Web Builders vs. WordPress

Hey folks,

Just wanted to get some thoughts on using a web builder vs. WordPress to build your website. I've built my sites with a web builder (BlueVoda from VodaHost); it's a great tool but I've also run into a couple frustrations, one of them being if I need to make a change to the top portion of my pages (header, title, add a link, etc) I have to do that on every single page. I've also been reading that Google does not like most web builders and favors WordPress sites.

I'm just wondering if it's worth the effort to rebuild my sites in WordPress (I have 130+ pages on my main site). Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Jason Stallworth

I don't think using a web builder has anything to do with Google. You can optimize any website/blog platform. Wordpress is the most used and recommended though. BUT I still use XSitePro which is a web design software. I mostly use it for just niche sites and use Wordpress for my blogs.

Now as far as using a web builder where you buy domains, that is not recommended.

As for rebuilding, I'm not sure what to recommend. I probably wouldn't but that's just me:)

Thanks for the reply. Well, one piece of info I didn't include in my original post, and this is a big reason I'm considering rebuilding my site with something else, is my site got hijacked a couple months ago. I had built up to about 200 organic hits a day with my site when all of a sudden I noticed a drastic reduction in traffic; from 200 a day to like 20-40. Come to find, Google told me my site was hijacked. Once this was fixed I resubmitted to Google but my traffic still has not moved. So that's another reason I was considering rebuilding my site using WordPress. I don't really know what else to do as I can't seem to find any answers on recovering the traffic I had...it's like all those 130+ pages I created went to waste.

This kind of reminds me of that saying, "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."

No, you don't have to change to WP. You can absolutely continue with what you've got. And honestly, I'm not sure changing to WP is going to help get your traffic back. SEO is SEO regardless of platform, and as long as you have access to things like your title tags and meta description in the current platform, no platform is better than any other as far as Google love goes.

With that said, changing a static site to WordPress is very much a manual cut/paste operation. Doing it with 130 pages is going to be time consuming. Waiting until you have 330 pages will make it worse. So I would say, if you're site is growing, and you're planning to make the move eventually, might as well do it now rather than wait.

One question, though - when you say your site was "hijacked" what does that mean? Was it hacked? I'm not familiar with the builder you're using, but typically it's php sites that are hacked, and it sounds like this one is just html, so that's why I'm wondering exactly what happened.

Cindy always has the right answers! She has saved my blog butt many times so listen to her:D

Thanks for your response Cindy.

I meant hacked, not hijacked. It seems I saw the term hijacked somewhere but I must have been mistaken (I just checked my Google Webmaster Tools and the old messages say 'hacked').

I'm using BlueVoda web builder that comes with their hosting service, VodaHost. Kind of a separate issue here but the one limitation using BlueVoda is that if you need to make a change to the header or anywhere on your pages, you have to make that change on every single page. BlueVoda is also html. I believe you can use php but I never have.

Do you have any suggestions on how to recover traffic from something like this? I'm still continuing with adding content, making videos, and updating my social networking sites with the new content as it's added. But I'm thinking what if this happens again after I've created another 100 pages? It's like all that work goes down the drain.