Built-in Site Optimization

Out-of-the-box, Website Builder sites are developed for optimization, focusing on real-world interactions and, ultimately, Google's Core Web Vitals.

Optimizing is an ongoing practice at Website Builder. We continue to stay up to date and implement changes to ensure continuous improvements.

Here’s an overview of the built-in optimizations that occur automatically. While this list highlights many key processes, it's not exhaustive.

• Image Optimization
• Video Optimization
• Lazy load images (for more information, see Lazy Loading and Fonts [254])
• Lazy load heavy widgets
• CDN Static Resources
• Defer non-critical CSS
• Minify CSS
• Extract Critical CSS
• Avoid invisible text during font loading
• Optimize WebFont loading and rendering
• Reduce WebFont Size
• Reduce JavaScript payloads with code splitting
• Minify and compress network payloads
• Preload critical assets to improve loading speed
• Serve static assests with efficient cache policy
• Preconnect to required origins
• Initial server response time is short; <250 ms
• Avoid multiple page redirects
• Preload key requests
• Avoids enormous network payloads (files larger than 5mb)
• Minimize third-party usage
• Third-party code blocked the main thread for 180 ms
• Avoid large layout shifts
• Use passive listeners to improve scrolling performance
• WebP images (all images have a WebP generated version)
• Brotoli compression
• Continued improvements of lazy loading for new widgets
• Improvement in how custom widgets load
• Videos with auto compress
• Moved nearly all assets to CDN
• Concatenating CSS files (fewer requests)
• Continued Critical CSS improvements

SEO: Key Concepts and Tools

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or "organic" search results. In general, the earlier and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEO may target different kinds of searches, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.

While SEO techniques and strategies need to adapt to the latest search engines algorithms, what makes up SEO should remain mostly consistent.

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NOTE

Google now factors Core Web Vitals in their search engine ranking. For more information, see Core Web Vitals

General SEO Overview

There are four components to SEO:

Content

This is what is visually able to be seen, your text as well as images (what visitors are able to see on your website).

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NOTE

If content is hidden, it will still show up in the HTML of a site as there currently isn’t a way of removing it. Search engines should be aware of this and ignore hidden items (for instance if there are multiple H1 tags, but only one can be seen by visitors, search engines should only detect the visible H1).

Structure & Organization

How the site as a whole and the individual pages are organized and structured.

• Pages. This would be the placement of heading tags and images, as well as the organization of the content on the page.
• Heading tags. In technical terms, heading tags are headings and subheadings that are denoted as important text with HTML tags. There are six tags: H1-H6.
• Whole site. This pertains to how the pages are organized and presented as well as how visitors will navigate your site. This also includes how and where internal links are utilized.

Back-end Information

What search engines see and potentially utilize. Following are some common backend elements:

• Site title and description

• Page titles and descriptions

• Favicon

• Page URLs

• Keywords (search engines do not use meta keywords to impact website ranking; their use is optional)

• Alt text

• Sitemap

• Schema

• Page speed

There is a little bit of overlap here as some elements (such as a page title and URL) can technically be seen by visitors, but aren’t included on the actual site.

Search Engines Algorithm

Ultimately, all sites are at the discretion of these algorithms and they do change frequently. An SEO expert would be a great resource for recent updates and changes.

Built-in SEO Settings & Tools

Website Builder sites offer a variety of settings and tools for SEO. For more information, see the following:

• Site SEO Settings
• Single Page Management
• Site Dashboard: SEO Overview

Does Website Builder have better SEO than other platforms?

When it comes down to it, the platform does not matter as much for SEO as does the content. As long as you have access to the site header to insert any special SEO tags and easy access to the other SEO settings (such as the site title and keyword information), then any site you build regardless of if it is on the Website Builder or not has the potential to rank high in SEO.

FAQs and Troubleshooting

How do I Set SEO Terms?

There are two places to set site SEO terms, see the following articles for more information:

• Site SEO Settings

• Single Page Management

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TIP

Search engines do not use meta keywords to impact website rankings. Their use is optional.

Is there somewhere where I can see a summary of my site's SEO?

Yes, the Site Overview has a summary of your site's SEO health.

Google results are showing a different Meta name or description than what is in the page or sites settings

Google may change meta information for search results at its discretion, in an effort to provide searchers with the most relevant information.