SBI (Site Build It) versus Wordpress: How to Structure a Website
April 28th, 2008
For years, I've been on the Site Build It list. SBI is the creation of the rather annoyingly gushy Ken Evoy who never stops his carnival barker cries about his one-stop-site-creation tool.
Ken Evoy Pumping Site Sell
Evoy's been at it since the bad old days when the internet was a mess and Site Built It! did have the advantage of actually getting a website up in some form - easier than coding html from scratch for the neophyte.
Throughout SBI's history, Evoy has shrieked about his process and his proprietary tools. On the surface, a clear process and proprietary tools are a good idea. Probably worth the price of admission (or so I thought at the time). The issue with the proprietary tools (which otherwise might be a good deal) is that you can only use them a little bit. Come and play for one hour per week, see you next week. Not exactly inviting brainstorming or creativity.
In contrast, the indepdendent expensive (many of which are free) tools Evoy condemns let you use them as much as you like once you find them.
Over the years, I've learned not to expect much from Evoy's newsletters (sometimes for six months at a time, they get relegated to the read later bin). Still it's worth sometimes checking in on somebody who's multiyear obsession has been selling ecommerce sites. Another perspective.
In the last couple of years the internet has changed and it's actually quite easy to put a website up. Just buy a hosting account (a single domain account is $3 to $7 Ken, not the $10 to $15 you cite), click the one step install button and you have vanilla Wordpress (or Mambo or Joomla or whatever else catches your fancy). Or pay nothing and sign up at Wordpress.com and have a better than vanilla Wordpress install with lots of attractive themes ready and waiting for you and an active forum.
The ease of putting up a high quality website - almost all of which look better than Site Build It websites and are easier to post to - is naturally a huge threat to the SBI business. Why pay Ken Evoy $300 per year per website for hosting which should cost $50?
Evoy's latest missive starts yet another hysterical title "Why blogging is a massive mistake!" Exclamation mark is his.
Writing a weblog is not a massive mistake. Handled properly, a weblog does wonders for your website traffic and search engine standing. But taking away the hype, this time Evoy does have a worthwhile point about weblog type sites (Wordpress in particular) - i.e. they date like stale newspaper. I can confirm the tendency from my own sites.
By publishing a weblog, you are effectively creating just a daily news source.
What happens if you publish a very good article which has value as a permanent reference? It stands alone in your weblog. People come, read the single article and leave. There may be other interesting content on your weblog for them to read but the visitor can't be bothered to ferrret it out. If your writing or content is extremely compelling, perhaps some visitors will read a certain amount of your content. But then they will leave. Which quite frankly for an online journal is fine. You're not selling anything.
But for a business, this isn't so good. What you want is to create an information resource for people in your business, which will bring them back again and again. An information structure which invites them to find immediately the other relevant areas of interest.
And Evoy quite correctly points out that this is the built-in model for Site Build It:
Blog posts are created and stored in chronological order. A good blogger will produce a post that is useful today, but who will read it in three months? Even when bloggers go to the extra effort of archiving their posts by "keyword categories," the articles are dated and not rewritten into coherent definitive articles. Usefulness plummets with time.
How does a Theme-Based Content Site differ? Instead of a stack of old newspapers, each resembles a good resource book about its theme, composed of useful, original articles ("Web pages") that cover related topics in some depth. Written in each small-business owners's unique voice, and based upon that person's experience in the field, they are useful resources that visitors return to over and over.
Evoy correctly points out that a photography weblog would just be one in a million, posting the nattering about the latest cameras and software:
How would a blog be presented? A stream of disjointed photography tips would be organized by "date of post." And posts on any given topic (ex., "portrait lighting") would be separated by time (weeks or months apart), each covering only a certain aspect of the topic. On the other hand...
Definitely not the right one to pull someone into your website. Evoy contrasts the above weblog site with this siloed sitemap for a static site:
site build it silo site
This time Evoy's absolutely right. Someone looking for information on photography lighting would gradually be led through the whole of your website, would bookmark it and come back as a reference. All of this assumes of course that your content is top-notch (and Ken, let's be frank, there's not too many people capable of creating top-notch content, on or off the SBI rolls). But with a static site structure at least you stand a fighting chance of retaining your visitor and becoming a reference.
In any case this is a huge insight. Pages instead of posts something I've been playing around with in the static pages section in Foliovision. Our client sites are also largely hierarchical with the weblog performing weblog functions (added value).
What I've been doing is making a static page instead of a post and then publishing a small announcement on the weblog section.
Unfortunately some of the news outlets which republish my content will not link to static pages or to articles which are more than 24 hours old (a pain in the neck, as after publishing a major article I like to come back to it 12 hours later to proof it and add or correct illustrations).
Going forward, I am going to build up the static pages sections very actively. When I first publish a post, it will go into the weblog, but within a few days. There is one small issue which is comments. We enable comments on pages so visitors will still be able to comment on the static page. But often some of the comments come in right away (on the weblog version).
- Do I leave the comments on the weblog post or move them to the static page?
- If I choose to move the comments to the static page, there is no mechanism to do so inside Wordpress. We'd have to build a plugin.
BTW, this sort of question is what you are paying Evoy to solve for you with either no solution (in this case) or his solution. For an inside the box thinker (or someone with very little design sensibility and/or minimal interest in technology), SBI solves a lot of problems. For an existing six-figure business, there are better ways to bring your business online than SBI DIYism. I do agree with Ken that business owners should have better things to do with their time than spend it troubleshooting websites or optimising their sites for Google.
If you're interested in having a closer look at the Site Build It system and way of thinking, Ken Evoy offers a number of free ebooks on writing for the web, selling services and montization. SBI's claim ithat the free ebooks are better than a lot of the pay ebooks out on internet marketing is more or less true. Given the rubbish sold as ebooks that's not necessarily saying a whole lot. The link above bundles several of them into a single zip file for your convenience.
Personally, Ken's writing style drives me up the wall (he's been described as rah-rah), but the bulk of the information is good. I just can't read past his marketing speech. The formatting is bizarre as well. I wish the guy would hire a graphic designer at some point. Why does he write Sidebar and then not make the sidebar a sidebar but whack it right into the middle of the text?
Some other references
- Are theme based site better than blogs?
- Wordpress vs SiteBuildIt
- Ken Evoy attacks blogging and Wordpress
By Alec
Tags: internet marketing, weblogs, wordpress
16 comments on “SBI (Site Build It) versus Wordpress: How to Structure a Website”
01
You could just silo using blog posts.
Create a static page
There is a siloing plugin I have written about before that just pulls in posts from a category on a static page, or you can just use some PHP
Alternatively use “in series” to define a browsing path with real “sidebar” or call-ous.
Well, you could even just edit a page by hand
I went one stage further a while ago and describe how you can 301 old URLs to a single landing page, and then change the page slog on existing posts before adding them to a silo. A good option for a series of posts that pick up some links on a core topic, but not enough to really stand out in the SERPs.
Also of note, some tools do have usage limits, so for example you use credits with Nichebot.
There are tons of free tools out there, which is why people still write blog posts with junk titles and content and complain about traffic.
If you are aiming to only spend 4hrs a week on your website, limiting keyword research to 1hr isn’t a bad bet. I haven’t owned SBI so I am not sure how limiting this is before you start.
02
Hello Andy,
I agree that one can get a certain distance down the track with tools like a related posts plugin and/or a good setup of categories.
Search helps as well.
But it still doesn’t turn a weblog into a reference site.
On the other hand, a lot of experts (especially in the marketing area but not only) release high quality information relatively freely on their weblogs - and then resell that information properly packaged as a book. If they made the website into a real reference, they’d have a harder time selling the packaged product, especially if it’s one of those $277-$777-$977-$1977 snow jobs.
Which brings up a point, I didn’t make in the article above: at least Ken Evoy hasn’t raised his prices substantially over the years. He does charge for additional modules but given his guru type following, he does treat his clientele quite fairly. That’s a big plus in his favour. The other advantage to Site Sell is that Evoy reads the reams of internet marketing material spewed out on the internet for you. That’s a huge timesaver as you point out for somebody spending 4 hours/week on their website as a second business.
Anyway, I do think Ken’s main point retains a measure of validity, no matter how we gussy our weblogs up. Weblogs are the equivalent of newspapers (or if better written in, magazines). They date and do not become a lasting reference.
Many of us need to spend more time on the static part of our websites.
03
The key to success in internet marketing lies in content. It is said content is king, so is true, without providing good content you cannot convert visitors to customers. Without your site you provide little value for potential customers and minimize your SEO marketing.
Even if you come on the top of ranking charts but if content is not strong it will result in divergence of your traffic result in a big loss.
Always build content-rich websites that drive traffic and maximize conversion to increase your business.
Track what your visitors are actually looking for and evaluate your services or products accordingly. Go in for easy navigation and simple site structure. Good internet marketing is also necessary for getting traffic. Offer free newsletter related to your industry. Quick and speedy response is always liked by visitors. Provide a multiple option to contact e.g. email, phone number, live chat. Include rss feeds on your site.
04
Hello Concord,
What you’ve written has some truth: integrity is essential to all long-term marketing efforts.
I agree that we don’t need SBI to create sites like this. Although for the absolute technophobe who’d like to create a single business website, SBI is a solid enough alternative.
05
Wow! Finally some good advice instead of an affiliate hawking the product.
Based on your article I think Wordpress solves all of Envoy’s issues (except traffic). For example you can have static pages and posts with WP2.5. You also can categorize posts and put tags on them.
The problem is traffic. Does SBI really get the great traffic results Ken touts? That would be worth the price of admission.
I’ve gone to SBI’s site a dozen times. Can’t actually get the facts. Does he include an autoresponder? A shoppping cart? Merchant account? Opt-in pages, etc? If so that would save me money from all the scripts, software and third-party payment systems I use now. But I can’t find this information and the hype, well it hurts my head.
Perhaps you could expand your information to answer what Ken doesn’t or won’t.
Again thanks. For now your great review is keeping me with Wordpress.
Russ
06
Hello Russ,
You are absolutely right about the technical capabilities of Wordpress. Wordpress can do everything Ken Evoy talks about.
In the end, SBI doesn’t get the traffic, you do. Ken’s focus on quality content via Content -> Traffic -> PREsell -> Monetize (C T P M) is what puts SBIers above your standard make money online - small business crowd.
If you don’t put out really high quality content, your site is a dead man walking. Visitors won’t come back and sooner or later, Google will catch you.
A lot of the components you describe are include within SBI. The components that aren’t included are paid but integrated options. The system is really a lot simpler for those who are not technically inclined. You do get free tech support as well (up to certain limits). On the other hand, those who are technically inclined/gifted do chafe at the restrictions of SBI, as they don’t need or want blinkers on (i.e. there aren’t many elite webloggers running SBI).
You can try SBI for awhile and there is a money back guarantee. They do honour it. Let me know if you would like to give SBI a try
Russ and I will get you a discount . I’ll even publish your impressions as an SBI new user.
07
I have been using SBI for a while now. I think that it’s a great start for someone who knows nothing about developing a website or internet marketing.
SBI in my opinion is very good in many ways. Their brainstorming tool for keyword research is great in its ability to rapidly highlight keyword traffic and competition and projected profitability. They have a very helpful user community.
However, their built in blog feature is very weak. It doesn’t provide for comments and is only nominally a blog.
The tiered site structure issue is a very important one that provides a lot of power and makes a site friendly for users. SBI develops this idea very well in terms of its navigation buttons and internal linking structure.
However, I think that this aspect could easily be emulated in a Wordpress blog. All one would need to do is to create a static page and put sitemap like links in it. The navigation would come from this page and from internal cross reference links.
This effectively would convert Wordpress into a vehicle for creating a tiered somewhat static site.
08
Of all the websites I have built, only the sites built and structured according to SBI rank well in the search engines. I used to build sites using James Martell’s methods: 5 or so main pages with hundreds of articles pointing to these main pages. The search engines never liked this structure and the result was no traffic. Go with SBI, it’s the best way to build a site for anyone.
09
Hello Kevin,
I don’t think it’s a matter of building according to SBI - the vast majority of high ranked sites on the Internet are not SBI.
The issues you were running into are:
1. Not building a growing and dynamic site (generally you need to keep adding content and sections to really go up the SERPs in Google: exception made for some older authority sites with outstanding incoming links).
2. Using a single source of links (in your case article directories).
As you not, SBI, for the most part, incorporates these as well as many other useful rules for building successful websites.
Thanks for stopping by.
10
The main benefit of SBI is that the site builder is forced to think about content. At least this is what SBI is doing for me. It is very hard work and there are frustrations, but as Ken Evoy often points out, at least I haven’t invested large quantities of time and money in building a beautiful site that has weak content and is thus doomed to failure. Yeah, I worry about how I’m going make a site that looks the way I want it to using SBI’s blockbuilder. I do not like the L&F of most SBI sites. But I know that this concern is just a distraction from the more important issues of site theme and content. Really, preoccupation with site L&F is a bad habit that I need to break, or at least a habit to keep under wraps until my site has a solid theme and good content.
11
Hi Mike,
Your take is a good one. If working within the constraints of SBI, keeps you focused on content instead of tinkering with layout, it’s well worth the $300/year. Content is where it’s at!
Once you have a really successful site, you may want to take it out of the constraints of SBI though. I know Ken Evoy keeps talking about removing the visual straitjacket, I haven’t seen much evidence of it.
Our clients pay a lot of money to have us wrestle with these questions rather than them. Most of the time, we even come up with the content - they are too busy to fiddle with websites and we stive to keep them that way: by sending them even more business.
12
I am following diligently thru the SBI lessons, and appreciate the approach and high integrity focus on quality content. but I am totally underwhelmed by the look and feel selections. I am non technical, with no site building experience, but am now working on some membership and ebusiness sites full time, and don;t wantto waste my time or not be happy with my results. Can either Alec or another reader assist me creating a quality look and feel within SBI, or is it a lost cause? I like the look of several clean simple wordpress themes, but not the information structure and layout for all the resons discussed on this thread. Any assistance is much appreciated
13
Hello Nathaniel,
If you don’t like the look of SBI sites, it’s pretty stiff uphill sledding. I have yet to see a SBI site which impressed me visually. SBI is a good framework in which to start a site if you have a limited technical background. If I had a really successful site, I’d be unlikely to leave it in the relative creative and technical straitjacket which is SBI.
I’ve sent you a note.
14
I agree that content is king. However where most SBIers fail is that besides not reading the material that Ken Evoy offers, they don’t follow directions.
It’s not just content…it’s the right kind of content. The process involves researching your niche and knowing how to find the keywords…
It’s a hit-or-miss project in sitting down and finding a niche and then finding a profitable area with the proper keywords and then developing content and organizing your site according to SBI’s guidelines.
When a newbie first gets involved in network marketing, he probably has a couple ideas he’d like to pursue and hopefully make money. The problem is that he finds out later after shelling out the $299 for the SBI website and then doing the keyword research for supply and demand, he finds there isn’t enough demand to support his website.
Then he has to come up with alternate ideas for a website and then develop at least thirty pages of content. The content for his website now has to be better than the millions of other websites with the same idea.
I’m still not clear on how SBI helps with its SEO wizardry to vault someone to the top of Google. I haven’t seen it with mine.
15
Hello Dave,
Your point is quite valid.
* You have to be on the right topic.
* You have to be at least either a good writer or a good researcher or have access to those skills for love or money.
Where SBI helps is that it’s one stop shopping on the low end.
Just sign up, follow the instructions and you have a kick at the can.
Otherwise internet marketing is just too overwhelming for most beginners.
Foliovision is a similar company except we work mainly at the extreme top end, building hugely successful websites for already successful businesses. We do content, SEO, spam filtering, the works.
We just make the pain go away.
And make the phone ring.
Our clients are too busy with the rest of their business to want to take on all of these challenges. Why would they? They make far more money we do, their time is too valuable to want to spend it on the nuts and bolts of internet marketing.
16
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