Your free Weebly website isn’t great for SEO
If being found through searches (like Google searches) is important, I recommend that you avoid the free Weebly website plan (mysite.weebly.com) and purchase a domain and a paid plan instead (mysite.com). As of May 2023, the Personal plan allows you to connect a custom domain for $120/year. A domain costs about $20/year. You can find out more in my blog post, Use a custom domain and launch a cheap Weebly website.
According to Weebly's own guide and confirmed by other research I've read, a website built on someone else's domain (in this case, Weebly's) is not going to do as well in searches. Here's the relevant section from the Weebly document about Domains.
Free Subdomains vs. Custom Domains
“A free subdomain (mysite.weebly.com) can be helpful when you're just getting started, but will carry less SEO weight versus a custom domain (www.mysite.com). You can't be serious about your SEO until you have your own domain. A free subdomain will always limit your SEO capabilities, Google and other search engines recognize these domains as starter sites and SEO metrics don't roll up cleanly. With a custom domain name your content, links and SEO signals will all be collected and focused to your site and apply directly to SEO growth. With a free subdomain these metrics are spread to Weebly and not maintained as clearly to your site.” -weebly.com/seo/domain
SEO is certainly something to consider if you're designing your own site. Not everyone needs to have excellent search results; if they're already well-known or they're just starting out and not ready to really "go into business," then the SEO results may not be a big deal. Bu you’ll want to consider the tradeoff between professionalism and cost if you want to go with a free starter website on Weebly.
