Why you should avoid DIY site builders
More than ‘Just a website’.
As the number of mobile phone users sky rockets, so are the number of people who use search engines to find businesses and organisations, most prominently Google. Google and its influence over the internet is so powerful, they are said to have almost completely removed spam and hacked-spam from their search engine listings, using their algorithms and analytical research to provide what they say is “The best search result possible”. But really, all they have done is replaced your music blog with someone who is paying money for an active Google Adwords campaign on their website.
In fact, Google not only has power over the internet, but is said to control around 40% of all internet traffic at any given time. This discovery was made when a near-unprecedented outage that seemingly affected all of Google’s services for a brief time took place… Anyway, the point here is that Google does in fact control the internet and this is why search engine visibility is more important these days than ever before. Google has literally replaced spam with what they believe is relevant. and it looks like for the time being, love them or hate them, web developers will have to get used to Googles changes.
Googles brief downtime detected: That’s a 40% drop as all of those services go offline and then a 50% bounce as they come back on and everyone is able to catch up with what they were doing.
Search Engine Optimisation
Every Person or business has different needs; there is no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to web design and establishing an online presence. Just having a website does not guarantee that you will have visitors. Most people that depend on online marketing have more than just “a website”. They have a comprehensive marketing strategy where a highly search engine optimised website is just the beginning. Almost everyone who is dominating the online market are paying big bucks to have their page metrics and search engine visibility optimised (On-page SEO & Off-page SEO) to its highest potential. The main reason for this is that over 85% of people find local businesses by using google, usually on their smart phones, people are no longer relying on dying resources like the yellow pages.
Search engine visibility and page metrics are everything these days, the fine tuning goes right down to a forensic level. This is forcing people to either take on a very large learning curb, or to pay someone big bucks in order to have their online presence established, as DIY site builders are not a suitable option when search engine visibility is taken into account. Even more important though, Google is not a fan of DIY site builders, like Wix or Weebly. Even Googles own Blogger doesn’t score that well. In part, this is due to the use of obsolete technology and templated websites that are not unique in the back end. Your website will not rank well, which makes it harder for people to find your website. This will affect how much traffic you can potentially get because your site will not be search engine optimized. In 2016, that’s an expensive mistake if you rely on calls coming in and your books remaining full.
The top four reasons you should not use DIY site builders for your personal or business website.
There are countless DIY website building tools available on the internet these days, most of them are usually backed by very large marketing campaigns. WIX is a prime example of this. Truth be told, the only good thing about Wix websites are that they are so easy to use that even the most technologically-challenged person can have a site up and running within an hour. There are however, countless reasons why you should not use DIY website building tools for your business website. Almost everyone who is dominating the online market are paying big bucks to have their page metrics and search engine visibility optimised to its highest potential. To help clarify this, we have provided what we believe are the top five reasons people should not use DIY site builders for their personal or business website.
- Search engine visibility. Just because you have a website it doesn’t mean people will visit it. Google cannot verify or sitemap DIY websites in webmaster tools, nor do templated websites score very well organically. this means your site will NEVER appear on the first page or second page of a google search… Most businesses these days are found on google and very rarely do people go past page 1 or 2 of a search result. Google uses comprehensive methods to determine the best search engine result to its users, based on location, relevance and search engine friendliness. SEO is so big these days that it is a super huge industry within itself, it is unavoidable but at the same time, its very much worth your time. No other form of online advertisement out-ranks Google… Period!
- Obsolete technology. Even the biggest DIY site builders (WIX, Weebly, Blogger, etc.) use obsolete technology. Slow-loading self-built sites, that are data and graphics laden, turn off all mobile users and churn through limited data plans faster. Mobile friendliness is essential these days. Only desktop users can see your site and they won’t wait longer than 5-7 seconds for a site to load. Would you? These days 40% of all search engine traffic are smart phone or tablet users. DIY sites are also usually created with Flash, Flash is not search engine friendly. Google recommends against it. Unless you are using open source tools like WordPress (which even the professionals use) your page ranking will never be up to scratch. a website is a great deal more than ‘How it looks’. What counts is the data in the back-end of your website, the information that customers usually don’t see, this data in the back-end of DIY site building websites is statistically proven to lack.
- No flexibility is bad for Business. You can build a website with any site builder in about 30 minutes, choosing from about 50 different templates that have all been previously used thousands of times by other people. It takes more time to bake a cake. Don’t assume your business or organisation deserves more time and energy for its most important public-facing thing than a cake? If you use DIY site builders, you cannot brand properly, you are subject to their limitations and bandwidth which are (at the very best) awful. Support, security and reliability is nonexistent. They lack aesthetically and generally are very easy to pick out due to their unprofessional standard and annoying popup ads. Using DIY site builders (like WIX) is financial suicide if your business depends on incoming calls and having your business found. Even if you were an expert WIX user and a graphic designing genius, you will still be unable to utilise the vastness of open source web development. Customisation can also cost more if you wish to expand beyond the scope of your generic choices in styles and placement.
- Accountability. By outsourcing your hosting and storage for your websites database, domain name and email, you will never own these outright properly. downtime and server issues will only be resolved at the mercy of people you cannot contact. Using DIY site builders also generally means that you will have shared hosting on slow servers that you share storage and loading time with potentially hundreds of other websites. If something happens to your online content, you are on your own. The difference is that as a small team you have employed (or as a sophisticated self-taught web developer) they (or you) will be forced to care. as the growth of their business may depend on your success. Choosing the right web developer can sometimes be like choosing cancer treatment, not a lot of people have success. a lot of people get burnt and are forced to try it themselves or invest elsewhere. The key here is to have a detailed understanding of what services or products you are trying to promote, It is essential that you or your web developer is constantly monitoring your traffic and optimising your search engine visibility.
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