Before you start: what you are really hiring for
Hiring Wix SEO help goes badly when the buyer cannot say what they want. The result is a pile of proposals that all sound fine and cannot be compared. This page is the process, in order, from the first note you write to the first thirty days after someone starts. It assumes you already know why you are hiring. If you are still deciding between kinds of help, read the main guide first and come back.
Start by writing down the problem in one sentence, using something you can see. "We get about a dozen visits a month from Google and none for our main service" is useful. "We want better SEO" is not. Open Google Search Console if you have it connected, and look at the last three months. Our page on Search Console for Wix shows how to connect it. If you have never connected it, do that this week, because whoever you hire will want a baseline and history only starts from the day you connect.
Then decide who inside your business owns the hire. One person should answer questions, hand over access and read the reports. Hiring by committee is how a thirty-day job takes ninety.
The five steps
Step 1. Write a one-page brief
Put it on one page. Your goal in a sentence. Your site address. What you sell, to whom, and in which area. What you have already tried. Which pages matter most. Who currently has access to your Wix site and to Search Console. A budget range, or at least a ceiling. Sending every candidate the same brief is what makes the proposals comparable later.
Step 2. Build a shortlist of three
Find candidates in more than one place so that you are not comparing three versions of one channel. Referrals from other owners in your trade are the best signal. Wix's own directory, freelance sites and direct outreach to specialists are the others. We compare those routes in the Wix Marketplace versus other ways to hire. Whatever the source, look for evidence of work on Wix sites specifically, and ask each one the same questions from our list of 12.
Step 3. Run a small paid test
Pay each finalist, or your top two, to do one small job. Rewrite the title, description and opening paragraph of one service page. Or audit five pages and list what they would change. This costs a little and tells you more than any sales call, because you see how they think, how fast they answer and whether their writing sounds like something you would publish.
Step 4. Agree access and scope in writing
List the deliverables by type and number per month. List what is included and what is quoted separately. Name the report and when you will get it. Set the review point at the end of month three. Access is covered in its own section below.
Step 5. Plan the first 30 days together
Before day one, agree what you will see by day seven, day fifteen and day thirty. A plan that exists only in the provider's head is a plan you cannot hold them to.
Where to look, and what each source tends to give you
You are likely to find candidates in four places, and each has a typical strength and a typical weakness. Knowing them in advance saves you from being surprised.
Referrals. Someone you trust used them and the site did better. This is the strongest evidence you can get, as long as that site was similar to yours. A referral from a restaurant owner is less useful if you sell business consulting. Ask what was done and what changed in Search Console, not just whether they were pleasant.
Wix's own directory of professionals. It has the advantage of being built around Wix, so the people listed know the editor. Check Wix's help center for how the directory works today and what vetting it does. A listing tells you someone is on the platform. It does not tell you they are good at SEO, and many listed professionals focus on design.
Freelance sites. Wide choice and a wide range of quality. Reviews help but can be thin. Filter hard for people who describe specific work on specific sites.
Direct outreach. Find sites in your field that rank for what you want and see who wrote their pages. This takes an hour and often turns up the best candidates, because they have already done the thing you want.
Aim for one candidate from at least two of these. If you want a longer comparison of kinds of company, how to compare Wix SEO companies covers what they would ship, and the services menu helps you recognize what is being offered.
Giving site access safely
Whoever you hire needs to see and edit your site. They do not need your owner login, and you should not give it to them. Wix lets the owner invite other people and give each one a role with limited permissions. The exact names of roles and the settings screen change from time to time, so check Wix's help center for the current steps. In general terms, this is what to do.
Invite the expert by their own email address as a collaborator on your site, with only the permissions the job needs. If you are not sure which, start narrow and widen it when they ask. A person who only writes page content does not need access to billing or to your domain. Keep the owner account and the domain registrar login under your own control, so that if the relationship ends, nothing is stuck.
For Google Search Console, add them as a user with the lowest level that lets them see data, or a higher level if they will submit pages for checking. Do not hand over your own Google password. For Google Business Profile, use the invite feature there to add them as a manager only if the job covers it.
Do three more things. Write down who has access and when it was granted. Turn on two-step sign-in for your own account. And agree in the scope that access is removed on the last day of the engagement, with you doing the removal, not them.
Finally, make a backup of what matters before anyone edits. Copy your page titles and descriptions into a simple sheet, and note your current page addresses. If a redirect goes wrong, you will want that list. Our page on 301 redirects for Wix explains why addresses are the thing to protect.
What to put in the scope
You do not need a legal document for a small engagement, but you do need a written scope that both sides read. Here is what it should contain.
Deliverables. The number and type of items per month. For example, four service pages rewritten, two new articles, and a fix list for redirects. If a deliverable cannot be counted, it will be argued about later.
Exclusions. What is not included, such as design changes, photography, paid ads or work on a second site. Naming these prevents surprise invoices.
Reporting. What you will receive, how often, and from which tool. A report that is just a ranking screenshot is weak. A report that lists pages published, pages shown in Google, and clicks from Search Console is useful.
Term and exit. A short minimum is reasonable, since SEO takes time to show. A long lock-in with no review point is not. Put a review at month three, and let either side leave with a short notice after it.
Ownership. Everything written for your site is yours, and every account stays in your name. This one line prevents most of the ugly endings.
Price. What the fee covers and how it changes if the scope does. To understand what usually drives that number, read what Wix SEO costs before you negotiate.
What the first 30 days should look like
A good start is visible. If you can read the list below at the end of the month and tick most of it, the hire is on track.
Days 1 to 7. Access is set up and a baseline is recorded. That means the clicks and impressions from Search Console as they stand before any change, saved somewhere you can both see. The expert also reads the site and writes down what they found, in plain language, tied to specific pages.
Days 8 to 15. The findings arrive as a short written list, ordered by how much each item matters. They should say things like "the services page has no description and the title is the default" rather than "improve on-page SEO". You agree on the first batch of work.
Days 16 to 30. The first changes are live. You should be able to open your own site and see new titles, rewritten pages or new articles. A strategy deck is not a deliverable. If a month passes and the only thing you have is a deck, ask what ships next week.
You will not see rankings move in thirty days, and a good provider will tell you so up front. What you can see is work done and a clean baseline to measure against. The longer arc, and what to expect from month three onward, is covered in how to improve Wix SEO in order of impact. If something in the first month is unclear, our Wix SEO guide is a good reference for checking their claims.
Five hiring mistakes worth avoiding
Most bad hires repeat the same few errors. None of them take talent to avoid, only a bit of patience at the start.
Choosing on price alone. The cheapest proposal is almost always the smallest scope. Compare what ships, not what costs.
Skipping the test. A sales call rewards confidence. A small paid job rewards skill.
Sharing the owner login. It is faster for a day and a problem forever. Use a collaborator invite.
Not recording a baseline. Without the before numbers, any later claim about results is a matter of opinion.
Hiring for the wrong problem. If your site loads slowly or no one can find your phone number, an SEO expert is the wrong first call. A quick check of what slows Wix pages can save you a month of confusion.
Adjusting the process to your kind of Wix site
The five steps stay the same. What changes is what you put in the brief and what you ask the paid test to cover.
A local service business. Your brief should name the towns you serve and the services that bring in the most money. The paid test is best as one service page, or one location page, written from scratch. Ask whether they will also look at your Google Business Profile, since for a local business it often matters as much as the site. The page on Wix local SEO shows what that involves.
A shop. Your brief should list your best-selling products and categories. The test could be a rewrite of one category page and three product pages. Ask how they handle product descriptions at volume, because a hundred products need a plan, not a heroic weekend.
A creator, coach or consultant. Your brief should say what you want to be known for. The test is often a pillar page or a short article on a question your clients ask, and you will learn quickly whether the writing sounds like you.
In every case, say in the brief what you will not do. If you will not write for the blog, say so, and ask the candidate how they would cover it.
How RunOctopus handles this
If a hiring process sounds like more of your time than you have, this is the other route.
RunOctopus is a done-for-you service. Its AI, Ollie, researches your business, then writes and publishes pages directly on your own website. A team plans, writes, reviews and publishes alongside Ollie. It works with Shopify, WordPress, WooCommerce and Wix. You install nothing, approve nothing, upload nothing and schedule nothing, and pages go live on their own.
The first week brings 8 long-form articles, 6 pages and a custom interactive tool built for your niche. After that it is 175+ pieces of content a month, written, published and linked. You also get reports on where ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini name your business. The promise is more visibility on Google and in AI answers within 90 days, measured against the 90 days before you joined, or every dollar back.
You can see what Ollie would do for your site before you decide anything. Paste your address into the free site read. Ollie reads the site and shows the plan. No account, no call.