Welcome back! This is John Locke, and today I'm answering a question that comes in:
“How do you feel about GoDaddy Website Builder websites? Can you make those
rank in Google? Are those okay for SEO? What about Wix websites?” Any type of site like that,
where you're using a page building tool or a proprietary tool to build the site, yeah,
absolutely you can make those rank high in search engines, depending on the level of competition and
depending on what else is out there. Here's what usually happens in reality—because I
see this with a lot of industrial sites, such as machine shops, manufacturing shops,
and some types of shop like that in a local area. And they're trying to rank against other shops
like that. Most of the time, the competing websites that you're trying to go up against
in your region are also not that awesome – because websites built on GoDaddy Builder are often pretty
basic-looking. They seem to have a dated look to them, and most of the time, these sites are about
five or six pages. I don't think I've ever seen a really extensive site architecture on a GoDaddy
site, or on most Wix sites. I haven't really seen that. They're good for very basic sites. And even
some of the more basic Squarespace sites. Those Squarespace sites tend to look a lot better, but
they're very limited in what they can do out of the box—which is a reason why I don't like them.
Most often, what happens is – if you have a basic site, or if some of the other sites that
you're trying to rank against are basic WordPress sites, and maybe they're built with something like
a Theme Forest theme – the instant that a site comes along with a proportionally larger amount of
content, better content, better design, something that's custom designed perhaps in WordPress or
Drupal or Joomla or Craft CMS, something that offers more flexibility with the design and
the layout of the site, something where people can get creative and actually have control over
how the site looks. Once you have a competing site with a little bit of content, that looks
a lot better than the competition and it gets a few links from other sites – after a few months,
that custom-built site that looks better than the rest, that has a little bit better content
than the rest of the sites out there – that site you're trying to rank against, it's going to win.
I've seen this happen time and time again. Those sites are going to rise to the top over time.
And those GoDaddy Builder sites, or the basic WordPress sites that are – perhaps somebody within
the organization built it themselves – but it doesn't stand out and it could have more content,
more links, it could have a lot better design – well, those sites start to go down in rankings
that's what happens, because Google is looking at the full picture. They want to see a site that is
going to give people information. Google wants to rank sites that are going to make people happy,
that have an adequate amount of links from other sites coming in, and have a distinct
link profile. Google likes sites with a good reputation, and of course reviews,
good reviews, all those sorts of things, that's in the local area where people are searching – those
types of sites are going to win over time. Websites that have poor design,
inadequate content, inadequate links – any of those characteristics – or a lot
of poor reviews – they’re not going to do so good over the long haul.
So, the instant a website comes around that is distinct from the rest of the websites in that
field or that category, it's going to destroy the rest of the competition—that's what happens. Now,
there's a lot of other industries out there where the competition is a lot fiercer,
so something like general contracting, HVAC, even roofing companies—I've seen this,
like a lot more stiffer competition. But in the categories where the websites were put
together—by somebody who's an employee or the site through the person who owns the business,
or they just got like somebody's nephew to do it, the boss's nephew—it's easy to beat these ones if
you put in a little effort. If you put in a few months effort, you can totally beat these. So,
that's what I think about GoDaddy Website Builder sites, to a lesser degree, Wix websites,
even Squarespace sites, which look better than both of those most of the time,
unless you're putting in some extra effort. Those can be beat. My name is John Locke, my business is
“Lockedown SEO”, and I'm here every single day giving SEO tips, answering questions. You have
a question? Leave it in the comments below, I'll answer. That's it for now until next time, peace.