What are your experiences with sites like Weebly, Yola and similar?
Have you used either of these websites or anything similar?
If so, please share your experiences, including maybe for example...
- How easy did you find them to use?
- Did you buy any premium option or just use the free services?
- What do you think of the themes?
- Do you use adsense, Google analytics etc on them?
- Any thoughts on SEO... is it easy, hard, or impossible on these sites?
- How did the experience compare with other things you've used, say Wordpress or Blogger?
And of course, share the URLs of your sites so we can check them out!
I'm interested in hearing any and all experiences people have had with these sites.
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M$2 Answers
I don't know about any other free services but I would not recommend Weebly to anyone who is serious about building their website.
The URL of the website that I have with their service is www.greyt-sites.com (I noticed that there are a few things that need to be fixed when I took a look this morning).
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M$If I were advising someone thinking about using one of these sites not to do so if search returns are important to them. If you're setting up a site for the pictures from the family reunion, or your 4H project, go ahead.
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M$
Say more about what is limiting about them, maybe some examples of what you can and can't do.
The problem with not receiving your own traffic statistics also exists with yahoo stores. It's probably fairly common with these types of sites across the board.
Thanks, that's useful info.
Does the traffic stats limitation also apply if you have your own domain name?
Weebly doesn't allow for meta tags beyond the front page of the site. So google only indexes the front page, essentially binding your hands for what is very important SEO optimization on the rest of the site's pages.
Traffic statistics, aren't credited to your url, but to weebly.
Still applies, even if you own the domain.
Even if you utilize the custom HTML areas to your very best advantage, your site past the front page still, flat out, will not be indexed.
If you own the domain, purchase hosting, and set up a Joomla CMS. You'll be way better off in the long run.
Btw I found this comment from a guy who should know what he's talking about...
-- Quote
SEO
Weebly’s SEO features left me with mixed feelings. Each page has an individual title tag and you can add custom blocks of HTML within each page, which is nice. But any serious SEO efforts require you to make use of those custom HTML blocks, which I suspect is beyond the capabilities of most of Weebly’s target customers. I’ll concede that SEO is a complex bit of business with many esoteric demands, but I would think Weebly’s target customers would need more support in this area, not less.
-- /Quote
http://www.timpeter.com/blog/2009/10/29/taking-a-look-at-weebly-the-thinks-website-hosting-tools-review/
Any thoughts on that comment?
With Yola you can edit title keywords and description. Yola sites never have problems getting indexed - I use free .co.cc domains and get them in the top of google using Yola. I usually use scrub the web after inputing all the content and it works just fine. A site I got indexed just the other day in a few hours - http://www.cheapwebz.co.cc
With Yola you can edit title keywords and description. Yola sites never have problems getting indexed - I use free .co.cc domains and get them in the top of google using Yola. I usually use scrub the web after inputing all the content and it works just fine. A site I got indexed just the other day in a few hours - http://www.cheapwebz.co.cc
I love Site Build It. It is one of the best that I have used in the many years that I have had a website of my own. It is easy to use, they provide you with tons of information that is included in the price, they have a super support group and best of all, it is much less expensive than many of the others. I would recommend them to anyone.
But, you need to be willing to put in a number of hours reading in order to get the most out of your website. The information and resources that they provide to one of their members is vast and well-worth the read. I have been with them for over two years and still haven't got through all the valuable info.
They are always upgrading to keep up to date and their down time has been nil since I started with them.
My website (which needs more work. I've been so busy here that I haven't had time to do anything on the website for months) is www.theglasshound.com
It is a culmination of my husbands and my artwork for sale. I have lots more that still needs to be put for sale on the website...
As for Weebly, you can enter keywords but they are for the entire website, not for each individual page. Not the most ideal but it's free...
Interesting thoughts.
One thing I'm interested in is whether with sites like Weebly it's not possible to do SEO, it's hard to do SEO, or it is quite feasible, but the type of person that uses it just doesn't know how.
Btw I see from you site that you're a fan (or affiliate?) of Site Build It. Any thoughts on that? Probably doesn't belong in the same category as Weebly as I believe it's not free, but I thought I'd ask while we're on the subject of site building tools.