You’re probably tired of the "gatekeeping" in the tech world. Everyone says you need a $5,000 custom build or a high-end hosting plan to even stand a chance at ranking on page one. Honestly? That’s mostly noise. People are obsessed with fancy tech stacks, but Google doesn't actually care if you're paying $50 a month for hosting or $0. They care about the user. They care about whether your site answers a question better than the next guy’s. If you want to know how to make a website free and actually get it into the eyes of millions via Google Discover, you have to stop thinking like a developer and start thinking like a librarian.
It's entirely possible. I've seen scrappy blogs on subdomains outrank massive corporate sites because the content was just that much better. But there are traps. Serious ones. If you pick the wrong "free" platform, you’re essentially building a house on a foundation made of wet cardboard. You don't own the land. If the platform disappears, so does your hard work. So, let’s talk about how to do this the right way—the way that actually survives an algorithm update.
Picking a Platform That Doesn't Suck for SEO
Look, most "free" website builders are traps for your SEO. They give you a "drag and drop" interface that spits out messy, bloated code that takes five seconds to load on a mobile phone. In 2026, a five-second load time is a death sentence. Google’s Core Web Vitals—things like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)—are real ranking factors. If your free site jumps around while loading, you're done.
Google Sites is the most basic option, but it’s surprisingly clean. Because it's a Google product, it integrates with their ecosystem flawlessly. However, it lacks the "oomph" needed for complex SEO metadata. Then you have WordPress.com (not to be confused with the self-hosted WordPress.org). The free tier is restrictive, but the underlying code is solid.
The real "pro" move for a free site? GitHub Pages or Netlify.
These are meant for developers, but don't let that scare you. They allow you to host "static" sites. Static sites are incredibly fast because there’s no database to query. You’re just serving files. Fast sites get indexed faster. Fast sites get into Google Discover. If you can handle a slight learning curve with a static site generator like Hugo or Jekyll, you’re lightyears ahead of anyone using a clunky free builder.
The Subdomain Problem
When you’re figuring out how to make a website free, you’ll likely end up with a URL like yourname.wordpress.com or yourname.github.io.
Is this ideal? No.
Does it prevent you from ranking? Also no.
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Medium.com and Substack are proof of this. They use subdomains or subdirectories, and their content ranks all the time. The downside is brand authority. People trust yourname.com more than a long string of text. But if the goal is strictly "free" and "ranking," you can absolutely dominate a niche on a subdomain if your information is the most authoritative on the web.
Why Google Discover is Your Secret Weapon
Google Discover is different from search. Search is "pull"—a user types a query. Discover is "push"—Google suggests content based on what it thinks the user likes. It’s a traffic firehose.
I’ve seen sites get 100,000 visitors in 48 hours from Discover and then go back to zero. To get there, you need two things: high-quality imagery and "entity" relevance. Google needs to know what your site is "about" in a very specific way.
Don't use stock photos. They’re boring. Google’s AI vision can tell if a photo has been used a million times across the web. Take your own photos. Even a mediocre smartphone photo of a real thing is better than a "perfect" stock photo of a group of people high-fiving in an office. High-resolution images (at least 1200px wide) are a non-negotiable requirement for Discover.
The E-E-A-T Factor
You’ve probably heard of E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. This isn't just a buzzword. Google actually hires human Search Quality Raters to verify this.
If you’re writing about health on a free website, you’re going to have a hard time. Google is very protective of "Your Money or Your Life" (YMYL) topics. But if you’re writing about something you actually do—like fixing a specific type of vintage camera or your personal experience with a niche hobby—your Experience (the first E) carries a lot of weight. Talk in the first person. Show your work. Link to your social profiles to show you’re a real human. This builds the trust that free sites often lack.
Content Strategy for the Budget-Conscious
Keywords are the backbone of search. But if you're trying to rank for "best credit cards" on a free blog, stop. You won't win. You’re competing with sites that have billion-dollar budgets and entire floors of SEO experts.
You need to find "Zero Volume" keywords. These are queries that SEO tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush say have no traffic, but people are actually searching for them. Use Google’s "People Also Ask" boxes. Find the weird, specific questions people have.
Instead of "how to bake bread," try "why does my sourdough starter smell like old gym socks on day three?"
That is a specific problem. If you provide the best answer, you will rank.
Formatting for Humans (and Spiders)
Google’s crawlers (the "spiders") need to be able to read your page. Use headers. Not because they look pretty, but because they create a hierarchy. Your H2 tags should tell the story of the article. If someone only read the headers, they should still walk away with 50% of the value.
Keep your sentences punchy. Long, academic blocks of text are where readers go to die. Or at least, where they click the "back" button. When a user bounces back to the search results quickly, it tells Google your page didn't satisfy them. That’s a "pogo-sticking" effect, and it’ll tank your rankings faster than anything else.
Making the "Free" Limitations Work For You
One of the biggest issues with free hosting is limited storage. You can't upload 50MB 4K videos.
This is actually a blessing in disguise. It forces you to be lean.
- Compress images: Use tools like TinyPNG.
- External hosting: Host your videos on YouTube and embed them. This doesn't just save space; it also gives you a second chance to rank in YouTube search.
- Minimalist design: Don't clutter the site with widgets. A clean, text-focused site is easier for Google to parse and faster for users to read.
The Technical Reality Check
There are some things you just can't do on a free plan. You often can't edit the robots.txt file or easily set up a complex sitemap.xml.
That’s okay.
Google is very good at finding content now. As long as your site is linked from somewhere—like a social media post or another blog—Google will find it. Go to Google Search Console (it’s free) and verify your site. This is the most important step. It lets you "tell" Google your site exists and shows you exactly which keywords are bringing people in. If you aren't using Search Console, you're flying blind.
Real World Example: The "Zero-Dollar" Success
I once knew a guy who started a blog about a specific, obscure brand of 1980s synthesizers. He used a free WordPress.com site. He didn't know a thing about "SEO strategy." He just wrote about what he loved. He took grainy photos of the circuit boards. He explained how to fix the oscillators.
Within six months, he was the top result for almost every query related to those synths. Why? Because he was the only one providing that level of detail. Google saw that when people landed on his free site, they stayed there for ten minutes reading. That signal—engagement—overrode the fact that he was on a free subdomain.
He eventually started getting into Google Discover because his photos of the "vintage tech" were visually striking to people who followed electronic music. He never spent a dime.
Crucial Steps to Stay Indexed
Google can be fickle. To keep your free site ranking, you need to update it. A site that hasn't been touched in two years is a site that Google assumes is dead. You don't need to post every day, but a monthly refresh of your best content helps.
Also, watch out for "broken links." Free platforms sometimes change their URL structures or delete old features. If your internal links break, it hurts your "crawl budget." Use a free broken link checker once in a while to make sure everything still works.
Summary of Actionable Next Steps
- Choose your platform based on speed. If you’re tech-savvy, go with GitHub Pages or Netlify. If you want easy, go with Google Sites or WordPress.com, but keep it minimal.
- Verify your site in Google Search Console immediately. You cannot improve what you cannot measure. Use the "URL Inspection" tool to ask Google to crawl your new pages.
- Focus on "Low Competition, High Specificity" topics. Don't compete with the giants. Find the questions no one else is answering.
- Prioritize original imagery. Take your own photos. Aim for 1200px width to satisfy the Google Discover requirements.
- Write for the "Quick Answer." Put the most important information at the top of the page. If you answer the user's question in the first two paragraphs, they’re more likely to trust you and keep reading.
- Build "Internal Links." When you write a new post, link back to your old ones. This helps Google understand how your content is related.
- Monitor your Core Web Vitals. Even on a free site, you can usually control how many images or scripts you load. Keep it fast.
Learning how to make a website free isn't about finding a "loophole." It’s about understanding that Google rewards value over fancy tech. If you provide a better experience than the people paying $500 a month for "premium SEO services," you will win. It just takes more sweat equity since you aren't using a credit card.
Once the site is live, spend 90% of your time on the content and 10% on the tech. Most people do the opposite and then wonder why their $0 site is invisible. Stick to the basics: speed, original images, and answering the questions that real people are asking in the real world.