The last three weeks I have had several calls asking for a quote to do some SEO on web sites that were built using a popular pay-by-the-month web design platform. These build-it-yourself web site services are often advertised on Facebook.
Unfortunately I had to decline this work. Here’s why …
These sites look very, very nice, are easy to build for the do-it-yourselfer and are reasonable priced.
The trouble is that many of the templates for these sites are not very search engine friendly.
One of the web sites I looked at could not be properly indexed by Google. All the search engine spider simulator could see was the title, description and keyword metatags, nothing else on the page. To Google and the other search engines, this page was blank.
Think of a book with a gripping cover title and compelling back-cover blurb, and when you open the book all the pages are blank.
The other problems I have often seen with pretty sites is that sometimes have wacky page file names, strange page redirects, a mountain of javascript within the page, and in some cases, take forever to load.
Here’s a few search engine spider simulators to try yourself:
http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php
http://totheweb.com/tools/spider-test/
Remember, currently search engines can only deal with text, if they can’t index your text then it is very hard to rank for anything.
If you are thinking of building a new web site, make sure the platform you choose is SEO friendly. When in doubt, use WordPress on standard Linux hosting that includes cpanel.
Cheap – Beautiful – SEO Friendly, pick any two.
