Coding hurting SEO?

[webgurucreative]

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[LJDigital]

Hi,

It is true that poor coding can harm your ability to rank highly in search, particularly in competitive areas. If you're not comfortable editing CSS files then I would definitely suggest you find an expert who is able to do so.

I have actually used the Avada theme in the past and the website that I made using it doesn't rank particularly well, even in a niche area, but as of yet I've not had a need to get it ranking more highly so efforts into it haven't been overly exhausted. I'm sure that creating enough high quality content that gathers shares, linkbacks...all the usual stuff, will no doubt still have a positive impact on your SEO though (although I would still advise getting it looked at).

[WebMarkets]

Good looking design, but on-page SEO does lack. Try downloading SEO quake to your Google chrome toolbar. Looks like your home page title, description, and headers need some love. Use this tool for every page on your site and make sure the content is unique to each page. It should help. Also, I would replace the phone # and 24/7 unless they are targeted keywords.

I have noticed rankings go up and increase when I clean up code from existing websites. Google sees clean code as quality content and is easier to crawl. Get rid of span and div tags where possible. Rely on your style sheets and change them if need be.

[evolvingSEO]

Hi There

While the CSS isn't ideal, it's ranking impact is likely in the .01% range of factors. There's lots of other things much more important.

Did you see a drop in rankings or traffic when you installed the new theme? Or are you just afraid it will hold the site back from further in increase?

I'd look more heavily into "local SEO". Here are a few sites and resources;

• http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/
• http://www.localseoguide.com/
• http://moz.com/blog/everybody-needs-local-seo

Local SEO involves getting your local listings in order, acquiring reviews etc. Moz also has a new Local service: https://moz.com/local/overview

You can also check out something like http://www.whitespark.ca/ - they have some of the best Local SEO services.

Secondly, you'd want to make sure your content is the BEST and most authoritative source of info about your industry in your general area. For example this page kind of just talks around the services, http://orange-restoration.com/services/san-diego-water-damage/ but if I were to be honest it feels as if it was written just to have content on the page for search engines. (ie: "san diego" and "san diego water company" appear over and over again. ) Instead you can focus the page as best as you can on helping to educate and inform the user. What would you teach a customer about water damage if they were standing right in front of you looking for help?