Is Webflow good for SEO? What 116 Webflow sites show

The short answer

The study cannot say whether Webflow is good or bad for rankings. It shows which technical SEO problems are common on Webflow sites, and where they differ from sites built with six other platforms.[1]

What is common on Webflow sites

The five most common warning-level problems on the 116 Webflow sites that count. A site has a problem when at least one of its pages does.[1]

• Heading hierarchy skips levels. A page jumps a heading level, for example from an H2 to an H4. On 100% of Webflow sites that count (116 of 116; 95% interval 96.8 to 100).[1]
• Unsafe cross-origin links (target=_blank without noopener). A link opens another site in a new tab without rel="noopener". On 95.7% of Webflow sites that count (111 of 116; 95% interval 90.3 to 98.1).[1]
• Links with no anchor text. A link has no text that a person or a screen reader can read. On 93.1% of Webflow sites that count (108 of 116; 95% interval 87 to 96.5).[1]
• Duplicate ID attributes. Two elements on one page share an id. On 90.5% of Webflow sites that count (105 of 116; 95% interval 83.8 to 94.6).[1]
• Links to broken pages. A link points at an address that answers with an error (a 4xx or 5xx status). On 89.7% of Webflow sites that count (104 of 116; 95% interval 82.8 to 94).[1]

Where Webflow sites differ from other builders

The six problems with the widest gap between the seven platforms. Webflow sites had the highest share of the seven for one of them: no main landmark, and the lowest share for one: HSTS max-age under 180 days.[1]

All seven builders side by side: what 743 sites built with seven website builders get wrong.

A Webflow SEO checklist, from the study

The five problems above, as five things to check on your own site. Some may be platform defaults and some owner choices; the study cannot tell them apart.

• Headings in order. Read each page’s headings from the top: an H2 follows the H1, an H3 follows an H2, and no level is skipped.
• rel="noopener" on links that open a new tab. Add it to each link to another site that opens in a new tab.
• Text on every link. Give every link text a person can read, or an aria-label when the link is an icon.
• Each id used once. Make every id unique on its page.
• Links that still work. Update or remove each link whose target answers with an error.

Which Webflow sites these are

128 Webflow sites were crawled and 116 count. Sites were drawn at random, with a fixed seed, from the Tranco list of popular domains, between rank 1,000 and rank 1,000,000, and the platform was detected from each homepage’s markup. No site is named.[1]

What this does not show

The study’s own limits, word for word:

• Search outcomes. Nothing here says whether these problems cost traffic or rankings.
• Cause. A figure describes sites built on a platform. It mixes platform defaults with owner choices and with the kind of site each platform attracts.
• Sites we could not crawl fully. If sites that refuse or block crawlers differ from the rest, the figures lean toward sites that are easy to crawl. The number left out is published with each version.
• Every page of large sites. Crawls stop at 1,000 pages; the number of sites that hit the cap is published with each version.
• Pages after JavaScript. Figures read the HTML as served. Speed (LCP, CLS) and accessibility need a browser and are not measured.
• Individual sites. No site is named, and the downloads hold totals only, one row per platform and problem.

Run an SEO audit of your own Webflow site

A share of 116 sites does not say what is on yours. Our free SEO audit is a real crawl of up to 25 of your pages, with no account, and lists the issues to fix first. What an SEO audit checks explains what it looks at.