Discover Wix’s structured data capabilities and use them to save time and money by implementing structured data at scale. Here’s how to do it step by step.
You can discover a nice story embedded in almost everything if you look hard enough.
The narrative of Wix for structured data (and I’ve seen more than my fair share of SEO tools) is one of the more interesting that I’ve been fortunate enough to watch.
On the surface, you’d think that a CMS and structured data would make for a bad story, but all it takes is a little digging.
Here’s everything you need to know about using structured data on a Wix site, as well as how we did it.
The Challenges of Solving Structured Data for Wix Sites
It wasn’t easy to make structured data implementation accessible and scalable for a comprehensive platform. I say robust not to use euphemistic marketing jargon, but because of Wix’s platform architecture.
Essentially, you have your site’s major pages (static pages).
The team responsible for the main Wix Editor “owns” pages like your homepage and about page.
Wix, on the other hand, offers a wide range of page kinds, including product pages, blog pages, and specialist verticals like restaurant and fitness pages.
If you want to add any of these pages to your Wix site, you’ll need to install the “app” for that page type.
To host a blog on your site, for example, you’ll need to install the Wix blog app and construct dynamic blog pages.
Of course, each “app” or vertical is managed by a separate team, with its own set of technological challenges.
There are static pages within the Wix Editor, which makes things even more confusing.
From the Wix dashboard, you can manage vertical pages (which I’ll refer to as product pages, courses, blog pages, forums, and so on in this post).
You adjust two different Wix sub-platforms (the Wix Editor and the Wix dashboard) and across any multiple (and unique) verticals to generate an across-the-board change to structured data implementation.
Let’s make the situation more difficult: Wix offers a diverse range of users.
Professional developers use an in-built full-stack dev tool called Velo to build sites, as do business owners with no technical knowledge.
How do you meet the needs of both?
We were left in an odd predicament once we became serious about upgrading structured data (around early 2020): Wix offered out-of-the-box markup for a range of dynamic verticals ranging from courses to products to the blog, but there was no easy way to customize it.
To make modifications to the markup we developed, users had to use our development tool.
This isn’t true for most business owners, and it’s certainly not true for many SEO experts.
In either scenario, it isn’t the most straightforward or streamlined solution.
Furthermore, folder-level premade markup is fantastic until you need to update the markup for a specific page within that group.
You could, but you’d require our development tool, which would lead to the same issue.
Out-Of-The-Box Structured Data Markup on Wix
Let us now turn our attention to possible remedies. We’ll start with the initial solution we built to enable site owners who don’t have an SEO background to scale structured data out-of-the-box markup.
In Wix, there is a set of pages I’ll refer to as “vertical pages” throughout this piece.
These are dynamic pages that are part of Wix’s core verticals or “dynamic page kinds.”
These verticals include:
- Product pages (i.e., Wix Store).
- Blog pages.
- Courses.
- Events.
- Forums.
Wix generates Rich Result-optimized JSON-LD structured data markup for certain page kinds based on Google’s best practice recommendations.
To get rich results, you don’t need to add any structured data markup because Wix does it for you.
Because Wix is a closed-CMS, we understand the structure of vertical pages because we created them and can build markup automatically.
As a result, when your customer adds a new event page, we can automatically generate Event markup using the information on the page.
The same may be said for product pages, courses, and forums, among other things.
This is beneficial in two ways:
When working on a site for the first time, can be a huge time saver.
When Google adjusts its rich result requirements, it can be a huge time saver.
To the latter, you won’t have to start making modifications to hundreds (if not thousands) of pages if Google updates its structured data requirements for rich result eligibility.
When using Wix’s out-of-the-box markup, the Wix SEO product team will make these adjustments for you so you don’t have to.
Creating & Customizing Structured Data Markup on Wix
While providing out-of-the-box markup solves some issues, it can also create new ones.
What if you don’t want to employ the solution we came up with for you?
What if you want to add a markup to a page where we haven’t already done so?
This is when things start to get interesting.
Remember that Wix is primarily a website builder.
The SEO functionality may need to be aligned with the platform’s structure at times.
As a result, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to personalizing structured data on a Wix site.
I hate to sound like a broken record, but it all depends.
It depends on the type of page you’re working on and your objectives in this scenario.
Creating Custom Markup on Wix Static Pages
We began markup customization with the site’s major pages (static pages) because it was the least “complicated” path.
Static pages were not just the “easiest” page type for us to open up markup modification for, but they are also the simplest when it comes to Wix structured data implementation.
On these pages, you can use the Wix Editor to add any markup you want.
