Wix.com recently spent a lot of money on a Super Bowl ad during Super Bowl LIII to promote how easy it is to use Wix to create a website. While I appreciate them mentioning SEO and getting good search results, the way it’s being promoted is deceiving. Furthermore, the showcase website in the ad is a horrible example of an optimized website.
You might recall that I followed the Wix SEO contest a while back that Wix lost. You can learn more about it from my previous post.
I took a look at the Karlie Kloss website, which is promoted in the Super Bowl Wix advertisement. It’s hosted by Wix.com, so it’s a good example. Here’s a few things to consider.
Speed Up Your Site
The faster your website, the better. In every single SEO audit that I do for clients, I always review the page load speed using multiple tools like GTMetrix and Web Page Test. But one of the basic ones to use is Google’s own Pagespeed Insights.
How does the Karlie Kloss website perform? It’s the showcase site for Wix. So it should be optimized and fast, right?? Well, https://www.karliekloss.com/ ranks a horrible 27 score on Mobile and 52 score on Desktop. This is slow, and is certainly one of the areas that I always point out during SEO audits. What’s the problem? Images aren’t optimized, JavaScript execution time is not as good as it could be. You can check it out for yourself here: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/.
Properly Code Your Site. For SEO
The on-page SEO is not good. It’s some of the worst coding I’ve ever seen, actually. The site is plagued by common issues that aren’t SEO best practices. I am assuming that the site is using a template, just like every other Wix site would typically use. The site has issues like multiple H1 tags. Actually, one of the H1 tags is literally “ARLIE” and another one is “Kloss”. Not a very efficient use of an H1 tag, as that should be ONE H1 tag and not TWO separate H1 tags. It should be one H1 tag “Karlie Kloss”. I get why the site drops the K in Karlie, because the K is a special font/logo). But honestly there are other ways to handle this.
Then, one of the paragraphs on the site is literally marked up as an H3 tag. Totally not necessary and not recommended. Just mark up the paragraph with the same font as the H3 tag. Remove the H3 tag. H3 tags are meant for headings, not 35-40 words of text.
Let’s also note that there’s another H1 tag with “Read more” as the heading. That’s a heading? Really? The words “Read More” aren’t important enough to be a HEADING on a page. That H1 of “Read more” has been styled so that it looks smaller and less important than another H1 tag on the page. That’s inconsistent, lazy html coding, and I cannot describe it in any other way. It doesn’t warrant an H1 tag, it’s not an important heading.
Not only is “Read More” a smaller H1 tag, but it’s actually smaller than the following H3 tag after it, which is even in a larger font. Again, that’s inconsistent, lazy HTML coding if I have every seen it. It gets better.
Then, let’s look at the H6 tags that are totally random on this site. Some “Read more” are H1, some are H6. What?!? If you have an H6 tag, wouldn’t you assume that you are using H1-H5 tags? Nope! Let’s just add a random H6 tag. Just because. But then later on, towards the bottom of the page, there’s a random H6 tag with absolutely no text in it.
Then there’s even another random heading that’s styled as large text but has absolutely no heading around it. I’m not sure why.
When you use a heading, something that’s supposed to be a “callout” or some text that’s important, mark it up with an H1, H2, H3, H4, or H5 tag. Then, under that heading tag, there should be text, a sentence (or more) or a paragraph of text underneath it.
Headings and properly code HTML code are so very important nowadays, I cannot even fathom not cleaning up the code of your website as a part of a site’s SEO. I literally, personally, have cleaned up the HTML code (headings, bulleted lists, ordered lists, some basic stuff!) and seen better, improved search engine rankings WITHIN HOURS. Yes, on-page SEO is so important now it’s ridiculous. Have better, more structured code than your competitor? You could rank better.
I’m not going to go into the specifics about another site hosted by Wix called KodeWithKlossy.com, which is linked from the KarlieKloss.com website. I’m actually embarrassed for them–the HTML code (on a site that’s supposed promote coding) is just as bad, and again doesn’t comply with SEO Best Practices.
So What’s The Issue Here?
Well, the problem I have, like I suspect many others in the SEO community have, is the fact that we have a website that’s being promoted as being SEO friendly. It’s being promoted as if it’s something that is going to allow you to simply “connect with Google” through one click or one dashboard that’s going to get your website top search engine rankings. And that’s so far from the truth it’s embarrassing and it’s just wrong.
It’s wrong to lead your customers to believe that they are creating an SEO friendly website that conforms to SEO best practices. Because they’re not, and they’re getting some of the worst on-page SEO that I’ve ever seen to date. I’ve seen some pretty bad websites, and the one being promoted to a worldwide audience via the Super Bowl, is one of the worst.
While I do applaud Wix for mentioning SEO to a worldwide audience and appreciate the fact that many have heard about SEO for the first time, the showcase website being promoted is far from being SEO friendly.
I do have a few questions, though. Does the “SEO plan” do the on-page optimization for you? Or is that extra money? Are all of the Wix templates SEO friendly and conform to SEO best practices? This showcase does not. Is there an option to speed up the website?