Using Free Templates and Its Impact on SEO

ddwebguru · May 27, 2009

I am running a person website where I have used free website template. Though it looks very fine and cost effective off course but I have a doubt whether it has any bad impacts on SEO, Please help me to solve this issue.

joned · May 27, 2009

What makes you think it might have a bad effect on SEO?

Have you thoroughly checked the code to make sure there are no concealed links (other than perhaps a link to the website of the person who designed it)?

Cheers, Jon

dashu1 · May 28, 2009

I never thought the design would impact SEO but I've had an odd experience recently.

I put up 4 sites using the same slightly modified template & all 4 of them were nowhere to be seen in Google.

2 of them did initially show up around page 1 & 2 then suddenly dropped like a brick to about page 30.

I did a bit of investigating, changed the <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC bit of the code, and hey presto 2 of them have re-appeared.

Just waiting for the other 2 to be crawled & we'll see what happens.

joned · May 28, 2009

dashu1 said:
I never thought the design would impact SEO but I've had an odd experience recently.

I put up 4 sites using the same slightly modified template & all 4 of them were nowhere to be seen in Google.

2 of them did initially show up around page 1 & 2 then suddenly dropped like a brick to about page 30.

I did a bit of investigating, changed the <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC bit of the code, and hey presto 2 of them have re-appeared.

Just waiting for the other 2 to be crawled & we'll see what happens.

It may be your changes that made the difference. But it's also fairly common for new sites to initially rank highly in G, then drop like a stone, then reappear a little later at a more "normal" level

Cheers, Jon

ddwebguru · Jun 3, 2009

But the fact is that I have never seen a website clutching top ranking position in a competitive keywords. Most of them are unique design. This is the reason why I have some doubt about it.

joned · Jun 3, 2009

ddwebguru said:
But the fact is that I have never seen a website clutching top ranking position in a competitive keywords. Most of them are unique design. This is the reason why I have some doubt about it.

I think that's a symptom of their success rather than a cause of it.

It's a bit like saying, "I've never seen a celebrity shopping in Tesco's. Therefore shopping in Tesco's prevents you from becoming a celebrity"

Cheers, Jon

crabfoot · Jun 5, 2009

I saw Leo Sayer shopping in Tesco on Ealing Broadway once ...

joned · Jun 6, 2009

crabfoot said:
I saw Leo Sayer shopping in Tesco on Ealing Broadway once ...

Exactly!

Cheers, Jon

dashu1 · Jun 6, 2009

joned said:
It may be your changes that made the difference. But it's also fairly common for new sites to initially rank highly in G, then drop like a stone, then reappear a little later at a more "normal" level

Cheers, Jon

Yes thats true. I have some sites that appear & just stay there and others that appear then disappear then reappear later.

This one has now disappeared again so God (or Google) only knows whats happening with it.

ddwebguru · Jun 10, 2009

joned said:
I think that's a symptom of their success rather than a cause of it.

It's a bit like saying, "I've never seen a celebrity shopping in Tesco's. Therefore shopping in Tesco's prevents you from becoming a celebrity"

Cheers, Jon

I like your reason very much. Now I will try out find the exact reasons rather than scrutinizing its symptoms.

jj1 · Jun 16, 2009

I would have thought that providing your template allows you to do the obvious SEO stuff - sprinkle keywords through title tags, h1-h6 tags, urls, image names, alt text content etc - that it should have no negative impact on the SEO. Obviously, a large part of SEO is the links.