building a new Google Site - my thoughts, process

So, I decided I'd build out a new Google Site- I'm going to keep adding to his on my thoughts.

First off, it's actually pretty simple, but being used to being able to build any site any way I want - it can be a little annoying.

I'm still figuring out how to change font color...

Anyways, it's a site about SEO - kinda building it out like a homepage for my website. Which, I'm definitely not trying to replace. Just like to test platforms of all sorts out. And it's free.

The positives:

1. I saw it ranking on page 1 of google for a few days for a specific, very competitive keyword term. I was impressed. I built no backlinks to it or anything. Maybe only had 500 words max at the time.

2. You can throw up a google site in no time.

3. You can add it to your Google Analytics Dashboard.

4. You can EASILY add youtube videos, or pretty much anything else Google owns such as docs, forms, slides etc.

5. DF Backlinks. sites.google.com has a TF of 80 - sweet, right? Well, I did everything correctly to get the google site indexed, saw no change in rankings, and it never showed up in Majestic as of writing this, one month later. Hmmm.....

6. Definitely mobile friendly - well, all device friendly at that.

7. Free SSL encryption on your Google Site

The negatives:

1. Not as fast as I expected from Google.

2. Not very customizable.

So, as you can see - the positives sure out-weight negatives, but to build quality backlinks to it or not? Even if it does rank, not the prettiest thing on earth - so it probably won't convert. But then again - who knows until we run some tests!