User-friendly website platforms like Squarespace and Wix make it easy for small businesses to create a cheap website, but is it actually costing you more than it's helping? Find out why these small business website builders aren’t really that good for SEO, why it matters, and how we can help grow your business with the best small business website design services:
Why is SEO Important for Small Businesses?
Not optimizing your website is one of the most common small business SEO mistakes that is hindering the growth of your business. What might sound like a quick and easy way to make a website in a day may not be the best website builder for small businesses, especially if you’re in a niche or highly competitive market. So why does SEO matter so much? Search engine optimization is a tool for bringing more organic traffic to your website, increasing brand credibility, and driving more leads and sales. The ability to customize your website is the #1 way to give your small business the competitive edge, whether that’s locally or worldwide.
Why Popular Small Business Website Builders are Bad for SEO
Why are platforms such as Squarespace and Wix bad for SEO? Here are a few reasons:
1. Code Bloat
Pre-made sites and templates typically have a lot of unnecessary code, caused by features you don’t need or use, low-quality or generic code, and other limitations. This “code bloat” is one of the main factors behind poor loading speed and a top contributor to a negative user experience.
2. Page Speed
Websites that don’t have a fast loading time are automatically flagged by Google and won’t rank as high as other sites with good page speed. This is also critical for optimizing your website for mobile!
3. Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are another ranking metric used by Google to determine your website’s ranking, which has to do with the overall user experience on your site. Things like page responsiveness, image optimization, and the ability to interact with elements on the site. Poor page loading speed directly impacts this score!
4. Lack of Control
Probably one of the biggest disadvantages of using platforms such as Squarespace or Wix is the lack of control, whether that’s creating custom content fields or personalizing advanced SEO plugins or tools.
5. Technical SEO
Website builders allow you to perform the basics of SEO, but things like canonical URLs, sitemaps, indexing, robots.txt, and other metadata are limited.
How to Improve SEO for Your Small Business
With today’s growing shift to AI, SEO needs to go beyond optimizing your website for search results — it also needs to improve AI visibility. Investing in a strong SEO strategy starts with a website designed for maximum traffic, leads, and overall results.
Ready to ditch the small business website builders that are bad for SEO? Reach out to our digital marketing experts about small business website design and development that will make you stand out from the competition, rank higher on Google, and get ahead of the curve with SEO and AI!
