Using a pre-design template and SEO
-
Hi,
If I use a template that maybe 50 other websites use but customise it my way will I still rank or will it hurt my ranking because other websites have the same template (even though they are in a different industry).
Thanks,
-
I agree !
A long time ago, before I knew much about SEO, I had a website redesigned and the traffic tanked big time. After that, even though I am not a "designer," almost all elements of our websites are built in-house. Not only do you have control over the SEO, but you also don't have to pull teeth and get into arguments to get things done the way you want. We keep 'em simple and they look OK.
-
Also I feel that it's important to say that could be an issue with a custom website too, due to the fact that a lot of web developers are not seo professionals, so they don't build a site to be seo friendly.
-
The fact that many other people use the same template is not a matter of concern.
What might be of concern is the code that underlies the template. It could be really inefficient, lack important optimization elements, have links that are not search engine friendly, have css or scripts that slow down the delivery.... there are many potential problems.
If you are using a template and are going to put a lot of work into your content and into your SEO then a quick evaluation by an experienced SEO might save you problems. I would want to spend a lot on content and SEO and only get fractional value because of a crap template.
-
There are lots of templates that rank really well, I have customers who have used templated sites and beat all of their competition. If you create lots of unique content and modify what you've got (make sure to change alt tags from the default template) and url paths for example, then you should be fine.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Using H3 before or instead of an H2...
My designer and I have been having an argument: we have a blog with short, 400 words posts. They have an H1 with nice keywords and a catchy title, and then a few subheadings. I don't like making the subheadings H2, because the font looks way too large in Wordpress, so my designer wants to make them all H4s, so the font looks to be a nicer size. Here's my problem with that and why I usually just bold the subheadings: Is it really bad to put a bunch of H4s right under an H1, with not H2's or 3's to separate? I'm reading different arguments on the internet about this and gladly welcome more debate and/or case studies. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | genevieveagar0 -
SEO benefit of tracked URLs
I've found a lot of mixed info on this topic so I thought I'd ask the experts (Moz community). If I'm adding tracking parameters to URLs to monitor organic traffic will this affect the rank/value of the original clean URL? If so, would best practice be to 301 redirect the tracked URL to the original:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IceIcebaby
i.e. redirect www.example.com/category/?DZID=Organic_G_NP/SQ&utm_source=Organic&utm_medium=Google TO www.example.com/category Thanks for your help!
-Reed0 -
Any SEO value in gTLD redirect?
So, my client is thinking of purchasing several gTLDs with second level keywords important to us. Stuff like this...we don't want .popsicles, just the domain with the second level keyword. Those cost anywhere from $20-30 right now: grape.popsicles cherry.popsicles rocket.popsicles companyname.popsicles The thinking is that it's best to be defensive, not let a competitor get the gTLD with our name in it (agreed) and not let them capitalize on a keyword-rich gTLD (hmm). The theory was that we or a competitor could buy this gTLD and redirect it to our relevant page for, say, cherry popsicles. They wonder if that would help that gTLD page rank well - and sort of work in lieu of AdWords for pages that are not ranking well. I don't think this will work. A redirected page shouldn't rank better that the page it links to...unless Google gave it points for Exact Match in the URL. Do you think they will -- does Google grade any part of a URL that redirects? Viewing this video from Matt Cutts, I surmise that a gTLD would be ranked like any other page -- if its content, inbound links, etc. support a high DA, well, ok then, you get graded like every domain. In the case of a redirect, the page would not be indexed as a standalone so that is a moot point, right? So, any competitor buying a gTLD with the hopes of ranking well against us would have to build up pagerank in that new domain...and for our purposes I see that being hugely difficult for anyone - even us. Still, a defensive purchase of some of these might not be a bad idea since it's a fairly low cost investment. Other thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jen_Floyd0 -
Website Layout and SEO
Hi All, As a brand new user to Wordpress and having read articles and forum posts I have purchased Studiopress Genesis Enterprise Theme. QuestionWordpress like any traditional bespoke site can be written to incorporate variations of columns structures.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
What is the best column strategy or page layout strategy for SEO? Thanks Mark0 -
Local SEO for a community.
How would one go about best doing local SEO for a townhome community? It seems to fall in between the traditional imformational SEO and the brick and mortar, G+ page model. There seems to be no way to attack the NAP, directory and traditional citation model for a certain region they build in. Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AESEO0 -
SEO for an exponentially growing site?
Hey Mozers! I was having a quick chat with a friend the other day on doing SEO for a site that grows in page size at an exponential rate and was just wondering how you would go about optimizing it? The example that we used would be a site that allowed users to upload videos and then have people vote on two videos against each other. So, if there are 100 uploaded videos and each of them are pared up with the other 99 to create a unique voting/battle page which has it's own unique URL, the site can get very large, VERY quickly. Meaning if just one more video is uploaded there would be How exactly would you go about optimizing the site? My biggest area of confusion would be generating sitemaps. I'm aware of best practices with large sitemaps (i.e. having a sitemap of sitemaps, not going over 50k in entries per sitemap etc..) But, how would you go about creating the sitemaps for this website if it's growing at an exponential rate, if at all? If you have any other questions feel free to ask and I'll clarify it. Thanks! 😃 **TL;DR How would you optimize a site that grows at an exponential rate? **
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JordanChoo0 -
SEO Recommendations
For about 3 years our website was number one in Google.co.uk for our trades main keyphrase which resulted in excellent sales. About 12 months ago that position started to slide downwards and for that keyphrase we are now number 10. We are still at number's 1,2 and 3 for several other keyphrases but ones that result in fewer daily Google searches and resultant sales. I have always added unique content to the site but admit that my blog posts became less than daily over the past 12 months. However I am adding posts as often as I can now, of good length and of unique content. As well as tweaking all our online seo factors I'm trying to add good backlinks as often as possible. I wonder if anyone has been in a similar position and what they did to try and regain their previous position? Colin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NileCruises0 -
Using exact keyword domains for local SEO
The website is for the attorney that serves several nearby cities. The main page is optimized for the biggest central city. I have several options how to go after the smaller surrounding cities: 1. Create optimized pages inside the main domain 2. Get more or less exact keyword domains for each city e.g. for the city ABC get yourABClawyer.com and then a) use 1 page websites that use the same template as main website and link all the menu items to the main website b)use 1 page website with a link "for more information go to our main website" c) point exact keyword domains to the optimized pages within the main domain. Which option would be the best in terms of SEO and user experience? Would people freak out if they click on the menu item and go to a different domain website even though it uses the same template (option 2a) Would I get more bounces with option 2b in your opinion? Would option 2c have any positive SEO effect? Should I not even bother with exact keyword domain and go with option 1?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SirMax1