Can a Joomla template ruin a sites on-page seo?

[steve82]

Absolutely agree Ben, of course just because something doesn't carry the weight it did doesn't mean it should be ignored. I would say in a similar fashion to meta description while H2's and the like aren't big for ranking they exist originally to improve user experience - a well structured page is easy to navigate and works for users.

I like the outline view tactic, build it in a way that is good for the user and the engines are probably going to like it too. Never really looked into annotations in analytics but sounds like a good tip too.

And yes the cardinal sin on their sites is text as images. The very worst is the NAP (name, address, phone). I do a lot of work on local/maps seo and this is a shocker in terms of localised search, and now the with the 'Venice' update local is an ever bigger factor. If you've not read up on venice I recommend it.

Thanks again and as I've said in the response below I will report back once I've seen the back end with their developer.

[blacey]

Glad me and Aeronet could be of assistance. I'll keep checking in on this thread and help as and when I can.

Going back to Google Analytics Annotations, I find them super useful. For one site, their web host kept having downtime on their servers and this was a significant issue to track as it affected the visits to the site and therefore the averages.

If nothing else I can look back at the statistics in a year's time and be able to recall everything that happened in the site's history to date along with the actual statistics.

Here is a quick video about annotations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfPx4Sus_CY

I would suggest setting the annotations as private, so only you can see the notes.

[steve82]

Hi Aeronet,

Just wanted to confirm to anyone else coming across this thread that this was exactly the issue and was simple to resolve in Joomla as described.

It took some time to get access to the site so was in the dark until I could confirm. Knowing this I looked at a few of the companies other sites and found similar issues in other free templates that had been used. From my limited experience it looks like sneaking links into image alts in j-query scrollers and slideshows is not un-common. Though not difficult to find and rectify if you are looking can easily sneak under the radar.

Thanks again for the help : )

[blacey]

Sadly even though there are good sites offering free or paid templates I find myself spending hours going through the template code and re-writing most of it because it lacks any real quality.

I'd just like to say that I don't buy themes a very often; I think in my whole web development career I've only bought 1 or 2 themes and that was simply to get used to how themes work using a new framework like Zend or Joomla 1.6.

Where possible I would always advocate writing your own themes, but I fully understand that not everyone can do this, that's why us website developers exist.

I would also say that comments or feedback from others who have used a theme can be misleading. If you don't understand code and you use the theme purely from a "what you see is what you get" perspective then chances are the theme will have a lot of good reviews but the code itself might be a dogs dinner.

I'd like to see more theme websites showing the structure of the theme files and maybe a sneak preview into 2 or 3 files that make up the theme so we get a feel for how well coded the template is, but the chances of that happening are pretty slim.

[SteveHoney65]

Just a further thought - I hadn't noticed until now you were based in France. Without sounding to 'spammy' I hope can I suggest you check out the company I worked for previously - Relevance Web Marketing (if you were not already aware of them). They are also based in France but English run, and do a lot of multi-lingual projects for clients. I know they are always interested in hearing from other companies with some 'overlap' in their business. Link building for French versions of sites has been a difficult in the past. I think it would be worth getting in contact with them to have a chat about where you could potentially help each other with future projects as am sure there are areas where you would compliment each other well.

Just an idea and I hope this isn't seen as trolling/spamming for business - I have no financial link to them and am only suggesting something which I believe could be beneficial to both parties.

[Aeronet]

Hi Steven,

Glad you could work it out

[Aeronet]

Hi Steve,

Nope, I didn't know them !

I tried to check their website but it was unavailable, I got the email from google's cache, I'll contact them today, thanks for the info.

[steve82]

That's strange, I don't see any problem - I wonder if you found one of the other domains that hasn't been re-directed to the new site? relevanceweb dot com should work fine.

[Aeronet]

This one works fine, thanks !

[PatioLifeStyle]

I would also suggest buying Artisteer, which is an inexpensive template creator that is not only amazingly simple, but fun to use as well.

[PatioLifeStyle]

I would also suggest buying Artisteer, which is an inexpensive template creator that is not only amazingly simple, but fun to use as well. Then you can create your own themes for multiple platforms.