Question Concerning HTML5/CSS Templates & Google Mobility Issues
-
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!
-
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
-
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.
-
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
-
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.
-
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".
-
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
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
-
404 errors & old unused pages
I am using shopify and I need to delete some old pages which are coming up as 404 errors (product no longer available!) does anyone know where you go to delete these pages which are no longer needed?
Web Design | | carleyb0 -
Doing SEO for single page applications / Prerender.io
My dev and I are migrating an existing multi page application to a single page application with prerender.io. Does anybody have any experience with doing SEO for single page applications? Any other consequences we should take into account? Anything important to expect. Any insights would be 10/10 appreciated.
Web Design | | Edward_Sturm0 -
Hi, I have a doubt. If we want to hide unwanted text in a web page its possible with "" tag. And my question "does a search engine crawl those text? help me.
I want to hide a lot of text behind my site page. I know its possible with that tag. But in what way a search engine looks at those text? Hidden or they are crawled and indexed.
Web Design | | FhyzicsBCPL0 -
For a web design firm, should i make a google plus local page or company page?
I have a web design firm located in India, At this moment we are focusing on local clients as the current competition in local market is very low. But in few months we will shift our focus to outsourcing. So I wanted to know if we should make a google plus local page and connect it with my google places account and website or should I make a google plus business page and connect it to website? Our major focus is on seo. Thanks
Web Design | | hard0 -
Does Google have problem crawling ssl sites?
We have a site that was ranking well and recently dropped in traffic and ranking. The whole site is https and and not just the shopping pages. Thats the way the server is setup, they make whole site https. My manager thinks the drop in ranking is due to google not crawling https. I think contrary, but would like some feedback on this. Site is here
Web Design | | anthonytjm0 -
Im having duplicate content issues in wordpress
all of my pages are working fine. but i added my sitemap to my footer in my website and when i click on my blog from my footer it takes me to the homepage. so now im having duplicate content for two diff urls. ive tried adding a rel=canonical and a 301 redirect to the blog page but it doesnt resolve the problem. also, when i go to my footer and click blog. after it brings me to the homepage ill try to click on my pages from the original bar at the top of my screen and it will bring me to the right pages. but it will have the same blog url in the search bar even when im on other pages. other than that all of my pages in my footer and in my homepage toolbar work fine. its just that one particular problem with the blog page in the footer and how it stays with the same blog url on every page after i click the blog in the footer. can someone please help. im using yoast and idk if i should disable it or what.
Web Design | | ClearVisionDesign0 -
H1 image replacement question
Working with content folks on a new section of our website. Developed a new logo for this section of the site, and they want to incorporate the style of it into all of the page headings. The only way to pull this off is to use images for H1's. (Without getting into unnecessary detail, they have to be images - too precise to try text over background images.) I made everyone aware of the importance of H1 text for SEO purposes, but they really want these images. When I first attempted SEO back in 2003, I recall doing a site using CSS image replacement along these lines: Widget Page #example {
Web Design | | c2g
background: url(../images/example.gif) no-repeat;
text-indent: -5000px;
} That was nearly 10 years ago, and they definitely ranked for the H1s at the time which led me to believe it worked. Anyone know if this is considered an acceptable practice today? I read some other threads about enclosing the image in tags and relying on the ALT text, but that doesn't seem to be a good option.0