Moving my domain to weebly

[bhsiao]

I am thinking of moving my html website to weebly. They offer a 301 redirect for my domain name. Is that ok for SEO?

[bhsiao]

The reason is that I need to update my website and that seems like an easy way to do it. My business partner can easily add content once I am finished. I do not want to use wordpress or joomla. I like that i can still keep the .html on my pages. The e-commerce part of it is so fabulously easy.

[David-Kley]

If you are moving it to have them host the domain, you should not see any issues. I thought you were speaking about having a .weebly domain, in which case you could see some negative effects from that. Out of curiosity, is there a reason you are wanting to move it there?

[AlenaCourtney]

No, there is nothing more risky about 301'ing with Weebly versus any other move you would make across platforms/domains.

If you do decide to use Weebly you might find these links useful:

Domain Guide: http://hc.weebly.com/hc/en-us/sections/200260578-Domain-Names

Redirect Configuration Guide: http://hc.weebly.com/hc/en-us/articles/201723883-How-to-301-Redirect-an-Old-Page-to-a-New-Weebly-Page

[bhsiao]

Yes, I would 301 to my own domain. I would not use the .weebly.com in my domain name.

I understand the design/ftp limitations but my main question is about SEO. Is it risky to 301 my domain over to weebly?

[AlenaCourtney]

No worries! I can't give specifics but we handle over 175 million unique visitors to Weebly sites each month so you wouldn't have to worry.

[davidangotti]

Thanks for responding to my comments above. It appears that some of what I said was unintentionally inaccurate - I apologize.

Do you have any examples and can you say with confidence that a site will have zero time jumping from 2K daily visits up to 200K daily visits with hourly spikes of 50K? My site is on WPEngine (several clients as well) and they handled all of our traffic without a hiccup. Wondering how it would work with you guys and if you have case studies/examples?

Thanks for your time and response.

[AlenaCourtney]

Full disclosure, I run SEO and Content Marketing at Weebly. I'm not going to try and sell you on Weebly, but I want to correct some inaccuracies in these answers so you can make an informed decision.

From dangotti

**Less flexibility in hosting options and plans: **Every website on Weebly is hosted through a datacenter redundant, cloud based hosting infrastructure designed to handle as much traffic as you can send our way. This is actually a huge value add when comparing Weebly to traditional hosts because you don't need to "dial up" hosting... we handle traffic spikes automatically without any issues on your end.

**Branding considerations: **You can use a custom domain with Weebly as the backend website building/hosting platform, so no branding concerns. Using Weebly does not mean using a Weebly subdomain.

From MoosaHemani

Brand Value: Again I think he is assuming you're switching to a free Weebly subdomain.

**Search Visibility: **There's no reason why a domain built with Weebly would not rank well just because Weebly was used on the backend. Once again, I think he is focusing on sites using the Weebly subdomain (mysite.weebly.com) versus a custom domain.

From David-Kley

Much harder to rank within contained hosting platforms: Another case of assuming you're using a Weebly subdomain. There's no reason that your site would be penalized just by using Weebly. Also, you're not passing any "ranking weight" to Weebly if you're using your own domain. Basically, if you use your current domain with Weebly you're not going to see ranking drops just because Weebly is the backend for your site.

---

Just wanted clear some of those answers up. They still make plenty of good points: if you want full root access and the ability to FTP in we don't have those features yet. Weebly does have a full HTML and CSS editor so while the design options aren't completely open (you have start with a template and then edit it) you still have the ability to build what you want and create a custom design.

OK hope that helps. Not trying to sell you just want to make sure you have the right information!

[David-Kley]

Much harder to rank within contained hosting platformss. Google doesn't give as much credit to "sitebuilder" platforms due to it being easier to spam for ranking.

For exmaple: if I am running a roofing company in St Louis, I can quickly and easily create 100 sites on weebly about roofing companys, roof repair, etc. On a real domain and full website, its harder and more time consuming to do that. A "normal" or natural site would not be set up that way. Google knows that legitimate sites put in the extra time and effort in making their sites worth a users time, and ranks them accordingly. Also, you don't want to pass your ranking weight to weebly, best to keep it on your own platform.

That's the short version. Just don't do it, lol.

[MoosaHemani]

I agree with Dan, I believe you should not move from your own domain to a free website server. Here are my reasons for it.

-          Design and Development Limitation

HTML code might be difficult but it will give you independence of doing anything on the website whereas with a free website builder, the design and development part might be easy for you but overall design and development restriction will bleed you out.

-          Brand Value

If you have a business website, then it’s a big no, no and this is because it will kill your branding. The first thing people normally see is a own domain name if you are going to kill your own domain name and move to a free website, your business on the internet will be much less valuable.

-          Search Visibility

I have not seen much websites (under any niche) that are on free website builder and ranking well on Google search results for money making keywords and this is because it’s useless to invest time and money on a free website as its out of your control.

I believe the better option here is to invest some money and move to customized WP solution as this will help you stay away from codes and all and you still will have design and development independence with your own domain name

Hope this helps!

[davidangotti]

I would strongly advise against moving your own domain name to anything other than another domain that you own. You will lose a small (minimal) amount of link equity from the redirect, but that is not the big reason. Several of the primary reasons I would encourage you to weigh this decision carefully include:

• I want to control and own all of my content. An example of how this could go very badly would be if you violate the Weebly terms of service (TOS). In several extreme cases this has led to a whole site begin deleted with other similar services (i.e. due to copyright infringement, etc.). Obviously, this is a far-fetched example, but I am a firm believer in self-hosting and owning/controlling all of my own high-quality content. Another more feasible example is if Weebly went out of business or was acquired and you didn't have time or know to migrate out.
• Less flexibility in hosting options and plans. Recently, a brand I work with saw traffic grow 30x overnight due to positive press coverage. We simply "dialed up" our cloud hosting plan and everything went smoothly - no downtime. This was with simultaneous coverage on the front page of Digg, Gizmodo, Mashable, NY Times, and a ton of other sites. Had we had a normal hosting plan with Weebly or other website builders our site would have crashed.
• Zero or minimal options for developers. Root access and FTP access is usually blocked with website builder services.
• Branding considerations. Do your customers already know you by your domain name? Does it make you appear like a smaller player since you are on a .Weebly domain? There are a multitude of branding considerations as well.

I would look long and hard at why I am thinking about moving (i.e. I like the builder) and see if there aren't other good options that would allow me to stay on my own domain rather than a .weebly domain. You lose a small amount (minimal) of SEO benefit, but more importantly lose control and options.