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Does your business rely on leads from the internet? If yes, then Google is your business partner. Google has over 80% of the market share of intern...
Haters might jump down my throat for this, but it has to be said.
The importance of a mobile-optimized website builder cannot be underestimated.
In this vein, if you want a website builder that works really well for SEO, there’s one thing you need to do.
Stay away from GoDaddy and Wix.
In this blog, we’ll walk you through why you should avoid these platforms at all costs.
But first…
You might get confused about what separates mobile-optimized websites from mobile-friendly and mobile-responsive ones.
But it can be pretty easy to take them apart from each other.
A mobile-optimized website is designed mainly for mobile first-searching and reformats itself for smartphone users. It is built for smaller screens and encourages a frictionless experience as much as possible.
On the other hand, “mobile-friendly” simply means your website is compatible with mobile users, but the design is still primarily for desktop users.
Basically, your website’s desktop version shrinks to fit a smaller screen, but it provides a different level of user experience, design appearance, and functionality.
Meanwhile, mobile-responsive websites are like mobile-optimized websites in that they restructure and reformat for mobile compatibility.
What makes them different, however, is that they maximize the user experience on all devices.
This means that when you pull up a specific website on your desktop, mobile phone, and tablet, its responsive design will format itself to fit the exact dimensions of these different screens.
As we mentioned in a previous blog, Google is like a very considerate lover in the sense that it prioritizes user experience above everything else.
So, if you want to get into the good graces of the world’s #1 search engine, having a mobile-optimized website is key.
Fortunately, ensuring that your website visitors will have a smooth user experience is easy—as long as you pick the right website builder.
If you’re wondering why we strongly recognize the importance of a mobile-optimized website builder, that’s because mobile optimization is one of the many aspects of optimizing your sites for search engines.
Search engine optimization—SEO for short—is the art and science of improving your website in order to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).
The end goal here is to make you more visible online so that your target audience can discover your business, products, and services more easily.
Considering how mobile drives consumer behavior, getting your website optimized for mobile devices will ensure that you will reach your customers wherever they are.
And the key to that is a website builder that lets you easily optimize your sites for mobile users.
The thing is, there are a lot of options that will come up when you look for website builders that are mobile-optimized.
In fact, a quick Google search will yield results that include Wix, GoDaddy, WordPress, and Duda, among others.
However, just because they're the first platforms you learn about doesn’t mean we recommend all of them as well.
On the contrary, Wix and GoDaddy are at the top of our list of website builders you should not use.
And this might hurt, but if you are using a Wix or GoDaddy website, don’t expect it to be anything more than a pretty business card for your business.
Nope.
Despite being the world’s largest web host and domain registrar, GoDaddy is actually not a good website builder for SEO.
While you can get a business off a GoDaddy website, in most markets, we have found it a lot more challenging to rank and get business from.
The pros of using GoDaddy for SEO
One positive thing about GoDaddy is that its layout is responsive to fit and works well on all types of screens.
Yes, you might be able to easily integrate it with Google Search Console. And yes, you can add it to Google Analytics as well.
Unfortunately, that’s just about it.
The cons of using GoDaddy for SEO
One of the greatest drawbacks to GoDaddy is that it has very limited and restrictive SEO options. This is to the point that there’s just not much you can do to optimize your site and content.
In fact, it’s worth noting that what GoDaddy considers SEO may be different from what SEO specialists consider to be SEO.
Not only that, but the slow page load times are liable to test your patience before you can even get to say hi to your competitors.
While GoDaddy automatically generates a site map—which it submits to Google for indexing—you don’t have access to it, and you can’t even claim it under your name.
Apart from that, even though they have full control of your robots.txt file, they won’t touch it nor even let you edit it. So, good luck with that.
GoDaddy and SEO: is it worth it?
The advantages and disadvantages of the GoDaddy website builder we mentioned above clearly show what you’ll be missing out on in terms of SEO. This is if you decide to go with it.
This is why we don’t recommend using it if you’re more than a beginner in SEO and want to get great SEO results.
No either.
Although Wix makes it easy to build a website, it has a bad rap when it comes to SEO.
And, it might sound painful, but just like with GoDaddy, you certainly can’t expect it to be anything more than a pretty business card for your business.
The pros of using Wix for SEO
Wix has stepped up their game in the recent years, trying to catch up to their rivals.
The main reason users use this site builder today is that it makes it ridiculously easy to create a site.
No coding required, and you can already have your website up and running in an hour or so. Who wouldn’t love that, right?
Unfortunately, that’s where its positive features end for us.
The cons of using Wix for SEO
Given Wix’s inherent simplicity, you might think that Wix doesn’t deserve its bad reputation in the SEO community.
But the thing is, this selling point is actually what makes it much less attractive to SEO experts.
Unlike GoDaddy, Wix gives you much more control over titles, meta tags, and other similar SEO basic functions.
However, the website builder is still relatively rigid, making it a challenge for more advanced optimization.
Another thing that makes Wix not good for SEO is its speed.
Page loading times have long been confirmed to be a crucial SEO ranking factor. However, Wix’s loading speed is a lot less than ideal.
There’s not much you can do about it either since the leading culprits behind its serious speed issues are the scripts and unnecessary codes that form part of Wix’s core.
Aside from that, although it offers free plans, you can’t add Google Analytics tracking unless you have a premium plan.
This is bad news for users of the free Wix plan who use Google Analytics to assess and track their website performance.
On the other hand, if you have outgrown your website and would like to expand and move your content away from Wix, too bad. This is because you can’t migrate your Wix data that easily.
In fact, this is a big downfall since it means that you have to scrap your website and move and re-upload all your data on your new platform.
Wix and SEO: is it worth the money?
Compared to GoDaddy, Wix offers greater flexibility in terms of the SEO basics.
However, that doesn’t mean that Wix is good for SEO.
On the contrary, the Wix website builder just isn’t up to the task yet if what you’re looking for is to get excellent results from optimizing your websites for search engines.
Now that we’ve said our piece about GoDaddy and Wix website builders, we’ll outline here what we think are awesome mobile-optimized website builders for your business.
One of the reasons why WordPress is the best for SEO is that it takes to heart Google’s priority on user experience.
The WordPress website builder creates themes and plugins that work together to ensure that visitors of WordPress websites will enjoy their browsing experience.
Since they are more engaged, they tend to stay longer, thus decreasing your bounce rate.
Here are some more features that make WordPress SEO the best for us:
1. WordPress gives you much greater control over fundamental SEO functions.
Among the many features you’ll love about this website builder is its well-organized content structure.
From its title, permalinks, and headings to its meta tags and linking structure, you can easily organize your content in a way that’s easy for search engines to understand.
2. You can easily create interactive content that appeals to your target audience.
High-quality content is one of your must-haves if you want your site to get positive SEO results.
With the WordPress website builder, that isn’t a problem.
Not only can you easily customize your posts, but you can also add multimedia content that increases engagement with your posts, like audio, images, and videos.
You can even optimize each of the images you add, thus boosting your chances of ranking on SERPs.
3. WordPress is amazing for mobile optimization.
Another awesome thing about building your website on WordPress is that you can optimize it for mobile usage.
You don’t even need to pay or do anything extra since many of its themes are already compatible with mobile.
It is worth noting that you can leverage a variety of other plugins to enhance your website’s performance and functionality. Popular plugins include Jetpack for security and accessiBe for Accessibility.
4. Slow website speed generally isn’t a concern.
Even if you’re operating large websites, as long as they’re powered up on WordPress, the chances of frustrating visitors with slow page speed is low.
This is because there are plenty of plugins that WordPress website owners can use to optimize loading times.
They also have complete freedom and control over their plugin choices.
5. There are several SEO plugins that you can integrate with WordPress.
Speaking of plugins, you can find a lot of plugins you can use to further strengthen your WordPress website’s SEO potential.
The most common ones include the Yoast SEO, MonsterInsights, and Google Search Console plugins.
Another website builder we recommend for SEO, Duda is full of creative features that help you quickly get your site up and running and even personalize it.
But more than that, it has many SEO features that you can tinker with if you want to maximize your SEO rankings.
Below are a handful of the benefits you can expect from using Duda:
1. This mobile-optimized website builder boasts a solid balance of ease of operation
and capabilities.
Seriously easy to use, Duda offers an intuitive way for you to design and develop your website from scratch.
It’s equipped with plenty of functionalities that give you lots of flexibility within limits.
Its mobile-responsiveness also ensures that your mobile users can access your websites regardless of the device they use.
2. It has fast loading times.
Page speed is not a problem with the Duda website builder.
In fact, all Duda-powered sites are automatically optimized in line with Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
Its global CDN feature also significantly reduces loading times.
3. You can perform basic SEO functions.
Unlike Wix and GoDaddy, Duda enables you to organize your content not only for search engines but also for your readers.
You can even edit and customize your titles, meta tags, URLs, and images.
All that said, there’s a clear reason why I and my team at Blue Crocus Solutions don’t recommend using GoDaddy and Wix if you want successful SEO.
Instead, we suggest investing in WordPress and Duda for the degree of convenience that they provide.
Got some questions about your website? Or do you want a free audit of how you’re doing? Feel free to shoot me a message.
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