We pulled Wix's sitemap this week and found 10,828 URLs, including 4,349 website templates, on a site SEO people once called bad for search.
Ten years ago, Wix offered $50,000 to anyone who could outrank it on Google. Today, its SEO brings in small business owners and the pros who once doubted it.
We traced Wix from 2006 to today, and it offers some of the clearest SEO strategy examples outside B2B. Each chapter below ends with lessons your team can put to work.
2006 to 2013: a builder that search engines struggled to read
Wix is a no-code website builder, and Avishai Abrahami, Nadav Abrahami and Giora Kaplan founded it in Tel Aviv in 2006.
The first Wix editor launched in 2008 on Flash, so every page got a hashbang address, the format Google then recommended for JavaScript sites.
Even so, past problems with Google gave Wix a reputation as unfriendly to SEO, and the label stuck for years.
Wix moved to an HTML5 editor in 2012 and opened its App Market that year, then listed on Nasdaq on November 6, 2013. By year end it had about 42.1 million registered users and $80.5 million in revenue.
Lessons to apply:
- Write down the doubts critics repeat most, since buyers ask about them on sales calls.
- Treat an early technical choice as a debt, and fix it before a reputation forms around it.
2015 to 2019: fixing the plumbing in public
Google deprecated the AJAX crawling scheme behind those addresses in October 2015. Wix then moved 85 million users and about 100 million URLs to clean addresses, each with a 301 redirect.
Starting with 50 super users and about 10,000 free sites, the move was finished by the end of August 2016.
In November 2016, Wix launched the SEO Hero contest, offering $50,000 to whoever ranked highest on Google for "SEO Hero" within four months.
Walid Gabteni, an SEO consultant in Paris, won in April 2017 with seo-hero.tech, and the contest kept Wix in the SEO press for months.
In May 2017, Wix launched SEO Wiz, built with Google's Search Console team, to plan each site's SEO and get it indexed in one click.
Wix's 2019 SEO Battle gave two agencies six months to rank for "Wix SEO", with $25,000 for the winner and $10,000 for the runner up.
Marie Haynes Consulting led the "Wix SEO Lovers" team, which built its site on Wix and won when the contest closed on December 19, 2019.
What to take away:
- Fix the product problem first, then invite critics to test the fix in public.
- Run an open contest only if you can live with losing, since the attention is the real prize.
- Build SEO features with a platform your buyers already trust, as Wix did with Google Search Console.
What Wix SEO looks like in 2026: we counted the sitemap
Wix's robots.txt lists one sitemap, which we fetched on November 3, 2026, and we sorted all 10,828 of its URLs by top folder:
Templates lead with 3,400 template pages and 791 gallery pages, followed by 1,905 Wix Blog URLs and 1,868 App Market pages.
Two things surprised us: the SEO Learning Hub at wix.com/seo/learn is missing from the sitemap, and 143 URLs under /studio/ai-search-lab/ hold Wix's AI search research.
Each of the four plays below targets a different kind of searcher:
- Templates reach people who already know they want a website.
- Free tools reach people who are still naming and branding a business.
- The blog reaches people with a how-to question about running a site.
- The SEO hub and AI Search Lab reach professionals who build sites for clients.
Takeaways for your team:
- Count your sitemap by folder every quarter to see which bets your team really made.
- Check that every hub you care about sits in a sitemap search engines can find.
Play 1: templates that work as landing pages
The template gallery is the site's biggest section, with a title tag targeting "2000+ Free HTML5 Website Templates" and a short, friendly H1.
Each template has its own page, and 791 gallery pages group them by type and industry. The main gallery page carries breadcrumb schema and about 140 internal links.
Each template page answers a search and hands the visitor a site to edit, which helps explain why templates lead the sitemap.
Lessons to apply:
- Turn common customer setups into templates, such as a sales pipeline or onboarding plan.
- Give each template its own page with a plain title, a preview and a button that opens it.
- Group templates by role and industry so each group page targets its own search.
Play 2: free tools that meet people before they need a website
The free tools hub at wix.com/tools covers branding, marketing, design and finance. Its logo maker has 158 sitemap URLs and now runs under Wixel, the AI design platform Wix launched in May 2025.
The business name generator turns a short description into name ideas, each linked to a Wix domain and website.
Then come 60 industry pages, such as the Bakery Name Generator, each with FAQPage and HowTo schema, sample names and naming tips.
Someone naming a bakery will soon need a domain and website, so the tool reaches them before they compare builders.
What to take away:
- Build a free tool for the first task your buyer faces, long before they shop for software.
- Make industry versions of the tool, each targeting its own search.
- Link the tool's result to the next step in your product, as the name generator links to domains.
Play 3: a blog built on how-to questions
The Wix Blog holds 1,767 articles once we set aside author and category pages. Sorting their slugs by pattern shows the SEO content strategy behind them:
- 525 slugs contain "how-to", such as guides to starting a blog or an ecommerce business.
- 158 slugs contain "best-", which usually marks a list of options.
- 147 slugs contain "what-is" and explain a single term.
- 88 slugs contain "ideas" and 50 contain "examples", for people seeking inspiration.
- 58 slugs compare two options with "-vs-" in the address.
Almost a third of the blog answers how-to questions, which suits a product people use to get tasks done. The flagship guide on building a website was updated on November 2, 2026.
That guide compares site builders with AI chat assistants like ChatGPT and Claude and with coding by hand. The page carries BlogPosting, HowTo, FAQPage and VideoObject schema, plus a domain search box beside the article.
Our roundup of content strategy examples from B2B brands shows how B2B software companies plan topics around the jobs their product does.
Takeaways for your team:
- Write how-to guides for the jobs your product does, and update the top ones every few months.
- Compare your product with every other way to do the job, AI tools included.
Play 4: a hub for the SEO pros who doubted Wix
The Wix SEO Learning Hub was live by June 2022 and teaches SEO for any platform through articles, webinars, videos and the SERP's Up podcast. Outside experts such as Aleyda Solis write beside Wix's own team.
Editor George Nguyen commissions, fact-checks and edits every article, with input from Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter of Wix.
In September 2024, Wix Studio added an SEO course built by 11 experts, with 12 hours of lessons for SEO pros. That year Wix also served as headline sponsor of brightonSEO San Diego.
The AI Search Lab adds research, guides and a glossary on AI search across 143 URLs. In July 2025, Wix added AI Visibility Overview to track how often ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude cite a site.
Between July 2022 and July 2023, over 2 million Wix sites connected Google Search Console, and their traffic grew 15% on average within a year.
Lessons to apply:
- Invite respected experts to teach on your site under their own names.
- Teach the topic for everyone, competitor users included, so the hub earns wider trust.
- Show up at the conference your critics attend, and bring something useful to give away.
Did it pay off? What the investor reports show
Registered users grew from about 42.1 million at the end of 2013 to over 304 million at the end of 2025:
Revenue grew from $80.5 million in 2013 to $761.1 million in 2019 and $1.39 billion in 2022. In 2025, revenue reached $1.99 billion, up 13% from the year before.
Partners revenue, mostly from agencies and freelancers who build client sites, matters most here. Partners revenue reached $750.3 million in 2025, up 23% and about 38% of the total.
Wix doesn't report how much of its growth came from search, so we won't guess. Its filings do show that the pros it courted bring in a growing share of revenue.
What to take away:
- Track revenue from the audience your content targets as its own line.
- Judge a hub for professionals by the deals it shapes over years, since trust builds slowly.
How to run the Wix playbook in a B2B company
You don't need 10,828 URLs for this playbook, and most B2B teams can start within a quarter:
- Pick the first task your buyers face before they shop, and build one free tool for it.
- Find the searches behind that task with B2B keyword research, then make a version for each industry you serve.
- Turn your five most common customer setups into templates, each with its own page and preview.
- Invite experts your buyers trust to write for a learning hub, planned like the pillar page examples we've collected.
- Check how AI answers cite your hub, using the steps in our guide to GEO for B2B SaaS.
FAQ
Is Wix good for SEO?
Yes, Wix covers the core parts of SEO, with clean page addresses since 2016 and built-in tools such as SEO Wiz and a Google Search Console connection. In the 2019 SEO Battle, the agency that built its site on Wix ranked higher for "Wix SEO" than the agency that used another platform.
What is the Wix SEO Learning Hub?
The Wix SEO Learning Hub is a free resource at wix.com/seo/learn with articles, webinars, videos and the SERP's Up podcast. It teaches SEO for any platform, and editor George Nguyen fact-checks every article.
How many pages are in Wix's sitemap?
Wix's sitemap held 10,828 URLs when we fetched it on November 3, 2026. Templates made up 4,349 of them, followed by 1,905 blog URLs and 1,868 App Market pages.
How did Wix change its SEO reputation?
Wix fixed the technical problem first by moving about 100 million URLs off hashbang addresses by August 2016. It then ran public SEO contests, built SEO Wiz with Google's Search Console team and launched a learning hub where outside SEO experts teach.
What can B2B companies learn from Wix's SEO strategy?
Start with a free tool for the first task your buyers face, since it reaches them before they shop. Then add templates with their own pages and a learning hub that the experts in your category write for.
Start by counting your sitemap by folder to see which plays you already run, then get a free AI visibility audit of your brand.
