So you just launched your new Weebly, Wix, or SquareSpace website using one of the many FREE website builders. A few months go by and you start to become suspicious about why you aren’t getting any website traffic or sales to your newly launched online store. Sadly, this is a very common situation.
Free Website Builders are NOT the way to go! (at least not long term)
These free website products are very basic by nature. You will quite likely not be obtaining any high-ranking keywords from a setup like this unless you shell out more money to pay for some kind of “Premium” SEO add-on to your service plan – and even then, we’ve found that many of the most important controls pertaining to your SEO presence will be restricted and/or limited.
That or you will require assistance from a support team to make the slightest changes. Yes, you heard that right. You’re going to have to PAY to access the controls necessary to fine-tune your SEO efforts even if you get your website for FREE. This is the main reason that we recommend you avoid almost every free website builder currently in existence. There are a few notable systems that show promise as of late, particularly those such as Webflow – where you can start with a free plan and upgrade later – but their free plan doesn’t even allow you to utilize your own domain (a major deal-breaker).
We simply have not found even one that we would seriously recommend when it comes to Search Engine Optimization, so if you do intend to seek help with your own company’s SEO efforts – at least from us, please expect a migration to a platform which we can optimize for – if you’re currently stuck with a free website builder.
Our website is powered by the WordPress platform, which is also our primary recommendation for a CMS when we work with other businesses. We like to use what we support, so that when you have a problem – we’ll be well prepared to handle it. Contact us today to learn how we can migrate you away from these free website builders and onto a platform that powers 39.5% of the entire internet!
We’re not the only ones who feel this way either. Check out this post, or this one to read more about the downfalls of using free website builders.
While we can understand that everyone needs to start somewhere, the only thing we would recommend the use of one of these systems for might be to do your initial prototype to create a layout, theme, font choices, etc.
That way, when you do move into a system like WordPress or another CMS system where you’re in control of both your website and your server, you can still make use of a Visual Builder / Editor – there are several available and most work great. Heck, we’re using them ourselves for many different situations even though we know how to code because they make life easy.
Most people just need a guide to the world of WordPress, and the good news is that it can be setup to operate in a very similar fashion to any of the freemium systems you may have already gotten used to. The best SEO systems / frameworks we’ve found are available for WordPress and the platform makes it easy to make significant progress with your SEO strategy.
