Webflow is one of the fastest-growing CMS, and it is estimated that 0.9% of all websites are built using Webflow.
The below figure shows that Webflow usage has grown tremendously in the last 8 months.
Even though the usage is high and competing with other popular CMS, many queries/feature requests are pending solved by the Webflow team, especially in the SEO areas.
We have been using Webflow for more than a year, not only for TripleDart but over 70% of our clients using Webflow as their CMS. We encountered a lot of issues and problems in Webflow when it came to SEO. I’m listing the top 5 SEO things we can’t directly do in Webflow but need a slight modification from your end.
The SEO activities that you can’t automate in Webflow,
1. Sitemap automation
2. Nofollow tag
3. No custom canonical URL
4. Image URL customization
5. No-index tag for individual blog pages
1. Sitemap automation:
A sitemap serves as a blueprint of your website and helps search engines find, crawl, and index all of your website's content.
But you all know that you can automate sitemaps in Webflow. But if you want to edit the same, you can’t do it. You should go for the manual sitemap if you want to edit the same.
I will tell you one scenario - If you want to replace the current (www.) of your website with a non-www. version, then you should modify the sitemap into non-www. version. But, Webflow doesn’t change the sitemap automatically, it will remain the same. In that case, you should go for the manual sitemap and add it manually.
2. No-follow tag:
The no-follow tag can be used to specify search engines to not follow any specific pages that you linked from your content. Mostly, it would be the external link you refer to from your blog content.
If it is a Wordpress, you will have a direct option on the external link to change it to the no-follow tag. But in Webflow, you should do custom coding to add the no-follow tag to the external domains.
You can use the below script to do an automated no-follow link to the external domains,
<script>
var reg_exp = new RegExp('tripledart');
$('a').each(function()
{
if (!reg_exp.test(this.href))
{
// External Link Found
$(this).attr('rel','nofollow');
}
});
</script>
3. No custom canonical URL:
Canonical URLs are used to specify the original URL of the content. This would help you specify that page's original URL to search engines.
In WordPress, you can add the canonical URL with plugins like Yoast or Rankmath. But, in Webflow, you can’t add the Canonical URL for the individual blogs.
And, still, the Webflow team is working on resolving this issue.
4. Image URL customization:
Unlike WordPress, you can’t edit the URL of the images that you add to the blog. Mostly you will copy-paste the content from google or Microsoft Docs. That said, you are not adding the images separately to the blog, so Webflow will not allow you to edit the URL of the image, which we consider as one of the major SEO factors to tell the search engine that this image explains the concepts.
5. No way to add the no-index tag to individual blog pages:
There is no provision in Webflow to add the no-index to individual blog pages. Whereas in WordPress, if you installed SEO plugins like Rankmath or Yoas, you can add the No-index tag to individual blog pages.
This is very important if you are adding any Webinar pages or any page that you don’t want the search engines to index, you can’t add the no-index tag directly to those pages. You will need a custom code to solve this issue.
Summary:
Though Webfow is becoming popular in the SaaS world, there are a lot of issues that need to be resolved when it comes to SEO best practices.
Hope the Webflow team is working on those things to comply with the SEO best practices that popular CMS’ are already aware of.
