Four technical issues account for the majority of SEO problems Michael finds on Wix sites during audits: broken redirects, crawl errors, missing hreflang, and misconfigured robots.txt. This lesson fixes all four.
301 Redirects on Wix
When you change a page URL on Wix, you must set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. Otherwise, any links pointing to the old URL will hit a 404 error, losing their ranking power. In Wix, go to Settings > SEO > Redirects to manage your 301 redirects.
Setting up 301 redirects in Wix
- 1Go to your Wix dashboard > Settings > SEO > Redirects
- 2Click "New Redirect"
- 3In "Old URL", enter the old page path (e.g., /old-services-page)
- 4In "New URL", enter the new destination path (e.g., /services)
- 5Click "Save", the redirect is now live
- 6Test by visiting the old URL, it should redirect to the new one
Finding and Fixing Crawl Errors
Go to Google Search Console > Indexing > Pages. The "Why pages aren't being indexed" section shows you crawl errors. Common ones: 404 (page not found, fix with a redirect), Server errors (contact Wix support), Crawled but not indexed (improve content quality or add internal links).
Hreflang for Multilingual Wix Sites
If your Wix site has content in multiple languages using Wix's multilingual feature, hreflang tags are essential. They tell Google which language version to show to users in different countries. Wix's multilingual feature does add hreflang automatically, but verify it is working correctly in GSC > International Targeting.
Redirect Audit
Before changing any URLs on your Wix site, run a quick check with Google Search Console's URL Inspection tool on the old URL to see if it has any backlinks or traffic. If it does, a 301 redirect is essential to preserve that equity.
Complete How-To Guide: Setting Up Redirects and Fixing Crawl Errors on Wix
This guide covers the complete process of resolving crawl errors, implementing 301 redirects, configuring hreflang for multilingual sites, and ensuring your robots.txt is not blocking important content.
Follow these steps to set up redirects and fix crawl errors on Wix
- 1Open GSC Coverage report and list all pages with crawl errors including 404 Not Found, server errors, and redirect errors
- 2For each 404 error determine whether the page should redirect to an existing page or was intentionally deleted
- 3In Wix Dashboard go to SEO > URL Redirect Manager and add a 301 redirect for each URL that should point to an existing page
- 4Enter the old URL path (e.g. /old-page) and the new destination path (e.g. /new-page) then save
- 5For server errors check whether the affected pages load in a browser and troubleshoot in the Wix editor if they do not
- 6Test all redirects by entering the old URLs in a browser and confirming they reach the correct destination with no intermediate steps
- 7If you have a multilingual Wix site add hreflang tags for each language version via Custom Code in the head section, specifying the language and region for each alternative page
- 8Review your robots.txt at yourdomain.com/robots.txt and confirm no important pages or sections are blocked by Disallow rules
- 9Run Screaming Frog to find redirect chains (A redirects to B which redirects to C) and simplify each to a single direct redirect from A to C
- 10After all fixes return to GSC Coverage and click Validate Fix on each error category to prompt Google to recheck
- 11Monitor crawl errors weekly in GSC for 4 weeks to confirm all issues are resolved
- 12Establish a process: whenever you change or delete a Wix page always add a 301 redirect from the old URL
Final Checkpoint
Zero crawl errors in GSC Coverage, all redirects tested and working with no chains, robots.txt not blocking important content, and hreflang tags validated if you have a multilingual site.
Essential Resources
Google Search Console
Monitor how Google crawls, indexes, and ranks your Wix site pages
XML Sitemap Validator
Validate your Wix sitemap for XML errors
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Crawl up to 500 URLs free to find broken links, orphan pages, and technical SEO issues
Bing Webmaster Tools
Submit your sitemap and monitor your Wix site visibility in Bing search
