Wix has spent years shaking off its old reputation for weak SEO, and today the platform takes care of a lot automatically: clean URLs, SSL certificates, XML sitemaps, structured data on blog posts and product pages, and mobile-friendly rendering all work out of the box. That means the technical ceiling is no longer the problem. What still sinks most new Wix sites is simpler — a handful of settings that ship half-configured and never get finished before launch.
This checklist covers the ten that matter most. None of them require code, and all of them are easier to fix before your site goes live than after Google has already crawled it. Work through them in order; the list roughly follows the sequence you'll encounter in the Wix dashboard.
1. Connect a custom domain before you care about rankings
On the free plan, your site lives on a yourname.wixsite.com subdomain. That's fine for building, but a subdomain signals "not a real business," and you can't build long-term ranking history on an address you'll eventually move away from. Every paid Wix plan includes a custom domain free for the first year, so connect it before you start chasing rankings — not after. Moving domains later means telling Google the whole site changed addresses, which is recoverable but never free.
2. Write a real homepage title tag — not the default
Wix auto-generates page titles from your site name and page headings. The default is honest but generic, and the title tag is still the single strongest on-page signal you directly control. Open the page's SEO settings and write a title of roughly 50–60 characters that names what you do and where: "Jane's Bakehouse | Custom Cakes in Austin, TX" beats "Home | Jane's Bakehouse" every time. Do the homepage first, then every page you expect a visitor to land on from search.
3. Write meta descriptions for every key page
Meta descriptions don't directly influence rankings, but they're your one chance to write the sales copy that appears under your listing in results. Wix leaves them blank by default, and a blank description means Google improvises a snippet from random page text. Write 140–160 characters per page with a reason to click: what the page offers and who it's for. Ten minutes of work, visible forever.
4. Set one H1 per page — and make it a sentence
Wix's editor lets you put any text in any size, which means heading structure is entirely your responsibility. Each page should have exactly one H1 — the main headline — with subsequent sections as H2 and H3. Two mistakes are common: a page with no H1 at all (just styled boxes), or five competing "H1s" because every text box was left at its default heading level. Give each page one descriptive H1 that reads like a sentence, not a stack of keywords.
5. Compress and name your images properly
Images are the fastest way to wreck a Wix site's speed, and speed is a ranking factor. Wix automatically serves images in modern formats and responsive sizes, but it can't fix a 6 MB photo straight from your camera. Before uploading, resize images to roughly the size they'll display at and compress them — most photo tools have a one-click export for the web. While you're at it, give files meaningful names (custom-wedding-cake-austin.jpg, not IMG_4471.jpg) and fill in the alt text field with what the image actually shows. Alt text is both an accessibility requirement and a minor ranking input, particularly in image search.
6. Check that indexing is switched on
This is the setting people discover three months after launch, when they search site:yourdomain.com and find nothing. Wix has a toggle that allows search engines to index your site, and sites under construction sometimes have it off. Before launch, open your SEO settings and confirm indexing is enabled — and that you've removed any "coming soon" status. It's the only setting on this list where a wrong value makes every other effort pointless.
7. Verify your site with Google Search Console
Wix generates your XML sitemap automatically and keeps it current, but Google won't necessarily come looking on its own schedule. Create a Google Search Console account, verify your Wix domain (Wix has a built-in integration that takes a few clicks), and submit the sitemap. Search Console is also where you'll see which queries actually bring visitors, which pages Google can't render, and whether anything breaks after launch. If you only do two things on this list, do this one and the indexing toggle above.
8. Turn on your privacy pages — and link them
A site with no visible privacy policy or contact information looks thin to evaluators of all kinds, including search engines assessing whether a small business is legitimate. Wix can generate a privacy policy template for you, and it takes minutes to fill in a real business name and contact email. Link your policy, terms, and an about page from the footer so they're reachable from every page. This won't win rankings on its own, but its absence quietly undermines everything else.
9. Decide on www vs non-www — and stay consistent
When you connect a custom domain, Wix lets you choose whether your canonical address is yourdomain.com or www.yourdomain.com, and it redirects the other variant automatically so visitors never notice. What matters is picking one and keeping every internal and external link consistent with it, because mixed signals dilute link equity. Pick your preference in domain settings, then use that exact form everywhere you list your site — social profiles, directories, business cards.
10. Preview on mobile before you publish
Google predominantly uses the mobile version of your pages to decide rankings, so the mobile preview isn't a formality — it's the actual product. Wix's editor has a mobile view that lets you reorder and hide elements independently of the desktop layout. Before launch, walk every key page on a real phone: check that headings aren't clipped, buttons are tappable, text is readable without zooming, and nothing overlaps. Fixing it later means fixing it after search engines have already formed an impression.
A quick word on expectations
Working through this list won't make a new site rank overnight. SEO results compound over months, and a young domain starts with no history regardless of how clean its settings are. What the checklist does is remove the avoidable penalties — the unindexed site, the default title, the 6 MB hero image — so that when your content earns attention, nothing technical stands in the way. The settings take an afternoon; the content is the long game.
One honest footnote on cost: while the free plan technically supports much of this, serious SEO on Wix effectively starts with a paid plan — you need the custom domain, and the free plan's Wix ads and subdomain work against you. Annual plans currently start at $17/mo with the first year's domain included. Check the full pricing breakdown if you're still deciding, or our deals hub for what's currently discounted.