Is Webflow Good for SEO

If you’re trying to figure out if Webflow is right for your business then you’re in the right place (you might also find this article on why we use Webflow helpful). We are strong advocates for utilising SEO to grow your business, but for good reason.

SEO is one of the most influential sources to any businesses online identity due to its low cost and the volume of traffic it can generate if done correctly. However, what many people are unaware of is that the way your website is created, as well as the platform it is built on, may have a significant influence on your website's capacity to perform well with SEO. Paddle Creative only uses the best of the best software and we do our research to make sure we get it - this is why we trust and use Webflow.

The short of it is yes, Webflow is good for SEO, pretty amazing in fact. Webflow's popularity has been rapidly increasing in recent years and it’s pretty simple as to why. 

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Why is Webflow good for SEO?

Despite the fact that it only debuted in 2013, Webflow has quickly built a positive reputation and is an excellent choice for building a website; it supports responsive design and is developed according to industry standards. It also comes readily equipped with all of the tools necessary to achieve top-level SEO criteria, which makes it stand out from a lot of other website building platforms which require additional plug-ins. Essentially, the SEO settings available in the Webflow, out the gate, are much better than any other CMS like WordPress, Duda, Wix and other website platforms.

Before we get into all the reasons we believe Webflow is the best for SEO let's get the nitty gritty out of the way. Not everyone is as mad about Webflow as we at Paddle Creative are and here’s why…

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Why is Webflow so hard?

Webflow has a high learning curve — it's not for inexperienced users who don't know or don't want to learn the fundamentals of HTML and CSS. It's technical, with custom code written from the ground up, but that's what makes it so unique. Composing code from scratch means clean code, which means search engine users can quickly identify Webflow websites to analyse the content and rank pages effectively. Everyone expects fast load times, so clean, structured code is a must. The good news is that you can hire a Webflow Expert to build a SEO-ready website for you.

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Does Webflow have plugins?

There are no plugins used with Webflow. The absence of plug-ins in Webflow has also been cited as a drawback, but we disagree. In platforms such as WordPress, you need a plugin such as Yoast to achieve the same SEO capabilities Webflow has built-in. Webflow takes care of the majority of fundamental SEO settings without the use of third-party plug-ins or extensions, which means everything is ready to go with. No downloads, no updates, no security vulnerabilities, just one smooth, clean, quick click. 

Within Webflow project settings, you can minify your HTML, CSS and JavaScript files for huge speed benefits.

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But where are Webflow sites hosted we hear you ask…

Webflow allows you to ensure that all of your websites use enterprise-grade hosting (built on AWS), generate clean semantic code, alter SEO settings without the use of plugins, and provide more freedom with content formats and web design.

One of the main benefits of the AWS hosting you get with Webflow sites is the SSL certificate, included as standard.

We cover the benefits of SSL certificates more in this article about SSL, but in short, if you chose Webflow and the AWS hosting your site will be ultra-secure and the SSL certificate is a must to stand any chance in search engine rankings.

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What is Webflow design?

This is the ace in the pack. Webflow allows us to create award-winning and exceptional, custom websites. You want layouts and animations that are complex? They can be implemented without the need for extra plug-ins or tinkering with the code. That's quite beneficial in terms of SEO. You won't be constrained by pre-set templates or website components when customising the UX or UI for your target demographic and customer persona. The better the user-experience, the better results you will see in SEO terms.

Because when we build a website with a blank canvas, it can be built and optimised for SEO from the start. You can optimise your page search engine rankings straight away while writing it, which is not offered in other CMS like WordPress, where a separate plugin is required to accomplish the same.

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Fast Page Speed Helps SEO

A slow website is bad for SEO and also bad for conversions! No one likes to wait for a web page to load. We already highlighted the AWS hosting you get with Webflow, this alone means that your site will have the potential to be fast-loading (we think it’s the best money can buy). Add to that clean code, and in-built audit tools and it is easy for your site to gain super-fast page speed times.

Page speed is an important SEO factor and this is a crucial reason why Webflow trumps the competition. In fact, many sites we rebuild for our clients are partially due to them wanting to increase their page speed.

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SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions‍

In Webflow, you can customise the SEO title and meta description for each page separately whether it's a blog or information page, making it versatile for any business category. There's also a sample that displays how the snippet will appear in Google search results which is always a bonus. In addition, for dynamic pages (CMS-generated pages) you can even generate these dynamically each time, saving time and giving unique titles.

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Page slug URL customisation

Before we get started on this section, it's important to understand that a slug is the component of a URL that identifies a specific page on a website in a readable format. In other words, it is the section of the URL that describes the content of the page. So, the slug for this page will be /blog/is-webflow-good-for-seo.

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In general, a shorter URL or slug that contains your target keyword will help with SEO. 

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Webflow makes it simple to provide a custom URL slug. You can write your own slug for each page in the Webflow CMS in the same location where you supply the SEO title and meta description. Or if you don't want to customise the slug yourself, Webflow will create one for you automatically. Slugs are a great place to highlight keywords which is a big thumbs up for SEO.

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Canonical URLs

In Webflow, you have the freedom to make a global canonical tag out of your website's base URL (for example, https://yourbusinessname.com). This URL, paired with the unique URL slug of each page, is used to construct canonical tags for each page on your website. You can also use Webflow's Custom Code Editor to add canonical tags to particular pages. This is technical SEO, but also important in some instances and helps Google identify the true source of information for a web page. Inside Webflow, this is easy to implement, site-wide and also on a per-page basis.

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Build Accessible Websites in Webflow

Webflow is pushing the boundaries in terms of what the norm of building websites is from an accessibility perspective. What does this mean? It enables us to create websites that anyone, no matter their disability, can use, whether that be visual impairments, keyboard-navigation, screen readers to name but a few accessibility considerations.

Webflow allows us to implement accessibility, including the basics such as colour-contrast checks, image alt-text and link-description audits to keyboard outline controls and navigation tools. In fact, Webflow even audits the site as it is built to ensure best-practice is followed.

Better accessibility leads to better user-experience, leads to better SEO. But accessibility will become a must-have feature in the near future, so do not take this feature lightly and ensure whatever platform you use to build your website, it allows for accessibility controls.

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Image SEO

Images always help add interest to a web page and often add extra information to help your page guest on their visit. For each picture you use in Webflow, you can set an alt-text. But why is alt text important? There’s more than one answer for that. Alt text not only enhances accessibility by defining what an image displays to users who are unable to see it, making your website universally accessible, but it also aids search engines such as Google, improving SEO. And just to make Webflow that extra bit better, it will give you a nudge if you forget to add alt-text. See, it’s always striving to help you and optimise your website and SEO.

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Conclusion - Is Webflow Bad for SEO? Or Good for SEO?

Yes, we are bias, but in our opinion and in our experience of running SEO campaigns for businesses, Webflow is good for SEO. The many features built into Webflow, like alt-tags, clean code, meta descriptions, customisable URLs and all round SEO optimisation make it an easy choice for website development. Webflow is not the best platform for every business and website project, however for the majority of custom websites, Webflow wins hands-down compared to other platforms.

In our opinion, the future is Webflow!

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If you have any questions don’t fret to get in touch. We hope this helped!