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Yeah. Automation makes many webdev jobs redundant. Let's say you have a restaurant or something. Before, you had to hire somebody to host/design your website.

Yeah. Automation makes many webdev jobs redundant. Let's say you have a restaurant or something. Before, you had to hire somebody to host/design your website. Now, Google/SquareSpace/Wix will do that for you. A lot of these sites also have payment options built in. Sure, those sites you make automatically won't be so flashy as a personalized one. But, realistically, if you're a business, what you need is the location, hours, maybe a picture, and a list of what you're selling. That's something all these automated website generators provide.

walshemj 9y ago
and will those sites rank properly in search engines
- jimmywanger 9y ago
  Who cares? There's a difference between "really good" (spendy) and "good enough" (free). If you're a small business, you don't really need SEO. You just need to provide information to your customers. You can of course pay for SEO, but that's my whole point. At some point, you're not willing to pay $50(USD) an hour to get the last few percent of profit, especially if your gross income is fairly small.
- viridian 9y ago
  I think for all three, the basic SEO stuff is actually taken care of for you as well. I had zero interest in the services until I read that it meant I wouldn't have to consult yet another seo guide written within the last six months because I wanted to stand up something new.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    Yes but for local businesses you also have to manage your product listings and your local listings with those $50 sites actually use the correct markup for local seo and is your browse structure optimised or even crawlable?
    - jimmywanger 9y ago
      Yes - there's a difference between doing it yourself through the GUI for free because of website management tools and paying somebody 50 dollars an hour to hand modify forms and HTML for you. Also, I believe unless you set the robots.txt file, most sites are crawlable, and SEO, like I said, is not really important for smaller businesses. Mostly they are existing customers who want to find out hours of operation and maybe any daily specials you might have, not somebody who stumbles across your site organically.
      - walshemj 9y ago
        ROTFL sorry no I have worked on major sites and even if you use straight html you can screw-up your crawlability and using the latest trendy JavaScript frame works makes it a lot worse. One major UK site made a simple mistake with the canonical tag on one of 12 websites cost them over £500,000 in lost traffic in lest than a week.
        jimmywanger 9y ago
        As I pointed out, crawlability and discovery isn't really important for "Mike's hoagie shop." If you start making a lot of money, you'll have enough to hire high priced consultants. If you're just starting up and concentrating on your actual busines, not IT, you shouldn't be worried about the best web framework. Also, for businesses just starting up, you just need simple HTML. The only information you need to expose are hours of operation, address, and a list of services/goods with prices. Everything else can come later, when you're getting enough business to justify it. My main point is that small webdevs are going to start getting starved for work. They're getting replaced by generated HTML which do a good enough job for free.

walshemj 9y ago

and will those sites rank properly in search engines

jimmywanger 9y ago
Who cares? There's a difference between "really good" (spendy) and "good enough" (free). If you're a small business, you don't really need SEO. You just need to provide information to your customers. You can of course pay for SEO, but that's my whole point. At some point, you're not willing to pay $50(USD) an hour to get the last few percent of profit, especially if your gross income is fairly small.
viridian 9y ago
I think for all three, the basic SEO stuff is actually taken care of for you as well. I had zero interest in the services until I read that it meant I wouldn't have to consult yet another seo guide written within the last six months because I wanted to stand up something new.
- walshemj 9y ago
  Yes but for local businesses you also have to manage your product listings and your local listings with those $50 sites actually use the correct markup for local seo and is your browse structure optimised or even crawlable?
  - jimmywanger 9y ago
    Yes - there's a difference between doing it yourself through the GUI for free because of website management tools and paying somebody 50 dollars an hour to hand modify forms and HTML for you. Also, I believe unless you set the robots.txt file, most sites are crawlable, and SEO, like I said, is not really important for smaller businesses. Mostly they are existing customers who want to find out hours of operation and maybe any daily specials you might have, not somebody who stumbles across your site organically.
    - walshemj 9y ago
      ROTFL sorry no I have worked on major sites and even if you use straight html you can screw-up your crawlability and using the latest trendy JavaScript frame works makes it a lot worse. One major UK site made a simple mistake with the canonical tag on one of 12 websites cost them over £500,000 in lost traffic in lest than a week.
      - jimmywanger 9y ago
        As I pointed out, crawlability and discovery isn't really important for "Mike's hoagie shop." If you start making a lot of money, you'll have enough to hire high priced consultants. If you're just starting up and concentrating on your actual busines, not IT, you shouldn't be worried about the best web framework. Also, for businesses just starting up, you just need simple HTML. The only information you need to expose are hours of operation, address, and a list of services/goods with prices. Everything else can come later, when you're getting enough business to justify it. My main point is that small webdevs are going to start getting starved for work. They're getting replaced by generated HTML which do a good enough job for free.