When people build or transfer their websites to Webflow, they claim it’s because they want to enjoy the SEO advantages Webflow offers. And yet there are still plenty of example of Webflow sites not ranking well on the SERP. Strange, huh?
Many users don’t observe the best Webflow SEO practices.
I can’t help but wonder, why use Webflow if you won’t leverage the SEO edge it gives you? That’s like subscribing to Netflix and not watching the latest movies.
If you’re sick and tired of watching your site occupy low positions on the SERPs, follow these Webflow best practices.
1. Optimize your Title Tags, and Meta Description
Title tags and meta descriptions help search engines understand the context of a web page. Through your choice of words, search engines can understand for whom your page is best suited.
As you can imagine, the Webflow builder has a special provision for optimizing website title pages and meta descriptions. There's a space for optimizing title tags and meta descriptions in the 'page options' section of a Webflow account.
It looks like this:
Three things are essential when optimizing your Webflow site title tags and meta descriptions.
- Choice of keywords: Use your primary keywords in your title tags. Your primary keyword is the main keyword you’re targeting for that page. You can also use it in your meta description, but it’s not compulsory.
- Placement of keywords: Add your keyword at the beginning of the title tag. Mayor may not add keywords within your meta description.
- Search intent: Make sure your meta description answers the kind of question your target audience might be thinking about when they come to Google.
See an example reflecting all these:
The searcher wants to know how to get backlinks to his site.
Look at the title of one of the top results, and see where the primary keyword is placed?
See any keyword in the meta description? No.
Finally, see how the meta description answered some of the top questions on the searcher’s mind. He’s asking how to get backlinks. The meta description says he can get them editorially from authoritative sites, but he mustn’t buy them.
That’s how you optimize your Webflow website title tags and meta descriptions. You can use best seo tools to optimize your webflow site SEO so you can get easy tracking of your website metrics.
2. Optimize Image Alt Text
Another advantage Webflow users enjoy is that the platform gives room for image alt text descriptions.
For every image you add to your Webflow site, you get a chance to write a short description for it. Also, Webflow allows you to write an alt text for every image collection you create. These help explain how the images relate to a web page's content.
Google loves alt text because they make its world more accessible. Sites with well-written alternative texts tend to rank better than those without.
Remember Google has the 'All,' 'Images,' 'News,' 'Videos,' and 'Maps' sections at the top of its search results. Alt-text is how an image makes it into the image section. When an image makes it there, the post from which that image has been extracted is usually rewarded with a higher ranking.
Alt text optimization is pretty easy, mind you. It simply involves an accurate description of the image and the correct use of keywords. Note that LSI keywords are also advised in alt text descriptions.
3. SEO-optimized URLs
URLs are important to both search engines and users. From Google's point of view, your site's URL needs to tell what a page is about explicitly; otherwise, it will be hard to rank you.
Look at the URL below. Can you tell what this blog is about by looking at this URL?
[www.blog.com/post-123-6567.html]
No, you can't. The URL reads "post 123-8567.” Nobody knows what that means. If humans can't understand your site URL, how will search engines?
In contrast, look at this URL below:
[www.blog.com/hair-salon-tips.html]
By looking at this URL, users and search engines can tell the page is about from a mile away.
The excellent news is that Webflow has a provision for URL optimization. Be it your homepage, blog page, service/product page, landing page, or contact page; the Webflow builder allows you to modify your URLs the way you like.
To optimize your URLs, follow these practices:
- Avoid the use of capital letters
- Find a way to include your target keyword
- Canonicalize your URLs
- Do 301 redirect for broken URLs
- Use hyphens instead of underscores
- Add mobile URLs to a sitemap
- Add a favicon (this aids brand visibility and further boosts recognition, which might, in turn, impact SEO).
