Is Webflow Good for SEO? Honest Marketer Analysis

I worked with WordPress SEO for years. Honestly, I spent fixing issues that I had little to no control in while not focusing on growing WordPress websites for longer than I would love to admit. I also worked with Shopify websites and their SEO, even had Wix and Squarespace clients. So I think I am the perfect person to answer this question…

Is Webflow Good for SEO?

Yes, Webflow is amazing for SEO! Webflow is better for search engine optimization than most other website builders out there. That’s because of Webflow’s lean code and complete control you have over your website. 

Next question?

But even though you think you had this question, I think you actually had something else in mind! So let me answer the actual question you had. 

How Does Ranking Webflow Websites Different?

There are so many different types of website builders out there, most popular of which are definitely WordPress and Shopify, but others like Wix, Squarespace, heck, even Framer or Canva. Which one to choose?

And most importantly… If I choose Webflow, will my website rank on search engines?

Yes your Webflow website will show up on SERPs… As long as you do actual SEO on your Webflow website. Continue reading and you will understand how Webflow SEO differs from other platforms, so you or your team can be prepared.

Basics of Webflow SEO

Imagine this section as a rapid fire question round where you will save your time and just answer the core questions everyone has. We will link to resources whenever possible and if you want to learn more about each question, drop me a DM on Twitter and I will write a whole article and make a video about each subject (a link to it here for future readers)!

Here we go!

Webflow Web Core Vitals

Speed is what Webflow is. Clean code and complete code control is how Webflow websites differ from other platforms. Guess who likes speed?

Webflow passes lighthouse tests like it’s nothing. Yes yes, we know - Lighthouse score is not SEO by any means. But for those who think that Lighthouse score is SEO…

Just took a random page (homepage) off this site that you are reading this article on and ran the Lighthouse test… I honestly never checked our site on Lighthouse before as I know it will be close to perfect anyways!

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Yes I know our design is not yet accessible and I don’t even have webP images, nor add alt tags everywhere I should. Still perfect, though!

Webflow Website Indexing

Here’s a Webflow website we made sitemap architecture for… Tiny 70 page MVP build, no fancy stuff, a 2 CMS collection build that will fit into strategy going for thousands of pages (and 14+ new CMS collections).

Fresh domain, no authority, no backlinks. A website that is nobody in the eyes of Google. No trust, no crawling budget.

Just a very clean and well thought out site with an ideal internal linking strategy and only fundamental pages… Think ~60 feature/service pages optimized for SEO and 6 feature groups to cluster them into feature sets. Basics.

Yes, if you know what this image means, you saw that correctly. Whole website was indexed on day one. Fully.

ONE F’IN DAY.

(Webflow community joke intended, sorry couldn’t stop myself).

Ok, to be completely fair 65 out of 69 pages indexed on day one and another 4 indexed the next day.

In all my years of SEO experience with different complex and simple profitable website builds that run solely on SEO, I have never seen anything like that happening on any other platform.

Here’s what clean Webflow code gives your SEO strategy. Power.

Webflow SEO Metadata

Wordpress needs plugins for title tags, meta descriptions, structured data and other stuff like that. How do you control that on Webflow?

Easy, most of those have native solutions as powerful as your Yoasts and RankMaths.

Here’s how static page title tag and meta description management looks like. Go to page settings and…

Here’s how the same thing looks when you solve for dynamic content (blog posts, services, categories, etc)...

Need more complex stuff? Go as nuts as you want (example has redacted client name as *software*).

Webflow SEO Structured Data

What about schema? Both static and dynamic structured data is easy to implement in Webflow. 

Every static or dynamic page has inside <head> and after </body> custom code sections where you can go nuts with your structured data. Just as the example above, you just can assign dynamic fields to be inserted inside that code.

So dynamically it would be:

At this point, I know some of you are already a bit confused and started to think…

That’s Different from How We Work on Our Website Platform!

Yes, working with Webflow website SEO and content is different to working with Spotify, WordPress, Wix or any other plugin heavy website platform. 

First I want to address business owners, startup founders, solopreneurs, salespeople and any other non content/marketing/SEO team member (you guys keep reading, we will meet with you to continue after speaking to your managers!)...

If you run a business, have a website, want a website or need to take your online business to the next level - Webflow is amazing in most cases. And by most we mean 99% of cases.

If anyone in your team points out Webflow limitations like:

What about the CMS item limit?

Our clients that hit that limit were making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month from their site, by then those limitations become a blessing that solves issues that you don’t know about if you never managed a 10 000 page website, they beg for headless CMS before that even happens.

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Webflow Doesn’t Have Plugins?

Not true in nature, most clients we have use MemberStack, Whalesync, Finsweet Attributes, Wized and many other tools directly connected to their Webflow website. They also use side tools like Slack, ClickUp, Airtable, Notion, Google Docs, Microsoft Teams, Gmail or any other apps that help them do what they need to do.

Heck, we all even know that one guy that messages you on WhatsApp to send you your tasks, I am talking to you, WTF Ken, it’s Saturday - not funny man.

If you ever had your WordPress site crash because of plugins, you know… It’s not all that easy. 

Webflow is a Website management system that is beyond all that - you control the code as opposed to reuse code (plugin) that others made and hope it works.

Don’t worry, the Webflow community is filled with smart, hardworking and experienced people that will take your website to the next level. 

Shameless plug - we are a team of right people if you need Webflow SEO or content strategy, all done for you or you want your marketing team to be retrained for the future of Websites that is Webflow. 

Training Marketing Teams that Come from Other Platforms

Hey marketing peeps, SEOs, editors, content managers, writers, ecommerce managers and anyone else who needs this knowledge. Yes, you will need to learn new things to work with Webflow.

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With great power comes…

Great failures.

As a Webflow marketing agency supporting many teams in their big change, we have seen that. Teams failing at first with Webflow. But you know what we have seen more? Amazing success stories.

And all those Webflow success stories share one thing - teams changed their mindset of how this works. They didn’t try to adapt their old workflows to match new ones (though in the end those workflows aren’t so different!). 

Before we move to the great new things that await those who migrate to Webflow and do SEO and marketing - I want to say the last bad and scary thing, may the readers who are scared of change click out now and we will share tips and tricks with those who stay…

Marketing operations have to be rethought from scratch. Completely new marketing workflows. 

Heck, sometimes even some team members need to be let go and new positions that were never excited before created. Don’t worry if your marketing department is smaller than 20-30 people it probably won't happen, if you are bigger than that, get in touch - we have least painful recipes for you guys.

With the scary stuff out of the way!

How SEO and Marketing Work Changes on Webflow?

Most teams start by understanding that Webflow is a visual code editor, not a no-code website platform. That doesn’t mean that all of you need to learn how to code. 

That just means that after learning how to work and avoid mistakes on Webflow, you and your team will understand basic CSS and HTML whether they like it or not. If you read this and think - I already know that… Great! You will love Webflow then.

Webflow Content SEO Flexibility

Biggest change (without learning about your project specifics) that happens to content strategy when starting or migrating to Webflow is…

Every CMS collection is a separate blog. But also a category. But also a tag. But also a product or product category.

I repeat. CMS Collection is whatever you need it to be. Articles, categories, features, services, tags, team members, use cases, even private company information - is a single item on CMS collection. 

Everything is a CMS Collection

That’s why I said before… With great power comes great mistakes. As a SEO specialist, content strategist, editor or marketing manager you know where this is going. Without boundaries and complete flexibility - it’s easy to make not SEO friendly, not optimized and wrong search intent content.

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We have seen it all, you are not alone… But do keep in mind that we were also once a team that worked with WordPress, Shopify and other platforms. And we also didn’t know where to start and how to do things right in Webflow when we started learning how Webflow SEO works.

But after we learned it. Oh snap, we are never looking back. 

No more fixing broken plugins and being afraid to update WordPress. 

No more almost perfect themes that kinda solve our needs, but we wish it would be a bit more customizable.

No more strategy ideas that we have but can’t find how to do because nobody coded a plugin for that. 

No more trusting in cookie cutter solutions that don’t move with the speed of how the web evolves.

No more seeing your competition have this cool new feature and you not knowing how to get it. 

With Webflow you control your site completely. 

With Webflow you grow websites not fix what broke down during theme update. 

With Webflow you create content templates for different search intents.

With Webflow you have all the superpowers you need to have the website you and your team always wanted.

Start learning or get in touch, we will help you to get started with Webflow SEO the right way.