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Why A Self-Built Website Isn’t Compatible With Essential Marketing Strategies

Building a website on a DIY platform is easy, but you might run into problems when you hire a professional marketing agency or SEO company. While DIY website builders like Wix and Weebly make it easy to create a website that looks good, you won’t have a foundation for strong marketing and SEO. Here’s why:

Some platforms restrict URL formats

WordPress allows you to choose your URLs, but not all builders do. Some builders automatically generate page URLs from page titles and don’t give you the option to edit them. Other platforms use URL formats that aren’t search engine friendly. Not having search engine friendly URLs makes it harder to rank your pages.

Intentionally creating URLs is part of marketing and SEO. Users see your URL in the search engine results; it tells them where each link leads. You need to place keywords in your URLs. Not having this freedom restricts your marketing and SEO efforts.

Inflexible customization options

Not all DIY website builders are flexible. With some builders, if you want to change your site’s theme you have to rebuild your site from scratch. For example, Godaddy’s site builder tool forces you to create your website from scratch when you want to change your theme. 

Being unable to change your theme easily has two serious consequences:

  • Limited navigation. If you can’t change your theme, you can’t expand your navigation when your site grows and you need to reorganize. 
  • Loss of SEO. Changing your theme and starting from scratch means you’ll lose all the SEO work you did. You’ll need to redo your on-page SEO from scratch. 

Some web building platforms don’t allow you to adjust the content shown to mobile users. That puts you at a disadvantage, considering 58% of people browse the web on mobile devices.

While not to pick on Godaddy, there is one other problem with their site builder you should be aware of. Godaddy actively blocks Google from indexing anything other than text. That means Godaddy blocks Google from indexing images. Blocked images are terrible for SEO. You want Google to index your images.

The need for plugins, add-ons, and other third-party tools

Many DIY builders give you just enough freedom to create a basic website but don’t include a blog. In today’s world, not having a blog is unacceptable. A crucial part of marketing is content marketing, and that requires a blog. 

Some builders make it easy to integrate third-party blogs like a WordPress blog, but it’s always going to be separate from your main website and it won’t be a seamless integration. This will confuse some users and make it hard for them to remember where to find your separate blog. When your blog gets indexed in the search engines, it will be separate from your main website. People who find your blog may not know you have a website and vice versa.

Instead of dealing with third-party applications and a limited builder, it’s better to hire a professional developer to get the job done. Hiring someone isn’t as expensive as you might think. You can get a Singapore developer for less, while still getting the same high-quality work.

You can’t move your newsletter signup form

If you’ve ever tried to edit the HTML in a WYSIWYG editor, you know it’s difficult and sometimes impossible to place elements exactly where you want them. Design builders don’t usually give you access to the source code for the template – just individual elements. That means your newsletter sign up form will probably be stuck in a sidebar. 

There’s nothing inherently wrong with placing your newsletter signup form in a sidebar, but it might not be optimal with some themes. Especially if your theme automatically resizes input forms and other elements contained in your signup form’s code.

Build your website right the first time

You won’t go far with a DIY website. Eventually, you’ll need to hire a marketing and SEO firm and they won’t be able to work with your existing site. You’ll need to pay a developer to redo your website from scratch. All the time you spent learning the builder, experimenting, and finally building your site will have been in vain.

Build your website right the first time by hiring a professional developer. Don’t be fooled by the hype. The easy road always comes at a price.

Written by Jenna Cyprus

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