CEO of Letterdrop, former Product Manager on Google Search
As a Content Marketer, you know that Webflow is fast becoming the go-to site-builder for businesses. But the big question is, is it good for SEO?
Whether it can be as good as your custom site or WordPress depends on your personal preferences and what resources you have. The platforms are very different and require different steps. Everything has its pros and cons.
But TL;DR is yes, Webflow is good for SEO... assuming you do some things right.
Webflow isn't purpose-built for SEO, so it's natural that it isn't perfect and does have SEO gaps. You may need to throw additional tools into your toolbox to improve your SEO game. That's when Webflow's capabilities go from good to great.
So... Is Webflow Good for SEO?
Yes! Lots of big companies like Petal use Webflow for their landing and content pages. Just look at their organic traffic: 74.8k.
Companies like Petal.com that use Webflow have great traffic | Semrush
But... Webflow is primarily a site-builder. You'll need third-party tools if you want your pages on Webflow to fit into your SEO program.
What Can Webflow Do Well for SEO?
Webflow does have built-in features that can cover your SEO basics, no problem. It prioritizes clean code, making it easy for search engines to crawl through and index your website.
1. You Can Edit on-Page Elements for SEO
Webflow lets you edit meta titles, descriptions, and image alt text without code.
Edit metadata under "SEO Settings" in Webflow
2. Webflow Can Be Fast
While not a strict ranking factor, Google encourages sites to have good core web vitals scores so that pages load fast. The score factors in how long it takes for your website to be usable by visitors, taking into account loading time, visual stability, and interactivity.
Here's how Webflow is optimized for speed (without the need for plugins):
Webflow sites are hosted on fast CDNs, or content distribution networks. That means speedy load times.
By default, Webflow enables lazy loading for all images. They only load when you scroll to them on a web page, saving bandwidth and speeding up your website's initial load time.
Webflow offers multiple options for compressing redundant code in "Advanced Publishing Options" and helps increase load time.
3. Webflow Can Run some Basic Audits
The audit panel can help scan your site for structural mistakes that can negatively impact SEO. This gives you a high-level sweep of improvements you can make.
The tool can identify missing alt text, skipped heading levels, non-descriptive link content, and broken ID elements.
Be aware, though — it only does this for landing pages and not your content or CMS collection items. You'll need other tools for that.
4. Support for 301 Redirects
Webflow makes it easy to:
set custom URL slugs on Webflow to make them short and keyword-rich
ensure search engines don’t see different versions of your page as duplicate content — you can set 301 redirects in SEO settings
Setting up 301 redirects in Webflow
5. Automatic Sitemap Generation
Webflow's hosting allows you to generate a sitemap automatically and hosts it on your website.
Webflow lets you add XML sitemaps automatically
6. You can Add and Edit Custom Schema Data Yourself
With Webflow, you can add schema markup, a type of structured data that provides additional information to search engines about the content on a webpage, all by yourself, without the help of an engineer.
Edit schema data yourself on Webflow | Source: Artios.io
What Does Webflow Not Do Well for SEO?
Let's call it what it is — Webflow is a site-builder and design tool, not an SEO tool.
It doesn't have SEO tools to help you with keyword research, SEO content optimization, link-building, or refresh monitoring.
Let's look at where Webflow may fall short in the SEO department.
1. Webflow Lacks Native Keyword Research Tools
Webflow has no integrated database for keyword research.
You'll need to do keyword research manually somewhere else — which is a pain to integrate and manage.
Webflow has no tool to identify broken links, suggest internal links, or recommend keyword placement.
3. Webflow Doesn't Have a Plugin Ecosystem
Without the help of SEO plugins, you'll be left with more manual tasks, such as adding metadata and managing structural optimization yourself.
You also miss opportunities to improve overall SEO with specialized tools, leaving your page ranking to chance.
4. Webflow Doesn't Offer Page Monitoring
Webflow has no native tools for page monitoring or keyword tracking. You'll need to track data such as keyword rankings by integrating it with Google Search Console.
5. Webfow Doesn't Support Nested URLs
No nested URLs make it more difficult for users and search engines to find and understand your web pages. This means lower rankings on the SERP and less visibility.
It can also mean your site structure becomes a disorganized mess, especially as you scale.
6. Webflow Can Slow Content Velocity
Your SEO program will fail if you can't publish content fast and, unfortunately, the publishing process on Webflow can get a little technical for content folks. As a result, it can slow your entire publishing process by half a week every month.
You Should Build On Webflow's SEO With Other Tools
With Webflow's SEO capabilities, you can get by, especially if you follow an extensive technical SEO checklist. This includes:
Optimizing URLs, meta titles, and descriptions
Optimizing images and writing image descriptions
Using proper heading structure, and more
But don't settle for Webflow alone.
Yes, Webflow is good for SEO, but it can be even better with the help of additional tools like Letterdrop.
Here's how pairing Webflow with Letterdrop can help you close the gaps in your SEO strategy.
1. Letterdrop Has Built-In Keyword Research
Letterdrop pulls SEO data from Semrush. You can see data surrounding what your audience is searching for in one place, from the number of searches per month to SEO difficulty.
The Keyword Research Tool in Letterdrop
2. Letterdrop Takes Care of Internal Link Building
Letterdrop suggests internal links per blog post or in bulk across your pages. If you accept, they are automatically added and published.
Internal linking suggestions across pages in Letterdrop
3. Letterdrop Has Smart SEO Tooling
Letterdrop's SEO Optimizer semantically understands your content and compares it to top pages, Google's EEAT guidelines, and search rater guidelines. It can:
Identify and auto-fix technical SEO issues, running your content through over 60 SEO rules in seconds.
Identify Search Intent and let you know you whether the search is informational, navigational, commercial or transactional. It analyzes top pages and suggests the best format you should use to get ranking
Identify and auto-add internal links.
Provide insight into what has been covered on the SERP so that you know what needs to be addressed. You can even auto-generate sections into your content.
Suggest topics and new angles that haven't been covered yet so that you optimize for Information Gain. You can also auto-generate sections into your content.
Analyze and compare your content to top pages, giving you comparative data on word count, keywords, headings, and media usage. You can auto-add the suggested headings and Featured Snippets to your own text.
It gives you an EEAT guide specific to your content to make sure all your bases are covered.
Don't spend hours manually wading through SEO analytics somewhere else.
Letterdrop monitors pages for you and alerts you to pages that may need an SEO refresh.
Letterdrop automatically monitors pages for SEO improvements
5. It's Easy to Publish on Letterdrop
Letterdrop brings the Webflow publishing process to parity with WordPress. Everything from approvals to previewing to social scheduling is streamlined.
Even writers with no technical SEO knowledge can easily publish error-free content. It integrates deeply into Webflow, can connect to multiple CMS collections and supports any type of custom field.
Integrate Webflow With a Powerful SEO Tool to Drive Conversions
So, is Webflow good for SEO in the end?
While it can do passable SEO checks, Webflow lacks the advanced analytics and tracking tools needed for a thorough SEO sweep.
And if your content is poorly optimized, you're getting less targeted traffic and fewer conversions. That can lead to awkward conversations with your CEO.
You'll need to look into supplementary tools like Letterdrop if you want to see real results. Your content can be SEO optimized from top to bottom, just one click away from jumping up to the top positions on the SERP.
Why wait any longer? Talk to us to start your Webflow-Letterdrop integration today.
Ready to drive 11x more traffic to your Webflow site?
We helped build Google Search and now we want to help you make content your customers love.