Wix SEO Glossary

This glossary explains the SEO terms a Wix site owner actually needs, including the Wix-specific ones no general SEO glossary covers. Terms are grouped by topic rather than alphabetically, so related concepts sit together. Where a term is covered in more depth in the free Wix SEO course, the entry links to the relevant lesson.

Wix Platform

Wix SEO Panel — The page-level settings panel where you control a page’s title tag, meta description, URL slug, canonical URL, and social sharing previews. Every page and blog post has its own SEO Panel, accessed by clicking the page menu and selecting “SEO (Google)” in the Wix Editor. This is where you do most of your on-page SEO work on Wix.
Custom Code (Head Injection) — A feature that lets you add HTML, CSS, or JavaScript to the head section, body start, or body end of individual pages or across the entire site. For SEO, Custom Code is how you add JSON-LD structured data, analytics scripts, and search engine verification tags. Find it under Settings then Custom Code in the Wix dashboard.
URL Redirect Manager — A built-in tool for creating 301 (permanent) and 302 (temporary) redirects from old URLs to new ones. When you change a page slug or remove a page, create a redirect here so existing links and rankings transfer to the new URL. Access it from the SEO Tools section of the dashboard.
Wix Studio — The professional version of Wix for agencies and designers, offering responsive design with breakpoints, custom CSS, advanced layout controls, and team collaboration. Wix Studio replaced Editor X in 2023 and gives more control over site structure, performance, and responsive behaviour than the standard Wix Editor.
Wix Editor (Classic) — The original drag-and-drop builder using absolute positioning, where pages are designed pixel by pixel rather than with responsive breakpoints. Wix generates a separate mobile version of each page automatically. Simpler to use than Wix Studio but with less control over responsive layouts and CSS.
Velo by Wix — The full-stack development platform built into Wix, giving access to backend code, database collections, HTTP functions, and APIs. For SEO, Velo enables dynamic meta tags, programmatic schema generation, custom server-side logic, and database-driven pages beyond what the visual editor offers.
SEO Wiz — A guided setup assistant that creates a personalised SEO checklist based on your business type, location, and target keywords. SEO Wiz walks you through foundational tasks such as connecting Search Console and setting your homepage title tag. It is a starting point for SEO, not a complete strategy.
Dynamic Pages — Pages generated automatically from a CMS database collection, each with its own unique URL. Product pages in Wix Stores and service pages in Wix Bookings are examples. The URL pattern and metadata for dynamic pages are controlled through SEO Patterns.
SEO Patterns — A feature that lets you define meta title and meta description templates for all dynamic pages of the same type, using variables such as page title, collection field, and site name. SEO Patterns ensure every dynamically generated page gets unique, keyword-relevant metadata without manual editing. Configure them in the SEO Tools section.
Wix Blog — The built-in blogging application that creates category pages, tag pages, author pages, and an RSS feed alongside your blog posts. Wix Blog renders server-side HTML for each post, which helps crawlability. Categories and tags create additional indexable pages that can rank if they contain enough unique content.
Wix Stores — The e-commerce application for selling products on a Wix site. Wix Stores generates dynamic product and category pages with automatic product schema markup. Key SEO considerations include product URL slugs, category architecture, and managing pagination on large catalogues.
Wix Bookings — The appointment and service scheduling application that creates bookable service pages, each with its own URL. Adding Service or ProfessionalService schema markup helps booking pages appear in rich results. Service descriptions should be written as landing pages, not just booking forms.
Wix Multilingual — The translation application that creates language-specific versions of your site and automatically generates hreflang tags linking each page to its counterparts. Wix Multilingual adds a language prefix to translated URLs and handles the technical hreflang setup that tells Google which language and region each page targets.
Bookings and Events Schema — Structured data that describes services from Wix Bookings and events from Wix Events using schema.org types such as Service, ProfessionalService, and Event. Adding this markup helps Google show service details, pricing, and dates in search results. On Wix, it is added via Custom Code as JSON-LD since the platform does not generate it automatically for these page types.
Site Members Area — A feature allowing visitors to create accounts, log in, and access member-only pages. Pages behind a member gate are still crawlable by search engines unless you add a noindex directive, so gated content can appear in results even when login is required. Decide whether gated content should be indexed based on whether the preview provides value to searchers.
Wix Media Manager — The centralised library where all images, videos, and files uploaded to your site are stored. Images from the Media Manager are served through Wix’s CDN with automatic format conversion and resizing. The file names you use when uploading affect image search visibility, so name files descriptively before uploading.
Wix Owner App — The mobile application for managing your Wix site from a phone, including publishing posts, responding to messages, and viewing traffic. While it does not directly affect rankings, the Owner App is useful for publishing time-sensitive content quickly or responding to reviews, both of which support freshness and local SEO signals.
Wix Analytics — The built-in analytics dashboard showing traffic, visitor behaviour, top pages, and sources. Wix Analytics provides a quick overview but lacks the depth of Google Analytics 4 or Search Console for SEO work. Use it alongside GA4 rather than as a replacement.
Wix Marketplace — The directory where businesses find and hire Wix-certified professionals for design, development, and SEO services. A Marketplace profile generates a backlink to your site and provides a verified credential. Listings can rank in Google for service-related queries in their own right.
Wix Partner Tiers — The recognition system for Wix professionals based on platform activity, client results, and project volume. Higher tiers grant additional tools, priority support, and greater visibility within the Marketplace. Partner status signals verified platform expertise to potential clients.

Technical SEO

Canonical Tag — An HTML element that tells search engines which version of a URL is the preferred one when similar content exists at multiple addresses. On Wix, you set the canonical URL in the SEO Panel for each page. Correct canonical tags prevent duplicate content from splitting your ranking authority across multiple URLs.
301 Redirect — A permanent redirect that sends visitors and search engines from an old URL to a new one, transferring the original page’s link equity. On Wix, create these through the URL Redirect Manager. Always set up a 301 when you change a page slug or remove a page.
302 Redirect — A temporary redirect that sends visitors to a different URL without permanently transferring link equity. Use a 302 only when the original URL will return, such as during a temporary promotion. For permanent changes, always use a 301 instead.
robots.txt — A text file at the root of your domain that tells search engine crawlers which parts of your site they should and should not access. Wix generates a robots.txt automatically, and you can customise it in the SEO Tools settings. Blocking a URL in robots.txt prevents crawling but does not prevent indexing if other sites link to it.
XML Sitemap — A structured file listing all the important URLs on your site, helping search engines discover and index your pages efficiently. Wix generates an XML sitemap automatically at /sitemap.xml and submits it to Google. Keep it current by ensuring new pages are published and removed pages are taken down.
Crawl Budget — The number of pages a search engine will crawl on your site within a given timeframe, determined by server capacity and how valuable Google considers your content. For most small to medium Wix sites, crawl budget is not a concern. It becomes important for larger sites with hundreds of pages where low-value URLs might consume crawling resources.
Indexation — The process by which search engines add your pages to their database so they can appear in search results. A page must be both crawled and deemed worthy of inclusion to be indexed. Check your site’s index status in Google Search Console’s Pages report.
Noindex — A directive that tells search engines not to include a page in their index, preventing it from appearing in results. On Wix, you can set noindex in the SEO Panel under Advanced SEO for pages you want to keep live but hidden from search, such as thank-you pages or internal landing pages.
Nofollow — An HTML attribute on a link that tells search engines not to pass ranking authority through that link. Google treats nofollow as a hint rather than a strict rule. Two related attributes exist: rel="sponsored" for paid links and rel="ugc" for user-generated content.
Server-Side Rendering (SSR) — A technique where the server generates the full HTML of a page before sending it to the browser, making content immediately available to search engine crawlers. Wix uses SSR for its pages, which means Googlebot can read your content without needing to execute JavaScript first. This gives Wix an advantage over platforms that rely entirely on client-side rendering.
Client-Side Rendering (CSR) — A technique where the browser downloads a minimal HTML shell and then JavaScript builds the page content after loading. Search engines must execute that JavaScript to see the content, which can delay or prevent indexing. Wix avoids this problem by using server-side rendering for page content.
Hydration — The process where a server-rendered HTML page becomes interactive in the browser as JavaScript loads and attaches event handlers to the existing markup. On Wix, hydration happens after the initial HTML loads, adding interactive features like menus and forms. The content is already visible to both users and crawlers before hydration completes.
Core Web Vitals — Three performance metrics Google uses as ranking signals: Largest Contentful Paint (loading speed), Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness), and Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability). Pages meeting all three thresholds receive a ranking advantage. Measure your scores using PageSpeed Insights with your live URL.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — The time it takes for the largest visible element, usually a hero image or heading, to finish rendering on screen. Google considers under 2.5 seconds good. Common causes of slow LCP on Wix include uncompressed hero images and heavy custom fonts.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — A metric measuring how much visible content shifts around unexpectedly as the page loads. Google considers a score under 0.1 good. On Wix, CLS issues often come from images without defined dimensions or late-loading embedded content.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP) — A metric measuring how quickly the page responds visually after a user clicks, taps, or types. Google considers under 200 milliseconds good. INP replaced First Input Delay as a Core Web Vital in March 2024.
HTTPS — The secure, encrypted version of HTTP that protects data between the visitor’s browser and the server. Google confirmed HTTPS as a ranking signal in 2014, and browsers label HTTP sites as “Not Secure”. All Wix sites use HTTPS by default with an SSL certificate included.
Structured Data — Machine-readable code added to your pages that tells search engines exactly what your content represents, such as a product, a business, a recipe, or an event. Structured data enables rich results like star ratings, prices, and FAQ accordions in search listings. On Wix, you add it as JSON-LD through Custom Code.
JSON-LD — JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data, the format Google recommends for adding structured data markup to web pages. JSON-LD sits in a script tag and does not require changes to visible HTML, making it the easiest format to maintain. On Wix, paste JSON-LD into Custom Code in the head section of the relevant page.
Rich Results — Enhanced search listings that display extra information drawn from structured data, such as star ratings, product prices, FAQ accordions, or event dates. Rich results take up more space in search results and typically get higher click-through rates than standard listings. Test your markup at search.google.com/test/rich-results.
Hreflang — An HTML attribute that tells search engines which language and region a page targets, ensuring the right version is shown to users in different countries. Wix Multilingual generates hreflang tags automatically when you add translations. Each hreflang tag must have a matching reciprocal tag on the corresponding alternate page.

On-Page SEO

Title Tag — The HTML element that sets the clickable headline shown in search results and the browser tab label. Keep titles under 60 characters, place your primary keyword near the start, and make them compelling enough to earn clicks. On Wix, set the title tag in the SEO Panel for each page.
Meta Description — The short summary shown below the title in search results, typically 150 to 160 characters. Meta descriptions do not directly affect rankings but strongly influence click-through rate. Google may rewrite your description if it considers its own version a better match for the query.
H1 — The main heading of a page, which should clearly state the page’s topic and include the primary keyword naturally. Each page should have exactly one H1. On Wix, the text element you designate as “Heading 1” in the editor becomes the H1 in the HTML.
Heading Hierarchy — The structured use of H1 through H6 tags to organise content into sections and subsections. A logical heading hierarchy helps search engines understand the structure and relative importance of your content. In the Wix Editor, use the text style dropdown to assign heading levels consistently.
Alt Text — Descriptive text attached to an image that serves two purposes: it tells screen readers what the image shows for accessibility, and it tells search engines what the image depicts for image search rankings. Write concise, accurate descriptions and include relevant keywords where they fit naturally. On Wix, add alt text by clicking an image and selecting the settings panel.
Internal Linking — The practice of linking one page on your site to another, distributing ranking authority across your pages and helping search engines discover your content. Pages with more internal links pointing to them are generally treated as more important. A strategic internal linking structure ensures no important page is left without links pointing to it.
Anchor Text — The visible, clickable text of a hyperlink, which gives search engines context about what the linked page covers. Using descriptive anchor text such as “our technical SEO service” is more useful than generic text like “click here”. Avoid over-optimising by using the exact target keyword in every link, as this can look manipulative.
Keyword Cannibalisation — A problem where multiple pages on your site target the same keyword, causing them to compete against each other in search results. This splits ranking authority and can prevent any single page from ranking well. Fix it by merging competing pages, differentiating their target keywords, or using canonical tags.
Thin Content — Pages with little substantive content that provide minimal value to visitors, such as near-empty category pages or stub articles. Google’s algorithms actively demote thin content and may suppress other pages on the same site if thin pages make up a significant proportion. Either expand thin pages with genuinely useful information or remove them with redirects.
Doorway Pages — Pages created only to rank for specific searches while funnelling visitors elsewhere, offering no real value in themselves. Google’s guidelines explicitly prohibit doorway pages. A common example is creating dozens of near-identical location pages with only the city name changed.
Orphan Page — A page on your site that has no internal links pointing to it, making it difficult for both visitors and search engines to find. Orphan pages miss out on internal link equity and may not be crawled regularly. Ensure every page you want indexed has at least one internal link from another page.
Content Depth — How thoroughly a page covers its topic compared to what searchers need and what competing pages provide. Shallow coverage of a topic rarely ranks well for competitive queries. Depth means answering the questions a reader would naturally have, not simply adding word count.
Search Intent — The underlying goal behind a search query: is the person looking for information, comparing options, trying to buy something, or navigating to a specific site? Matching your page content to the dominant intent behind your target keywords is the most important factor in ranking. A product page will not rank for an informational query regardless of how well it is optimised.

Local SEO

Google Business Profile — Google’s free business listing that controls how your business appears in Google Search and Maps, including your name, address, phone number, hours, photos, and reviews. An optimised profile is the most important factor for appearing in local search results. Claim yours at business.google.com and keep it accurate.
NAP Consistency — Having your business Name, Address, and Phone number written identically across every online listing, directory, and mention. Inconsistencies, even small ones like “Street” versus “St”, weaken the trust signals Google uses for local rankings. Audit your listings regularly to ensure they match.
Local Pack — The group of three business listings with a map that Google shows near the top of results for searches with local intent. Appearing in the Local Pack depends on proximity to the searcher, relevance of your business category, and prominence signals such as reviews and citation quality.
Citations — Mentions of your business name, address, and phone number on other websites, particularly directories like Yell, Yelp, and industry-specific listings. Citations help Google verify that your business exists and is located where you say it is. Accuracy matters more than quantity.
Service Area Business — A business that visits customers at their location rather than serving them at a fixed address, such as a plumber, mobile hairdresser, or dog walker. Google Business Profile lets you define service areas by city or postcode instead of showing a physical address. Your Wix site should have location pages or service area pages that match these defined areas.
Local Schema — Structured data using LocalBusiness (or a more specific subtype like Dentist or Plumber) that tells Google your business name, address, phone number, opening hours, and service area in machine-readable format. Adding local schema to your Wix site via Custom Code strengthens the connection between your website and your Google Business Profile.
Proximity — How close a business is to the person searching, which Google uses as a major ranking factor for local results. You cannot control proximity, but you can influence the other two local ranking factors: relevance (matching your categories and content to the query) and prominence (building reviews, citations, and authority).

Off-Page SEO

Backlink — A link from another website pointing to your site, acting as a vote of confidence that tells search engines your content is valuable. Links from relevant, authoritative sites carry far more weight than links from low-quality or unrelated domains. Building backlinks through genuine relationships, useful content, and digital PR remains one of the most effective SEO strategies.
Referring Domain — A unique website that links to your site. Ten links from one domain count as one referring domain, while one link each from ten different sites counts as ten. The number and quality of referring domains is generally a stronger ranking signal than total backlink count.
Link Equity — The ranking authority that flows from one page to another through links, sometimes called “link juice”. A link from a page with high authority passes more equity than one from a low-authority page. Internal links distribute equity across your own site, which is why strategic internal linking matters.
Domain Authority — A third-party metric (created by Moz, scored 1 to 100) that estimates how likely a domain is to rank in search results based on its backlink profile. It is not a Google ranking factor, but it serves as a useful shorthand for comparing the relative strength of competing websites.
Private Blog Network (PBN) — A group of websites secretly owned by one person or company, used solely to build backlinks to a main site and manipulate rankings. PBNs violate Google’s guidelines and carry a high risk of penalties. Google has become increasingly effective at detecting them through hosting patterns, content similarity, and linking behaviour.
Link Scheme — Any pattern of links intended to manipulate rankings, including buying links, excessive link exchanges, and large-scale guest posting with keyword-rich anchor text. Google’s guidelines list specific examples of link schemes. Links earned through genuine content quality and real relationships are the sustainable alternative.
Disavow — A process where you ask Google to ignore specific backlinks when calculating your rankings, done through a disavow file in Search Console. Use it only for genuinely toxic or spammy links that you cannot get removed by contacting the linking site. Disavowing legitimate links by mistake can harm your rankings.
Nofollow, Sponsored, and UGC — Three link attributes that tell search engines about the nature of a link. Nofollow means “do not pass ranking authority,” sponsored marks paid or advertising links, and UGC identifies links in user-generated content such as comments or forum posts. Google treats all three as hints rather than strict rules.

AI Search and GEO

Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) — The practice of optimising content to be cited and referenced by AI-powered search tools such as Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, ChatGPT search, and Claude. GEO involves creating authoritative, clearly structured, fact-dense content that AI systems can extract and attribute. It is a complement to traditional SEO, not a replacement.
Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) — Optimising content to appear as a direct answer in search features that resolve queries without requiring a click, including featured snippets, knowledge panels, and voice assistant responses. AEO focuses on clear, concise answers formatted with headings, lists, and tables that search engines can easily extract.
AI Overviews — Google’s AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of search results for many queries, synthesising information from multiple web pages. AI Overviews can reduce clicks to individual websites for simple informational queries. Being cited as a source within an AI Overview depends on content authority, clarity, and structured data.
Entity — A distinct, identifiable thing, such as a person, business, place, or concept, that search engines recognise and store in their knowledge graphs. Establishing your business as a recognised entity helps Google connect your website, social profiles, and directory listings into a coherent picture. Structured data, consistent branding, and third-party mentions all contribute to entity recognition.
Entity Graph — The network of relationships between entities that search engines maintain, connecting people to organisations, organisations to locations, and content to topics. Strengthening your position in Google’s entity graph involves making these connections explicit through structured data and consistent information across the web.
@id Linking — A technique in JSON-LD structured data where you assign a unique identifier (using @id) to an entity and then reference that identifier elsewhere, creating explicit connections between schema nodes. This lets you link your Organisation, Person, WebPage, and other schema types into a coherent graph rather than having them exist as isolated blocks.
sameAs — A schema.org property that lists URLs confirming an entity’s identity across the web, such as social media profiles, directory listings, and Wikipedia pages. Adding sameAs to your Organisation or Person schema helps Google verify who you are and connect your various online presences into a single entity.
Speakable — A schema.org property that identifies sections of a page particularly suitable for text-to-speech playback by voice assistants and AI systems. Marking a concise summary paragraph as speakable signals that it is a self-contained, quotable statement of fact. This can influence how AI systems select content for citation.
Citation (AI Context) — In the context of AI search, a citation is when an AI system attributes information to a specific source by name or link. Being cited by AI tools depends on content authority, clear factual statements, structured data, and presence on trusted third-party sites. Citations in AI search serve a similar trust function to backlinks in traditional SEO.
LLM Crawler — An automated bot operated by an AI company (such as OpenAI’s GPTBot or Anthropic’s ClaudeBot) that crawls websites to gather training data or to retrieve information for real-time AI search responses. You can control access to these crawlers through your robots.txt file. Blocking them prevents your content from being used in AI training but may also prevent citation in AI search results.
llms.txt — A proposed standard file (placed at the root of a domain, similar to robots.txt) that provides AI systems with a structured summary of a site’s content, purpose, and key pages. It is designed to help language models understand your site more efficiently than crawling every page. The standard is still emerging but adoption is growing.

Measurement

Impressions — The number of times a page from your site appeared in search results, regardless of whether anyone clicked on it. Impressions indicate visibility: a page can receive many impressions but few clicks if its title and description are not compelling or if it ranks below the fold. Track impressions in Google Search Console.
Clicks — The number of times a user clicked on your page in search results to visit your site. Clicks are the most direct measure of how much organic traffic search is sending you. A page with high impressions but low clicks may need a more compelling title tag or meta description.
Click-Through Rate (CTR) — The percentage of impressions that result in a click, calculated as clicks divided by impressions. A CTR of 5% means that five out of every 100 people who saw your listing clicked on it. Improving your title tag and meta description is the primary way to increase CTR for a given ranking position.
Average Position — The mean ranking position of your page across all the queries it appeared for, reported in Google Search Console. An average position of 8.5 means your page typically appears near the bottom of the first page. This metric is most useful for tracking ranking trends over time rather than as an absolute measure.
Organic Traffic — Visitors who arrive at your site by clicking on an unpaid search result rather than an advertisement. Organic traffic is the primary goal of SEO and is tracked in Google Analytics and Search Console. Unlike paid traffic, organic visits continue as long as your rankings hold without ongoing ad spend.
Conversion — A visitor completing a desired action on your site, such as submitting a contact form, making a purchase, or booking an appointment. Tracking which pages and keywords drive conversions tells you where your SEO effort delivers actual business results rather than just traffic.
Google Search Console — Google’s free tool for monitoring your site’s presence in search results, showing which queries bring impressions and clicks, which pages are indexed, and any errors preventing indexing. Every Wix site should be connected to Search Console. It is the most reliable source of data about your organic search performance.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) — Google’s current web analytics platform, which tracks how visitors behave on your site: which pages they visit, how long they stay, where they came from, and whether they convert. GA4 uses an event-based tracking model and pairs with Search Console data to give a complete picture of SEO performance.
Attribution — The process of determining which marketing channel or touchpoint deserves credit for a conversion. A visitor might find your site through organic search, leave, return via a social media link, then convert. Understanding attribution helps you measure the true value of SEO alongside other channels.

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