Using SiteBuilder etc..

[Donstu71]

How difficult is it to get ranked when using a template website builder like SiteBuilder? Or similar?
I get a free site (very basic) with my Adobe subscription and don't seem to rank anywhere, obviously it's key to getting known and I would like to be at least somewhere in the first 10 pages on Google.
Please help. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Stu

 

[fisicx]

Simple answer: very difficult.

Anything free from Adobe doubly so

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

The website simplicity shouldnt be a problem, rather an advantage. Technical factors of the website are just a one of many pieces of a rank factors.

Most often it's really doesn't matter, whether you run commercial premium web engine or make some simple html template, all you need to focus about is user experiences.

If you're searching for some ranking possibilities make sure, you deliver better content, product, services - than your competitors, and present it more useful way.

Then try to get some valuable and useful backlinks for niche related to your website and you will definitely see results.

If someone say free website is more difficult to rank than some paid one without knowing minimum details of the page, he is just a pathetic ignorant who knows nothing about SEO.

 

[simon field]

he is just a pathetic ignorant who knows nothing about SEO.

Oh dear, you have problems don't you!

 

[Sudha]

I dont think thats an issue. Follow SEO techniques for your Website including great content, proper keywords, social promotions etc etc. If you cannot do SEO, then you may need to contact an agency that does it.

 

[devidweb]

The website simplicity shouldnt be a problem, rather an advantage. Technical factors of the website are just a one of many pieces of a rank factors.

Most often it's really doesn't matter, whether you run commercial premium web engine or make some simple html template, all you need to focus about is user experiences.

If you're searching for some ranking possibilities make sure, you deliver better content, product, services - than your competitors, and present it more useful way.

Then try to get some valuable and useful backlinks for niche related to your website and you will definitely see results.

If someone say free website is more difficult to rank than some paid one without knowing minimum details of the page, he is just a pathetic ignorant who knows nothing about SEO.

Nice Post sharing , this post very useful post for seo technique.

Thanks

 

[fisicx]

If someone say free website is more difficult to rank than some paid one without knowing minimum details of the page, he is just a pathetic ignorant who knows nothing about SEO.

If you had looked the site in question you would not have made such a fatuous comment. The Adobe site builder does not allow editing of individual page titles. Which means onsite SEO is very difficult. And the images are all external and you can't add caption so that's another blow to onsite SEO.

So your post does rather make you look more the ignorant.

 

[soundengineeruk]

I would like to be at least somewhere in the first 10 pages on Google.
Stu

I'm not web designer or SEO expert as both of these are mind fields.

Silly question, but have you submitted your site to Google?

 

[fisicx]

https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=stuartreevephotography.co.uk

Google knows about the site - it just doesn't like the site.

 

[soundengineeruk]

https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=stuartreevephotography.co.uk

Google knows about the site - it just doesn't like the site.

That answers that question.

Right I'm going back to my desk to be quiet lol

 

[Ian J]

If someone say free website is more difficult to rank than some paid one without knowing minimum details of the page, he is just a pathetic ignorant who knows nothing about SEO.

Surely the pathetic ignorant person is the one who feels obliged to make comments like that about someone whose opinion differs from his

 

[Toni Anicic]

You do rank no 1 for "stuart reeve photography" on google.co.uk as far as I can tell. Since that's your title tag, I guess that's what you were trying to rank for. - https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=stuart+reeve+photography

OK, seriously now... It really depends on what you're trying to rank for but if you're aiming for some high competition keywords in your niche, the technical side of things will be a smaller part of the work that needs to be done from the SEO perspective.

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

I was hoping for some more evidence on table, and I just get one:

The Adobe site builder does not allow editing of individual page titles. Which means onsite SEO is very difficult.

You are completely wrong:

Google is replacing title tag while deems necessary, or you choose mismatched one - so you can even left it blank, if you have enough good content.

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

Surely the pathetic ignorant person is the one who feels obliged to make comments like that about someone whose opinion differs from his

I'm taking firm position in the case, when I see that someone is trying to mislead other users, while giving no evidence for his opinion, and he is 100% wrong (which may confirm any seo specialist).

BTW.

I didn't quote or point or call fisicx as an ignorant (read closely), so what is the point of barking on me?

More tears please...

 

[Ian J]

I'm taking firm position in the case, when I see that someone is trying to mislead other users, while giving no evidence for his opinion, and he is 100% wrong (which may confirm any seo specialist).

By all means take firm positions on issues that you believe in but preferably by arguing your case rather than insulting others and your comment "more tears please" that you have used twice so far in this thread just makes you appear childish

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

By all means take firm positions on issues that you believe in but preferably by arguing your case rather than insulting others and your comment "more tears please" that you have used twice so far in this thread just makes you appear childish

Thanks for your point of view, I really appreciate it.

But I assume, that users would prefer to get some proven content (what I just did) even in childish edition, rather than misleading post.

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

The Adobe site builder does not allow editing of individual page titles. Which means onsite SEO is very difficult.

As I said before Google can replace title tag and choose most preferred.

As you mentioned adobe site builder does not allow editing of individual page titles - this is the only correct assertion of your post, but the thesis that makes it SEO difficult is misrepresentation.

Here is an evidence:

As you mentioned, all individual page have the same title which is:

<title>Stuart Reeve Photography</title>

...so I suppose we should see: Stuart Reeve Photography on every single page

But what we will see is this:

https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=site:stuartreevephotography.co.uk&start=10

And there are millions of other more complex examples.

 

[Toni Anicic]

That being said there are some serious technical SEO issues with that website.

All of those non-hompage URLs indexed by Google 302 redirect user to /projects. This is extremely bad user experience and one of the reasons why those inner pages won't rank highly for the specified keywords.

Regarding title tags, yes Google can rewrite them, but it still doesn't mean you should intentionally shoot yourself in the foot. You should have descriptive title tags, unique for each URL and it will help with ranking for those keywords within the title tag as it's still a ranking factor.

There's some serious keyword stuffing going on in the keywords meta tag as well on that website. Even though Google mostly ignores it, it looks spammy and I would personally remove those and not risk it.

Also, the contact link doesn't work, it has an extra http:// in front.

That's just the tip of the iceberg, I could probably go on for half an hour writing down just stuff that's wrong from purely technical SEO point of view, let alone the other aspects of SEO.

 

[Annie Starks]

As I see it, you'd better change the whole design of your website and only then start thinking about Google ranking... What is the point, if people who will find you while surfing Google, will close your website right after opening it, since design and user experience issues look unprofessional.

 

[fisicx]

As I said before Google can replace title tag and choose most preferred..

The page title is still one of the most powerful onsite ranking signals. Agreed you also need great content but without the right title on each page getting ranked becomes a whole lot harder.

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

user experience issues look unprofessional.

How can you estimate user experiences without knowing nothing about website data like - bounce rate, average session time, etc...

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

look unprofessional.

I need to agree, first impression about mentioned website isn't fantastic and could be better, but please find the proper adjective to describe this one:

http://www.rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk/

 

[Mike Wilford]

I feel this thread has digressed from the original question - is Sitebuilder good for SEO? Not - "whats wrong with my site."

As fisicx mentioned "The Adobe site builder does not allow editing of individual page titles. Which means onsite SEO is very difficult. And the images are all external and you can't add caption so that's another blow to onsite SEO." - this is not good for SEO

Yes Google can automatically pull these in but as and SEO expert we require the control to make the changes - not leave it up to Google. - so not good for SEO

To revert back to the question here are my views on DIY website builders:

1. In the case of many site builders they are usually created with Flash. No matter what they say, Flash is not search engine friendly. Google recommends against it.

2. You mentioned templates - The templates look like something out of Microsoft’s template directory!

3. Not mobile friendly. Slow-loading self-built sites, ( code heavy), turn off all mobile users and churn through limited data plans faster. Only desktop users can see your site and they won’t wait longer than 5-7 seconds for a site to load.

4. Finally if you examine the code of site builders (wix for example) you will see that it does not conform to normal conventions making it difficult for search engines to crawl.

DIY site builders do rank, but you are facing an upstream struggle. Wordpress websites find it much easier to rank faster.

 

[Mike Wilford]

How can you estimate user experiences without knowing nothing about website data like - bounce rate, average session time, etc...

Because its an estimation. A rough calculation based on similar sites of that quality that have been analysed.

I think its a fair comment - I would not expect a strong user experience on that site from my humble experience. We can spend time analysing and most likely come to the same conclusion. There are many practices that can be used to improve user experience - I think it goes against many of them

Its fair to say right? Happy to be proved wrong!

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

1. In the case of many site builders they are usually created with Flash. No matter what they say, Flash is not search engine friendly. Google recommends against it.

2. You mentioned templates - The templates look like something out of Microsoft’s template directory!

3. Not mobile friendly. Slow-loading self-built sites, ( code heavy), turn off all mobile users and churn through limited data plans faster. Only desktop users can see your site and they won’t wait longer than 5-7 seconds for a site to load.

4. Finally if you examine the code of site builders (wix for example) you will see that it does not conform to normal conventions making it difficult for search engines to crawl.

DIY site builders do rank, but you are facing an upstream struggle. Wordpress websites find it much easier to rank faster.

100% wrong, looks like you're really outdated

1. None of 50 most popular site builders support Flash. Mike its 2016 not 2006.

2. Again we have 2016 not 2006, now days even free templates looks incredibly good (while you complain about wix - check example below)

http://pl.wix.com/website-template/view/html/1721?originUrl=http://pl.wix.com/website/templates/html/all/1&bookName=create-master-new&galleryDocIndex=0&category=all&metaSiteId=

3. Mentioned website (http://www.stuartreevephotography.co.uk/) is 100% mobile friendly.

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http://www.stuartreevephotography.co.uk/

Most of site builders save files to *.html, the fastest existing format. But the reason of why you wait longer for free website is the free overloaded hosting. You shouldn't expect more from free hosting, but you still have opportunity to move your free website to some premium and fast hosting.

4.There is no possible way to examine code of site builders, it is simply ridiculous. The only thing you can examine is source code of ready website that was made by site builder. And if you examine at least one of wix websites, you will find its 100% crawlable.

https://www.google.pl/search?q=site:wix.com&oq=site:wix.com&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.2529j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

Because its an estimation. A rough calculation based on similar sites of that quality that have been analysed.

I think its a fair comment - I would not expect a strong user experience on that site from my humble experience. We can spend time analysing and most likely come to the same conclusion. There are many practices that can be used to improve user experience - I think it goes against many of them

Its fair to say right? Happy to be proved wrong!

Just because someone is wearing police uniform, doesn't make him police officer. I know it can be really confusing.

That is why I was asking for "some numbers", especially - bounce rate, the most powerful indicator, that tells much more about website than first impression.

But till we don't have such information, we both can be wrong about users experience.

 

[Mike Wilford]

I can't be wrong on my expectations. I could be wrong in my judgement though....

Also could a high bounce rate not be coming from wrong targeting in advertising rather than site performance ? I.E if you have the best car website but you are advertising on the wrong keywords?

Some initiative and gut feeling needs to come into play.

 

[Mike Wilford]

Defend all you want, I stay away from DIY websites..