Any recommendations for small businesses
-
I'm currently helping a bunch of small business owners with using internet marketing SEO etc. A couple of them are just starting out and cant afford to pay for someone to build the site for them etc.
If someone wants to use one of these Free / cheap websites (live vistaprint, 123 reg, Moonfruit, etc), which one would you recommend? Are any any better and giving the foundations to build some decent rankings on?I
Do the ones where you drag and drop to build the site normally create a flash site?
Has anyone done a study on which ones work best?
Any recommendations would be appreciated.
Ant
-
Thanks Egol and Keri for your replies. Really helpful and much appreciated.
Ant
-
If they have a little bit more to spend, I'd recommend EGOL's suggestion above, and then to look at something like page.ly for hosting. The basic WP hosting there is about $25 a month, and they take care of all of the upgrades for you. I worked with it once a couple of years ago, and it was the easiest WP install I've ever done.
-
I have not looked at vistaprint or moonfruit but those types of systems are generally awful for SEO.
If I knew a person who had a tiny business and needed a website I would point them towards a wordpress site using a template. Then they can focus 100% on the content and easily change or improve the design in the future.
They might need some help getting started, so there could be a small expense and a learning curve - but you will have that with anything.
I would also register a domain and have the wordpress on my own hosting. This cost is very small - probably under $100/year.
In the end you have your website on a platform that is very versatile, functional, well supported, and can easily get experts to improve it when you are ready.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What crawler do you recommend for finding orphaned pages on a website?
Is there a crawler that you guys recommend for finding all pages, including orphaned pages on a website? A data export is not feasible. I saw a question from back in 2013 and was wondering if anything has changed since then in regards to crawling orphaned pages. Do most enterprise systems already have this built into their crawler? Or is it best to get a crawler like Xenu or Screaming Frog or Deepcrawl?
Technical SEO | | DigitalMarketingSEO0 -
Best way to handle 301 redirects on a business directory
We work with quite a few sites that promote retail traders and feature a traders' directory with pages for each of the shops (around 500 listings in most cases). As retail strips, shops come and go all the time, so I get a lot of pages that are removed as the business is no longer present. Currently I've been doing 301 redirects to the home page of the directory if you try to access a deleted trader page, but this means a ever growing htaccess file with thousands of 301 redirects. Are we handling this the best way or is there a better way to tackle this situation?
Technical SEO | | Assemblo0 -
Business Address SERP problem in Google- What DO?
Hi Guys, I have a business at "30 Auto Center Dr, Irivne, CA" when I search for "30 Auto Center Dr" Google search results will show a map result for 30 auto center dr, Tustin CA. It will show this map result for all surrounding cities and will only show Irivne, if I set my location to irvine. I'm not sure why this is happening. Cities that are closer to Irvine are also showing a map to the address located in Tustin. Since Google is choosing to display this map result, I feel that this is causing me to lose customers. I have already done business listings and local seo to my current address,and was wondering if it would be worth it to change my address (My building has more than one address). Would this even be a good idea? What do you guys think are my options here? attached is the screenshot of the map result I am talking about. 1ywIMVt.png
Technical SEO | | qlkasdjfw0 -
Small business sites banned by google. Please help.
Hi. My 2 sites http://www.painterdublin.com and http://www.tilers-dublin.com were banned by google update in November 2012. Both were ranking fairly well in search results: painterdublin generating cca 600/month and tilers-dublin cca 300/month organic traffic from google. After update it is about 70% less. Is there anyone willing to take a look at my pages and give me some advice about what to do to improve the situation? thank you very much
Technical SEO | | jarik0 -
SEO for a franchise business
Were about to embark on an SEO project for a franchise business with about 150 franchises. Would it be best to give all of the franchises individual domain names or house them under the one domain? If they were on the same domain would it be worth setting them up with sub domains or with a URL so city.mydomain.com vs mydomain.com/city Thanks
Technical SEO | | acs1110 -
Business Site Hit Hard from The Penguin Update
Over the last week or so I have been swimming through all the forum posts regarding the latest google penguin update and I am still unclear as to why my site was hit so hard. I have lost 90% of my traffic and my target keywords have disappeared. Maybe I am missing something hear but if you could have a look at my site in question here : http://www.websitetemplatedesign.com/ Is there something that just stands out that I have missed as to why this site would have been hit so hard? Any input would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | jmccommas1 -
Has anyone used Micrositez? Or can recommend them?
Hi all, After using SEOmoz for a while (and I have learnt alot - it's a fantastic resource) I think it's about time our website is given the nudge by a professional, who unlike me isn't learning the ropes and trying to compete with the big boys! So easy question, has anyone used/can vouch for http://www.micrositezdigital.co.uk/ I've been in contact with them alot recently and spent hours on the phone. 1 side of me is impressed, the other is scared to death of the monthly price. Any help would be appreciated with this, It would nice to know how good they are especially in regards to their bespoke campaigns. Thanks, Allan
Technical SEO | | allan-chris0 -
Linking to related business?
If your working with a local business, is it a good idea to reach out to similar businesses in other states and ask for a link? Example: I own a paint shop in Minnesota, and I reach out to a paint shop in California to see if we want to link to each others site to help our SEO. Because we aren’t in competition with each other wouldn’t this help us both?
Technical SEO | | marker-3115280