Site Build It! Product Review

SiteSell, owner of Site Build It!, is a refreshing company in these cynical times. As a long-time user of SBI, I’ve been impressed with its high standards.

Site Build It! (SBI) is usually categorized as a website building program. Well, it is that, but it’s more than that. I won’t say it’s a step above, because it would be more accurate to say it belongs in a different category. It doesn’t just give you a domain name, a host, and a template. It offers extensive training and tools for building a successful website and learning how to make money from that site.

If your goal is to create a multi-page website, I have no hesitation in saying this is a great choice. It’s especially useful for informational sites. Those are sites in which you share information rather than selling your services, although it’s fine for sales sites as well.

If you’re already savvy about SEO (search engine optimization), building traffic, and web design, or if you just want a one-page website, this may not be your best option. Although SBI founder Ken Evoy points out that an informational site can be a great way to get people to a one-page site.

I started my own SBI site in July 2008. I’d created several websites in the past, but it wasn’t until I created the SBI site, carefully following SBI’s instructions and using its tools, that I started to really learn how to build a successful website. In fact, at one point, my site had an Alexa ranking of about 333,000 – much better than any of my other sites have ever achieved. If I were putting some serious effort into the site (frankly, I’m not at this time), I believe I could get it back down to that level.

My SBI site is far more successful in the search engines than my other sites, and it gets more visitors too. Meanwhile, I’ve learned to make my other sites more successful based on what I’ve learned.

What SBI Includes

• Extensive instruction in the form of an “Action Guide” available in both written and video form, along with a huge amount of supplemental information.
• A domain name, along with detailed information on how to choose a good name that will help search engines find your site.
• Pleasant, user-friendly design templates. Other website building programs I’ve looked at use dark backgrounds and heavy graphics. I’m a website marketing consultant, and I can assure you that SBI’s simple templates are more likely to keep your readers at your site. I just wish SBI would offer examples of these templates.
• 25 Wordtracker keyword searches. If you bought Wordtracker it would cost you $59 a month or $329 a year. This will help you find a profitable niche, as well as the most profitable keywords.
• A tool that analyzes each page, ensuring that the main keyword for that page is optimized for the search engines. Your SEO is taken care of, and you’ll start learning how to do it yourself in the process. It does take some effort to follow the tool’s recommendations, and there are times when you need to decide between awkward phrasing and following guidelines. But even there you’ll get good guidance.
• A good training manual on how to write your own web content.
• An automated system for sending new pages and newly edited pages to Google, Yahoo, Ask, and Bing.
• Tracking of the position of the main keyword for each site page on these four search engines. This feature will tell you a keyword’s exact position in these search engines, once that keyword ranks below 30.
• Instructions and automated services to help you increase visitors to your site using social bookmarking, backlinks and reciprocal linking.
• Instructions and automated services to help you make money with your site, using AdSense, affiliate links, and more.
• A cool search tool with more functions than a Swiss army knife that helps you find all kinds of information related to building a website, including keyword searches, content, competitor research, and where you rank for certain keywords, as well as image, video, sound searches. Go ahead and try out the public version.
• A forum where you can get help on each step of the process.
• Great customer support.

It takes time and patience to build a successful SBI website

SBI can be frustrating. There’s a learning curve. In fact, you’re not even supposed to so much as register a domain name until you’ve followed five chapters’ worth of instructions! This may seem like overkill, but on the other hand, it’s a breath of fresh air to see a company pushing you so hard to do this job right from the start.

Follow those instructions and you may not have your site up as quickly as you’d like, but you’ll have built a solid foundation for it.

Building pages requires getting used to their page-building tool, but it’s easier than learning to code a whole site in Dreamweaver or KompoZer. You can add a little html code. If you’d rather use a coded page, you can, but I’m not sure exactly how.

Who is an ideal Site Build It! owner?

How to Order SBI

Janet