The Backlash of Hosted Site Solutions

Several kinds of sites fall into this category, including many kinds of site builders, shopping carts, and some other specialty niche business sites. Niche business sites include Real Estate, Insurance, Kitchen Designer, and other business sites hosted by a company that “specializes” in “easy” sites for that kind of business.

Not only are such sites deadly to a business because they lack personality, they also are deadly to SEO, for a number of reasons.

1. They are likely to use Flash and heavy JavaScript in the site template. They do this to look impressive, but in fact, it is usually NOT the most efficient way to achieve the impact needed, and so much is used that the code is bloated and cumbersome for people and search engines to utilize. Search engines may time out before they even get to the content.
2. The templates are identical, from one site to another. Usually, the only thing that changes is the individual page content, and the images in the template (still shared by many sites). Search engines do pay attention to that, but ONLY if they get through the code to the actual content.
3. You cannot control the code of the page at all, or any template elements. If it is inefficient, too bad.
4. Once you build in one, you cannot move it. If you wish to move it into something more SEO friendly, you will have to rebuild it – and your individual page URLs will likely change in the process. Regaining ground lost from that can take some time.
5. Most have a way to put in metatags, or control alt-tags. But those are not the most important parts of page coding.
6. Many times, people will pay a monthly fee for this kind of site, taken in by the illusion that “it is so easy anyone can do it”, and will end up with an ineffective site, and never know why. For the same money, they could have got a much better site, that actually worked to help build their business.

The silly thing is, typically a good quality site costs the same, or only a very little more. And the difference in performance pays for the difference in price, many times over.

I wish there were a simple solution. But every one that we have seen has been a disappointment, and as new clients come to us, asking for help in getting their site functioning, this impression has been reinforced over and over, and it is clear that when a site that is built in this kind of system does not work, half of the blame falls squarely on the system itself.