Will a Non-Customized Site Kill My Search Engine Rankings?

Q:  I learned from a recent teleseminar that, in spite of all the hype about FrontPage, Dreamweaver, SBI, etc., providing easy ready-made templates for beginners … it’s most beneficial for sites to be custom made from scratch. The experts on the call were talking about Google and other search engines, and what they prefer. Something about these ready-made templates having all sorts of unnecessary code that gets in the way of search engine rankings and Google doesn’t like them.  I always thought there had to be a catch. To sum up their conclusions — the most professional sites are just like anything else considered top-of-the-line: like a custom-made suit, custom-made sites are the class act.  What do you think about this conclusion?

Ana

A: Hi Ana–

I think that your teleclass was probably hosted by a website designer who truly believes his/her rhetoric that anything other than a pricey, customized site is evil..LOL  Most of the people that I deal with cannot afford to hand over $5000 for a customized site.  Many of my clients who’ve paid that, and more, have been sorely disappointed with their results.  And, of course, I’m answering this question with bias as someone who’s done most of her websites herself..<g>  I guess it boils down to asking yourself who has a realistic solution for your circumstances and how long that solution will delay the pursuit of your goal?  And, do you need a Lexus to do what a Ford Taurus will do? 

There is merit, I think, to what you heard in terms of search engines tripping over bad coding as they index sites.  However, I hear more frequently from people who are using FrontPage, Dreamweaver, SBI, or who purchase templates or some other out-of-the-box solution and are doing quite well with their non-customized, low-cost sites. If the sites contain coding that isn’t search engine friendly, they are obviously using other effective strategies that make that fact unimportant in the overall scheme of things.

I will rant, here, for a moment, about people in the US who outsource their work, whether that’s copywriting, webdesign, graphic design, data entry, telemarketing, etc. to people and companies outside the US to reap a significant cost savings.  One person who I highly admire (except on this subject) farms out his custom website work to a company in Russia for pennies on the dollar.  When you choose to operate your business solely on the basis of cost saving rather than on relationships you develop, how long do you think it will be before someone outsources the services you offer to a country like India or China because those companies can afford to severely undercut your prices?  I do believe that what comes around, goes around, so I try to support and promote my fellow self-bossers as much as possible..:)

So, I guess the bottom-line question is, "Do you want to be right or be successful?"  Only you know the answer to that question..:)