So you’ve put in the time and effort to launch your new Weebly, Wix, or SquareSpace website using one of the many FREE website builders. A few months go by, and you start to feel the frustration of not seeing any significant website traffic or sales for your newly launched online store. Unfortunately, this is a common and disheartening situation.
Stay Away From those Darn Free Website Builders!
These free website products are fundamental 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 “Premium” SEO add-on to your service plan – and even then, we’ve found that many of the essential controls about your SEO presence will be restricted and limited.
That or you will require assistance from a support team to make the slightest changes. Yes, you heard that right. You’ll have to PAY to access the controls necessary to fine-tune your SEO efforts, even if you get your website for FREE. This is why we recommend you avoid almost every free website builder. A few notable systems 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 domain (a major deal-breaker).
We have not found even one that we would seriously recommend for 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 that we can optimize for if you’re currently stuck with a free website builder.
So then, what platform SHOULD you be using?
The WordPress platform powers our website, which is our primary recommendation for a CMS when you are a small or medium-sized business. We use what we support so that when you have a problem – we’ll be well-prepared to handle it. Rest assured; we can help you migrate away from these free website builders and onto a platform that powers 39.5% of the entire internet, giving your website a better chance at success!
We’re not the only ones who feel this way. Read this post to learn more about the downsides of using free website builders.
While we understand that everyone needs to start somewhere, we only recommend using one of these systems for your initial prototype to create a layout, theme, font choices, etc.
That way, when you move into a WordPress or another CMS system where you’re in control of your website and your server, you can still use a Visual Builder / Editor – several are available, and most work great. We use them ourselves for many different situations even though we know how to code because they make life easy.
Most people need a guide to the world of WordPress, and the good news is that it can be set up 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.
