I would like to create a number of small business sites related to training and coaching. I have been looking around for a simple way to do this and it appeared that Site Build It looked good - many of their sites seem to rank well in the search engines. As I am in Australia and need to use the .com.au namespace, SBI is not suitable.

Any suggestions on a good site builder that a novice without any html knowledge might use? Will using a site builder enable me to achieve reasonable search engine rankings? As I'm only interested in the Australian market, Google is the search engine I'm interested in as almost everyone here uses it.
Thanks & Cheers from Downunder.

Do you plan to sell products or take payments for services on the site or is it information only? I haven't seen anything as extensive as the SBI process and I'm not sure you cannot use it.

I would contact them and ask if you can use a .com.au domain name or redirect from one to another domain. Why do you think you cannot use it?

The SBI process does seem to work and has a lot of SEO type stuff built into the preparing to build process; however, it takes a very strong commitment to completion.

Thanks Rose. No products or payments, just information. I have been in touch and they do not accomodate .com.au domain names. If I use a .com name it does not identify my site as being Australian and I believe that people searching for my services in Australia will ignore a lot of .com names as most of them turn out to be U.S. sites. I personally never click on anything but a .com.au name if I need a local supplier. Of course, like anyone else downunder, if I'm looking for a downloadable product, happy to go with a .com site. If I was an internet marketer it would be a different story but as I am a traditional small business providing a face to face service in Australia, the Australian domain is of significant value.

if your wanting to be in the autralian market, it's best to host in Australia (doesn't matter too much about the TLD (end bit of a domain name)). The .com.au will look good to australians looking at your site (or anyone looking for australian stuff) of course like you said.

HTML is fairly easy to pick up, so I'd advice in your spare time play about in Dreamweaver

If you don't want to, I don't know of any site builders, maybe try Googles own website builder

The SiteBuildIt system he mentioned does a lot of front end keyword research, helps identify niche pockets of traffic and optimizes sites for SEO as they're built. It is rather unique and very time consuming to implement but appears to be well worth the time investment.

If I come across or can think of anything else I've seen that does some SEO type stuff too I'll post again.

Thanks for the replies folks. It might be easier to have someone build the sites for me. The problem is, the people I have spoken to here in Oz. haven't a clue about optimisation. It's amazing to me how many people are building websites that have no hope of being ranked. This should be the place to find someone who can build a good site at a reasonable price. Any suggestions?

Making recommendations of specific companies and individuals is not something many want to do in case someone isn't happy with their experience later.

Because I personally feel it is extremely difficult to evaluate what systems and companies are worthwhile until you have enough information to do it yourself, I'm going to do recommend one anyway and hope I don't step on any toes.

This is MY personal opinion as an individual and not in any way an endorsement or opinion of SearchEngineForums or any other sites or individuals affiliated with it.

I just attended an exceptionally informative and accurate Internet Marketing seminar last weekend given by Derek Gehl. They sell packages of information and Web site resources or you can have them build you a site.

Based on what they presented and what I know from studying online marketing for years now I was extremely impressed with their organization and the results their sites have achieved.

Most everything in life that is valuable has a price and you generally get what you pay for. They're not cheap but for what they offer they're very reasonable. I've had many clients who paid a lot more for sites that didn't sell and in some cases shopping carts that didn't even work consistently.

Results are critical and the best should be able to provide proof of their results. Give serious consideration to any solution you decide to use.

Thanks Rose.