Guide
Is Wix or Squarespace Good for SEO?
Yes, both handle the SEO basics a small business needs. Wix gives you a little more control, but for a local business the platform is rarely what's stopping you ranking.
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Where these facts come from
Everything below is from Wix's and Squarespace's own help centres, read on 21 October 2026, and linked at the bottom of this page so you can check it. Both platforms change their tools often, so if a feature matters to you, read the current help article before you choose. We build custom-coded sites, so we have a side in this. We've kept to what each platform says about itself.
What each one lets you control
| SEO setting | Wix | Squarespace |
|---|---|---|
| Page titles and descriptions | Editable per page, with title templates by page type | Editable per page, blog post and product |
| URL slugs | Editable; product and blog URL structures set in SEO settings | Editable, with redirects when you change one |
| Image alt text | Editable | Editable |
| Sitemap | Built automatically at /sitemap.xml | Built automatically at /sitemap.xml; you can't edit it |
| robots.txt | Editable in the Robots.txt Editor | Same file on every site; you can't edit it |
| Structured data | Your own JSON-LD on any page, up to 5 markups, each under 7,000 characters | Through code injection on Core, Plus and Advanced |
| Canonical tags | Added by default, changeable | Not covered in the help articles we read |
| Speed reporting | Site Speed dashboard with Core Web Vitals | Not covered in the help articles we read |
Where Wix gives you more
Wix has put real work into its SEO tools. Its help centre says it adds structured data automatically to store products, booking services, blog posts and event pages, and creates Local Business markup for your homepage once you add a business name and location. You can add your own JSON-LD on top, change the default tags, and edit robots.txt yourself. Wix also has a Site Speed dashboard that reports real visitor data against Google's Core Web Vitals, and it suggests waiting at least three weeks after a change before expecting the numbers to move.
Where Squarespace keeps it simple
Squarespace says all its sites are built for clean indexing, and it handles the technical parts for you. The trade-off is that you can't change them. Its help centre says every Squarespace site uses the same robots.txt and that you can't edit the sitemap or a page's source code. You can still do the things that matter most: write a unique title and description for each page, fix slugs, add alt text and set redirects. Its SEO checklist suggests a description of 50 to 300 characters for each page. To add your own structured data you'd paste it in through code injection, which comes on the Core plan and up.
What matters more than the platform
For a small local business, these move rankings more than any setting in the table:
- One page for each service. A page called "Hot water repairs" can rank for that search. A Services page listing eight things usually ranks for none of them.
- Words a customer would type. Your suburb, your service, your prices and how long jobs take, written the way people search.
- A Google Business Profile. For "near me" searches, the map results are decided mostly by your profile and reviews. Our Google Maps guide covers it.
- Other sites linking to you. Directories, suppliers and local groups. Google counts these on any platform.
- Keeping it current. A site that hasn't changed in two years is easy to outrank.
When the platform starts to hold you back
The limits show up on bigger sites in competitive markets. You might want twenty service and suburb pages, each with its own structured data, on Squarespace Basic, which has no code injection. You might need faster pages than the platform's own code allows, where you can trim your images and apps but not the code the builder ships. Or you want full control over what Google crawls. If none of those describe you, stay put and spend the time on the list above. If they do, that's when a custom-coded site earns its price.
Sources
- Wix: Adding structured data markup to your site's pageshttps://support.wix.com/en/article/adding-structured-data-markup-to-your-sites-pages-2546962
JSON-LD only, five markups a page, under 7,000 characters.
- Wix: Customizing your SEO settingshttps://support.wix.com/en/article/customizing-your-seo-settings-1420929
Title templates, default tags, URL structures.
- Wix: Editing your site's robots.txt filehttps://support.wix.com/en/article/editing-your-sites-robotstxt-file
- Wix: Understanding your Site Speed dashboardhttps://support.wix.com/en/article/understanding-your-site-speed-dashboard
- Squarespace: SEO checklisthttps://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002090267-Understanding-SEO-features
- Squarespace: View your site maphttps://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206543547-View-your-site-map
- Squarespace: Understanding Google SEO emails and console errorshttps://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206543207-Google-Search-Console-robots-txt-crawl-errors
The robots.txt note.
- Squarespace: Customize parts of your site with code injectionhttps://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/205815908-Using-code-injection
Plans that include it.
Where to next
- Check your site's Google basics for free
The free website audit checks your title, description, indexing and alt text, whatever platform you're on.
- Step 07 of The Climb: technical SEO basics
The settings above, and the rest of the checklist, in order.
- Why isn't my website showing up on Google?
Five causes and three free checks, on any platform.
See how we build for search
Our sites are custom-coded, prerendered for Google, and come with local SEO built in on the Growth package. See what that includes, or send us your current site and we'll tell you whether the platform is the problem.
Common Questions
Some of the sites we've built
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