Webflow is one of the CMS platforms that provides the best web performance (Core Web Vitals) for websites. The performance of a site directly influences the user experience (UX) as well as its organic search ranking (SEO). By choosing Webflow, you already have a head start over your competitors. However, to ensure you reach the top positions on search engines, it is essential to complete certain tasks and verify that they have all been done before publishing your website online.
Today, we will provide you with a checklist that will guide you in optimizing your site for organic search engine optimization.
The various SEO tasks to check in Webflow
1. Headings Structure
On each of your pages, it is important to ensure that there is only one H1 heading and that the rest of your titles follow a logical order. There should be no heading jumps.
2. Title & Meta Description
On each of your pages, be sure to fill in the SEO Title (about 60 characters) and the Meta Description (around 160 characters). These two fields are essential for being able to rank for your target queries. Therefore, it is necessary to optimize them with keywords without overdoing it and while remaining natural.
Discover how to optimize the SEO of your pages in Webflow
3. Slug Optimization
Slugs have somewhat less importance in SEO, but it is still crucial to optimize them for each page using the main keyword and removing articles or determiners. Your slugs should be short for better readability and impact.
4. Open Graph Image
The Open Graph image is the image that will appear when you share the link of a page from your site. This can be customized for each page of your site. To do this in Webflow, simply go to the page settings and add the link to your image. This is an important element that helps increase the click-through rate.
Discover why to add an Open Graph to your website
5. Favicon + Webclip
The Favicon and Webclip are graphical elements that appear respectively in the tab of your pages in your browser or as shortcuts on various devices. You can configure them in your project settings. These elements add value to your website.
6. Image Optimization
6.1 All images (or almost) are compressed
Image compression helps reduce the weight of your page and thus its loading time. A fast loading time decreases the bounce rate and improves the UX of your site.
6.2 All images are renamed
Renaming your images is very important for your online visibility. The words you add in the name of your image help position it and make it appear in search engines (especially in Google Images).
6.3 All images have Alt Text
Alt texts serve two purposes. First, they provide information to indexing bots and thus favor the ranking of your images in search engines. Additionally, they also promote web accessibility as they are the texts that will be read (instead of the images) for visually impaired individuals, for example.
Discover how to optimize images for SEO
7. 404 Page
You have customized the 404 page (with a redirect to your homepage) for users who land on a wrong URL.
8. Redirects
Redirects help prevent users from landing on a 404 page. If you migrate your site or delete a URL, it is crucial to implement a redirect.
Discover how to set up 301 redirects in Webflow
9. Test Responsiveness
Once again, to improve the user experience, it is essential to ensure that your site adapts to all types of devices.
Discover how to make a Webflow site responsive
10. Remove Unused Classes and Animations
To avoid unnecessarily loading your website's code, Webflow gives you the option to remove classes and interactions that you are no longer using. This will help improve the web performance of your pages.
11. Minify CSS + HTML + JS Code
In the general settings of your site, you can check options to minify (remove unnecessary spaces) the code of your site to enhance its performance.
12. Optimize Webflow Project Structure
Just as important as minifying your code, having a “clean” development structure allows you to optimize your site. For this, we recommend using the Client-First method, with precise class naming and the use of combo classes. The goal is to reuse classes you have already used to avoid unnecessarily overloading your code.
13. Add an SSL Certificate
Webflow allows you to generate an SSL certificate for free if you use one of their paid plans. This will secure your site and reassure users.
14. Site Language
In the global settings of your project, you can set the language code for your site. This will enable browsers, translation applications, and other tools to operate according to that language.
15. Add a Canonical Tag
In the general settings of your Webflow project, you can define a canonical tag to allow indexing bots to index the correct URL and avoid considering a page as duplicate content.
16. Remove Site Indexing on webflow.io
When developing on Webflow, the tool provides you with a domain under a webflow.io version. It is important, before publishing a site on a custom domain, to disallow indexing of pages on the Webflow version to avoid duplicate content.
17. Add a Sitemap
The sitemap is a list of URLs that allows search engines to access all the pages of your website. Webflow provides you with the option to generate one automatically or to add a custom one.
18. Add Structured Data
Structured data is beneficial to implement on a website. It provides additional information to search engine algorithms. It will help you stand out better in search results.
19. Integrate Google Analytics and Search Console
Before publishing your site, it may be beneficial to connect your Google Analytics and Search Console accounts to your website. This will allow you to track the progress of your SEO results.
Discover how to add your Webflow site to Search Console
20. Content Optimization
Content optimization is not a task to be done just once. In fact, SEO is an ongoing effort. Adding content to your website helps keep it alive and improves your online ranking. However, you can already optimize your static pages using tools like Textoptimizer, for example.
The Complete SEO Checklist
With this comprehensive list, you can achieve relatively “quick” results and climb the SERPs. Nevertheless, SEO is a recurring task; to ensure you reach the results you want, you will need to update your site frequently with content additions, for instance.
If you need assistance with your SEO on Webflow, our agency can help you achieve your online visibility goals!
