TL;DR: Build website for free social media ads – if something is too good to be true, ask yourself why, and are you getting a raw deal?
In recent times, my social media has been flooded with sponsored posts/ads for companies offering businesses to build websites for free.
So, let’s break it down: the why, the how, and who stands to gain?
I get the attraction when you are a new startup, you’ve got to spend every last penny in the most effective way possible to get a decent ROI. Or you possibly don’t have the technical know-how to build your own affordable website. It’s a technological minefield for the uninitiated.
Free website – the additional costs.
So, there are fundamental questions you need to ask yourself, because every website needs two things:
- Hosting
- A domain
Without these two key components, no website works. The hosting is where your website lives, and the domain tells what traffic goes where (amongst other things). However, if the figures are accurate for how many ‘build website for free’ sites these companies have created, running into the thousands, their hosting costs must be enormous. So you can see why they wouldn’t include it.
Next, the Domain, generally speaking we’ll buy domains for our clients for lots of reasons, but mainly because we have a working relationship and have built up trust, or it’s part of our subscription-based model for one page websites.
This means we currently have about 50-60 domains on our account, some ranging from $5 to over $70 per year for renewals. But if we were overseeing thousands of domains, it would become a logistical nightmare
Then there are the addition services for a website; SSL, security, backups, images, content, SEO etc.
So how good are these companies who’ll build websites for free?
Most of the time, you can judge a web designer or agency by their own site, and if that’s the case, most of them aren’t doing the basics. So here’s the lighthouse scores from three of these ‘build website for free’ companies that have been dropping into my social media feeds.
This company’s scores were so bad, that Google’s Lighthouse gave up scoring the site.
Whilst this free website building company scores pretty well on Accessibility / Best Practices / SEO – Performance is a key indicator and ranking factor for search engines, especially on responsive sites.
This free website building company have swung the pendulum the other way. Great performance for a responsive site, but the absolute basics are shocking.
How & why build free websites?
The how is pretty simple, these are modular template websites that most of the popular free website builder tools will supply you with, whether it’s Wix, SquareSpace or Divi, Elementor etc on Wordpress – it doesn’t matter. You create the original template and use repeatedly. This is commonly known as WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) builders, often low or no code, which can facilitate building rudimentary websites quickly.
The why? Is a multifaceted answer. Essentially, a successful deployment will get the free website-building company at least one backlink. So, this builds Domain Authority for the website supplier.
Then there is their secondary business, whatever it may be:
- SEO
- Social media ads
- Google ads
Etc. And the benefit to the website company if your website gets traffic means that their backlinks will impart ‘link juice’ to their own website, rinse & repeat.
Conclusion.
I can see the attraction to these ‘Build free website’ companies, even if you have to pay for your own domain & hosting, it’s relatively peanuts compared to a bespoke website, but what you get from your web designer who you are spending hundreds or thousands with will include a level of support or Wordpress care plan.
But what you need to ask is, is my business just a conduit for free backlinks or will they be coming back for a second bite of the cake. After all, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
