Why Drag and Drop Builders Might Be Hurting Your SEO
If you’ve ever tried to build a website yourself, you’ve probably been lured by the siren song of drag-and-drop website builders. They promise zero coding and beautiful results without the professional price. Sounds perfect, right?
Not so fast!
While drag and drop builders like Webflow, Elementor, Wix and Squarespace make creating a visually appealing site "easy" they come with risks. They also come with quite a learning curve if you've never used them before.
The Problem with "Easy" Code
When you use a drag and drop editor the builder is attempting to translate your visuals into code. Developers do this the other way around. Not surprisingly, the AI behind these drag and drop builders produce sloppy code. It's messy, bloated and it slows down your site.
Even worse, some proprietary services like Square Space and Wix only work with their own services. That means you are stuck with them unless you re-build the entire site elsewhere. If your business starts doing well and you decide you want to hire a developer to add more features to the website in the future, that person is going to charge you more because working with messy code is tremendously frustrating and time consuming.
Messy code can also create:
- Duplicate or missing meta tags necessary for SEO
- Excessive javascript or hidden elements that can confuse crawlers
- Poor mobile optimization (this also impacts your real users looking at your website on a mobile device.)
- Improper hierarchy
- Inline styles that make it harder to read the content
You may think that messy code isn't a problem because you can't see it. But remember that search engines like Google don't really care what your website looks like. Google can only see your code. And that's a big problem.
Plugins and Add-Ons
Many developers understand that drag and drop code isn't great for SEO. However, drag and drop is always going to be easier for them than building a website from scratch. Instead, they apply SEO plugins or other solutions that sometimes make the code even more messy and are sometimes creating their own SEO crimes. (Like duplicating code or adding extra meta tags.)
SEO Isn't Just About Code
SEO isn't just about cleaning up your code. You also need to make sure you have proper site structure, internal linking, content strategy and a good user experience. Drag and drop builders often give you more control over the visuals but can limit your ability to do everything else correctly.
What's the Solution?
At Salt Song, we love beautiful designs as much as anyone. But what good is a beautiful website if no one ever sees it? We never let style get in the way of function. A good website should be readable by everyone. That means it should be accessible for all humans as well as optimized for search engines. That's why we don't use drag and drop builders.
Here is what we do:
- We hand code each website, no builders allowed.
- Optimize for site speed that makes users and google happy :)
- Ensure that content is structured for both humans and search engines.
The Takeaway
Drag and drop builders are great for small hobby sites or getting a page up quickly for a campaign. If you're counting on search engines to index your website so you can grow your business, these builders cause more problems than they solve.
Your website is your ship on the digital ocean. You want to impress visitors, but you also need it to be seaworthy. And that means you must consider SEO. If you want your website to perform, you've got to start making sure it's technically sound instead of just pretty.
If you're ready to leave drag and drop behind and get a website that works, we can help. Our flexible payment structure is perfect for small businesses who don't have a lot to invest but want to make sure things are done right. Contact us today for a free consultation and we can help chart your course to a website that hits the mark without hurting your SEO.
