Users search for local products and services.

Your target market is probably more likely to search for “your-location your-product “than “your-product”. In other words “Chicago wedding photographers” makes more sense as a search term than just “wedding photographers”.

2. You’ll build customer trust.

Letting customers know where you’re actually located adds credibility to your website or business. Otherwise, you’re just a vague concept floating around on the internet. Include your physical location so that visitors can place you in their minds.

3. You may improve your rating in search engines.

It has been argued that including a physical address can boost Google’s trust in your website. This has not been proven to be an indisputable fact, but there is some evidence indicating that having a real world, verifiable address on your website boost your site’s credibility according to Google, which DOES impact your ranking. Read more in this article at SearchEngineLand.

How to Make a Website Geo-Friendly

1. Add your postal address to your site’s pages

Depending on what you’re offering, it may be useful to include your postal address to as many pages of your site as possible. If you’re using mini-pages, add it to your main page’s content so that it’s seen throughout your site.

2. Add location keywords to your title, description and headers

Your website’s title and description should contain “vague” regional terms – as well as some well-placed headers. For more info on how to change your website’s title and description, and how to add header tags, visit these SEOMyWix posts.

Blaine Photography, a team of California wedding photographers, added regional keywords to their page headers. Notice the meta title of their site as well, as it shows up at the top of your browser – another source of valuable SEO juice!

3. Add a Google Map Widget

In the website builder, go to Widgets > Google Maps. Now users on your site can easily pinpoint your precise location.

4. Add your site to Google Places

Google Places, formerly known as Google’s Local Business Center, is a free service offered by Google that allows you to control how your site appears within Google maps. This is a great opportunity to have further control of how your site appears to users who search for you based on location keywords. Yahoo! local is also worth taking a look at. Also, Insider Pages will post your listing on Ask.com. You need to sign up for free accounts with all of these sites to get listed. It’s worth it.

Take control of your business’ success by making it easier for your target audience to locate you!

/noflashhtml and /sitebackhtml

Both the /noflashhtml and the /sitebackhtml are necessary components of your site. They contribute to the successful presentation and functioning of your design elements and Flash content. It’s the search engines who do not need to see these files. This issue seems to only occur when performing a search with Google. The crawlers of Bing, Yahoo! and the other search engines don’t seem to cache these pages. So, Wix has created a fix preventing Google from crawling these two specific files inside your Wix.

The Fix

We have added a robots.txt, as well as a no-index tag to the source code of all Wix sites. These are like signs telling Googlebot to scram when it encounters the /noflashhtml or /sitebackhtml URLs.

The Caveat

Google is not a person. It is a robot. Robots have limitations. As stated in Google Webmaster Tools:

“Note that because we have to crawl your page in order to see the noindex meta tag, there’s a small chance that Googlebot won’t see and respect the noindex meta tag. If your page is still appearing in results, it’s probably because we haven’t crawled your site since you added the tag.”

So, if you are still seeing those pesky links when you search for your site in Google, it’s probably because your Wix has not been recached since before this fix was implemented. And since Google only displays search results based on the info it obtained from its last visit to your site, the old version of your site may still be inside Googlebot’s memory.

You can check to see when Google last crawled your site by typing “cache:yoursiteURL” into a Google search. In order to refresh this memory and restore your proper Wix URL to Google searches, you need to wait until Google crawls your site again. This may take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.

All Good Things Come to Those Who Backlink

This motto should be burned into the SEO section of your brain. Not only does link building raise the ranking of your site in a list of search results, but it affects how often your site is crawled by all the search engines’ crawlers. It all boils down to how many backlinks you have as well as the quality of those links. The more backlinks you have (links on other websites pointing to your Wix) the quicker Google will come visit you. Then, it will take a new snapshot of your source code, and refresh its index. In all likelihood, as soon as Google spots your site again, the proper URL for your Wix will show up in a search.

Get Re-Crawled:

1. Visit the Yahoo! Site Explorer to see what sites are linking back to you.

Type your URL into the window at the top and click Explore URL

2. Obtain more backlinks to your site

3. Submit your site to Google

Be Patient

We’ve seen plenty of users whose sites were showing the /noflashhtml and /sitebackhtml links in Google, only to be restored to their proper listings once the sites were crawled again. The same will hold true for your site. Follow the suggestions in this post and the related articles on link-building, and restore your Wix to its seat in Google glory.

You should also check out Where Did My Wix Go? – Part 1

Is Your <Title> Tag Optimized?

Read this post on how to add a <Title> tag to your Wix if you aren’t sure what a Title tag is or how to add one to your Wix.

Character Limit

Titles should be no longer than 70 characters – including spaces. You can copy/paste your Title text into Microsoft Word and use the Word Count tool which tells you how many words and characters entered text contains. Or, just count the number of words, spaces between words, and any other characters you have in your title, and keep it below 70.

If your title is too long OR too short, Google might not process it. This could result in your site being pushed down in search results, or being removed entirely from Google’s index. Your site’s Title is the # 1 thing Google uses for determining what your site is about. So if it’s too short, or too long and wordy it is difficult both for Google, and your visitors, to quickly understand what your site is about.

Word Selection

Your title should include a few words describing your website, company, business, organization, etc. Be descriptive and concise. If you include nothing but an acronym, a made-up word (like, Wix, for example) or a brand name for your Title, it won’t make any sense to Google. Remember – you have to do this in less than 70 characters. You can use dividers to make your titles more readable, like:

Keyword | Brand Name or Brand Name | Keyword

A Wix Without an Optimized Title:

(the actual URL has been removed from the picture to save face for the user)

The Wix.com link actually points to the user’s Wix.  The user wrote to Wix Support, and our team peeked inside the site’s source code.  Sure enough, the <Title> tag was not optimized.  It consisted of only the word “The” and the 5-letter name of the company.

Sites with Optimized Titles

Wix

Do a search in Google for www.wix.com. The very first result is in fact wix.com (as you can see in the green URL), but the hyper-text link (blue or purple underlined text) is Free Website With Free Flash Website Builder at Wix.com. These 56 characters describe Wix.  Google can tell what is on the Wix site, and knows what keywords should be found inside the site’s content as well.

Nike

The same can be observed with Nike. Do a search for www.nike.com in Google. The first search result is – as you’d expect – the Nike URL. But the Title of the link is Nike.com – Official Site for Nike Shoes, Clothing & Gear. The folks over at Nike knew that to SEO their website, they needed to include a few more words than just “Nike” into the site’s title, in order to be indexed properly and remain on top of their game.

Read more about best practices for Title tags on this SEOMoz post.  To optimize your title, click on your account in the free website builder, go into your site, click on Settings and update your Title. Be sure to click SAVE once you’ve made your changes. Then you’ll have to wait until Google recrawls your site in order to see the changes reflected in Google. This can take anywhere from a week to a month, especially if you have no backlinks pointing at your site.

Stay tuned for more SEOMyWix posts on Wixes Behaving Badly – and quick ways to fix them!

It’s a good question in today’s globalized market.

Worldly Wix Websites

Creating a website with multilingual content is a great way to appeal to foreign-language speaking visitors. Your site might be an international business, or you may just want to appeal to members of different communities who live within the same geographical area. It’s also a smart way to ensure your site will come up for users who perform searches in their native tongues.

You’ll be relieved to find out that the answer is definitely NO: The same content in different languages is NOT considered duplicate content by search engines. This actually holds true even if the content is under the same domain, and hosted by the same server. So, if your free website has multilingual content on it, you do not need to worry about Google translating it on its own and choosing only one page of your site to index.

Keeping Things Organized

Separate your site’s multilingual content onto different pages, to make things easy for both your users and Search Engines. Creating separate pages for your site’s different content will be appreciated by users and contributes to your site’s usability. And an organized site is a popular site!

Bonus Design Tip:

Normally, SEOmyWix is not exactly the place to turn for design advice (shout-out to the fabulous Wix Design Blog!), but while we’re on the subject…it’s worth noting that Wix just added some flashy new animated flag icons to the website builder. Found inside the Clip Art section, these icons can easily be turned into linkable buttons that connect to your site’s various language pages, for a sleek and optimized look!

Bonne chance!!

Using DMoz to Charm Google

Submitting your Wix website to the Open Directory Project, also known as DMoz, can help in your quest to woo Google’s search engine crawlers. DMoz is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited web directory. It’s purpose is to provide a list of websites arranged by category. Unlike a search engine, this web directory does not rank or promote the sites it includes.  However, Google, AOL, Yahoo and other search portals definitely have search engine crawlers that prowl DMoz to learn about new, relevant and worthy websites. And then they duplicate this data in their own “clone” directories. Why?

The Humans

Websites listed in DMoz were approved by volunteer human editors, who are experts in their fields of interest. Sites listed under a certain category actually do contain information relevant to that category. In addition, it is free to submit sites to DMoz, and only DMoz. So, the websites of large corporations and small business owners (like many of you!) all get the same treatment in DMoz land. The individual attention given to each submitted site is why search engines like to look at DMoz’ data. So, while it’s entirely possible to perform well in Google without getting listing DMoz, it helps a lot to get listed.

Submitting Your Wix

• Make sure your Wix site is completed. At least make sure all your pages have content and all your links go somewhere. Incomplete sites with broken links or graphics get “Under Construction” notices and generally aren’t listed.
• Do a search in DMoz for your Wix website, to make sure that you are not already listed. This step could save you time.
• Select the most relevant category for your website
• Scroll down to make sure that category has a category editor, and not a “Volunteer to edit this category” link.  Submitting a website to a category without an editor decreases the likelihood of your site getting listed. Try the next most relevant category if your top choice has no editor.
• Click “Suggest URL” link on the top of your category’s page.  Some categories are too general to accept submissions, in which case you should find a more specific category.
• Carefully follow the directions on the submission form. Submit your site only once.

Here’s a short video on How to Submit Your Site to DMoz.

While You Wait
It can take some time before a site is included in this directory, but it is worth the wait. DMoz’s editors review each site to make sure that it is completed, and relevant to the category under which it was submitted. It can take two weeks to a few months to get approved. To see if your site was included, check back on DMoz’ homepage in a few weeks and do a search for your site. Be sure to only submit your URL to the Open Directory once, as multiple submissions can result in your site being automatically excluded.

Other Directories

You could also submit your site to specialized directories based on your site’s area of interest. There are many free website directories on the web, but the key is to find ones that will give you valuable links, from reputable sources. This means PageRank. Directories with low-level PageRank won’t do much for your site’s linkability. The paid directories will require payment over the phone, a personal e-mail and even a pitch as to why you should be included in their listings. The harder the directory is to get into, the more link value it probably has.

A few good general directories (some free, some paid) include: ProLinkDirectory, Directory-Free.com, WhitePages.com, HotvsNot and DataSoftSystem

Getting your site listed in directories such as DMoz won’t guarantee that your Google ranking will improve, but it definitely gives you a solid push in the right direction.

However, sometimes the natural process of editing involves creating duplicate content. Say you want to update your Wix website, but you don’t want to save the changes on the Published version until you’re positive you like them. Instead of making changes to your original document, a way around this is to go to “File”, and click “Save As”. This creates a duplicate version of your original document. You can now experiment and make changes to your site’s content without permanently altering your earlier work.

But how will Google (and the other search engines) know which version of your website to index?

1. You must decide which version of your site you want indexed.

2. Go into the Settings of your preferred version.  Under Privacy, make sure the “List in Search Engines” box is checked. If it isn’t, check it. Click Apply and Save.

3. Go into the Settings of your duplicate Wix versions.  Uncheck the “List in Search Engines” box. Click Apply and Save your Wix.

What Google Sees

To see what Googlebot currently has stored in its memory of your site, type cache:yoursite.com into a search. Or, type your Wix’s URL into a search, and under the search results click on the Cached link rather than your site’s Title. You can see the date and time that your site was last crawled. If nothing comes up, your site has not yet been indexed by Google.

If you do not clarify which site you want indexed and which site you want kept private, Googlebot will interpret the most recent version of your site as duplicate content. Older links have more time to build SEO juice and are therefore favored by search engines. Googlebot will then revert to your older web document, and this is what users will see when they search for your website.

Getting Your Site Re-Indexed

Once you uncheck the “List in Search Engines” box in the site you DON’T want indexed, you won’t see the changes in a search right away.  It can take Google 1-3 months to “unindex” a page. In the meantime, there are a couple of things you can do to speed up the process:

• Get good backlinks to your website
• Submit your site to Google again

Saving multiple versions of your site with Wix’s free website builder can be a smart editing tactic. Just make sure you’re in control of what can and cannot be indexed by search engines. Happy editing!