Any recommendations for small businesses

[Ant71]

I'm currently helping a bunch of small business owners with using internet marketing SEO etc. A couple of them are just starting out and cant afford to pay for someone to build the site for them etc.

If someone wants to use one of these Free / cheap websites (live vistaprint, 123 reg, Moonfruit, etc), which one would you recommend? Are any any better and giving the foundations to build some decent rankings on?I

Do the ones where you drag and drop to build the site normally create a flash site?

Has anyone done a study on which ones work best?

Any recommendations would be appreciated.

Ant

[EGOL]

I have not looked at vistaprint or moonfruit but those types of systems are generally awful for SEO.

If I knew a person who had a tiny business and needed a website I would point them towards a wordpress site using a template.  Then they can focus 100% on the content and easily change or improve the design in the future.

They might need some help getting started, so there could be a small expense and a learning curve - but you will have that with anything.

I would also register a domain and have the wordpress on my own hosting.  This cost is very small - probably under $100/year.

In the end you have your website on a platform that is very versatile, functional, well supported, and can easily get experts to improve it when you are ready.

[KeriMorgret]

If they have a little bit more to spend, I'd recommend EGOL's suggestion above, and then to look at something like page.ly for hosting. The basic WP hosting there is about $25 a month, and they take care of all of the upgrades for you. I worked with it once a couple of years ago, and it was the easiest WP install I've ever done.

[Ant71]

Thanks Egol and Keri for your replies. Really helpful and much appreciated.

Ant