Question Concerning HTML5/CSS Templates & Google Mobility Issues

[Pixelwik]

Hi all,

Looking for some kind of solution for a responsive update for a site and I am wondering if there are any templates (not Wordpress) that are both great SEO wise and would also pass muster with the impending Google update for responsiveness? I was looking at things like Canvas and Porto ( http://themeforest.net/popular_item/by_category?category=site-templates ) but can't find any discussion on whether or not these things have been addressed with any of these templates. If any of you have suggestions or other places to look for something that could possibly fit the bill (even if temporarily) I would be very appreciative. Thank you so much in advance!

[evolvingSEO]

Oh by the way, here's a post I wrote for Moz on setting up wordpress for SEO: http://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success

[evolvingSEO]

Hi There

In my experience, so long as you redirect any URL changes correctly you shouldn't see a drop in rankings. A good coder should be able to clean up a template, as well as take measuers to help with load time. Definitely use a caching plugin like WP Super Cache. I think WordPress is a great way to go for a quick solution. A premium theme is only about $50 - go with one that is from a developer that a) has really good star ratings and b) and this is important - seems to provide good support.

[DirkC]

Hi,

Not really a great coder myself, but I am building a smaller site as kind of hobby project, trying to incorporate all the best practices of RWD. My first approach as my skills in CSS & HTML were quite limited was to buy a template on Themeforest. I noticed very soon however, that modifying these templates is quite difficult to do, and it's even harder to understand exactly what each element in the css is used for (there was no documentation inside the css)

When I ran some checks with external tools, I noticed that for all the templates only 30% of the css was actually used. Load times were pretty mediocre, mainly because the huge number of external javascripts used for all the fancy stuff on the page. Maybe I bought the wrong template, but my general impression is that these templates are developed based on frameworks which are already quite bloated (Bootstrap, Foundation) - and then they add a lot of additional jquery plugins for things like sliders, responsive menus, ...etc.

If you just need a temporary fix - you could try one of these templates - they are cheap & functional, even if they do not fit your needs for 100%. For the final version, it's probably better/cheaper to find a great designer/coder to build your code from scratch rather (or based on a very light css framework) than to clean the code in the template.

rgds,

Dirk

[Pixelwik]

Thanks so much for the comments...really appreciated. For many years we've just had basic html sites without any kind of CMS (right now it's html5). I guess I'm a bit weary of Wordpress because of the SEO aspect; and that's purely from years ago hearing that it was only a blogging mechanism. I fully realize that's not the case and it's used by companies big and small but I suppose some of the fear comes from the fact that the site in question ranks very well organically and I was worried that any kind of big change like that could make us drop.

Anyway, regardless of what happens, you mention something about the templates being stuffed with too much junk but I'm wondering if we used one of those (if only temporarily) if we could hire a good coder to clean it up if that turns out to be the case? Really right now we are just looking for a quick solution that could possibly be made to last but doesn't necessarily have to.

Anyway, thanks again. Really appreciate the assistance.

[evolvingSEO]

Hi There

Dirk is right - most responsive templates should pass the mobile test. If not WordPress, are you on a different CMS or something?

Themeforest.net has a ton of themes for all situations. Just look for "responsive".

[DirkC]

Hi

If the template is marked as responsive it should pass the mobile friendly test. Main issue with these templates is that they are very often stuffed with a lot of features that you're not going to use (resulting in heavy css / js files). This could have a negative impact on the load time of your page. That said, I guess most people just buy Wordpress themes rather than develop themselves.

rgds,

Dirk