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

[Aeronet]

Hi Steven,

The [Visit camp26.biz] is coming from the alternative text on the scroller images.

You must have the option to put the alternative text of your choice in the Joomla admin.

[blacey]

I always look at my pages in Outline View using the WAVE toolbar and I look at all my page headings and see if I can understand what the page (or article) is about based purely on the headings.

This forces me to make sure my headings are descriptive and targeted for the page/post being written.

I would say that singularly the

doesn't have as much weight as it used to but as we all know SEO is a combination of everything. Google may rank you down for links as images (as an example) but it may see you've made good use of headings so the penalty in terms on on-page SEO balances out. Now I'm not saying that things like this should be ignored, I'm saying that every potential issue on the site should be addressed to give you the best possible standing with the search engines.

In some cases there may be things you can't easily change, which sometimes is the case, so I would concentrate on fixing the issues you can and make improvements whereever possible.

I find that if I make any on-page changes that I make an Annotation within Google Analytics. This helps me keep track of changes and I can see from the stats if its had much of a difference.

Issues:

Straight away on the homepage I can see duplicate h1 tags, 'Party bag fillers' and 'birthday parties'.

The sidebar modules need to be converted to text, because they are all images at the moment. I would suggest something similar to the followng:

Ordering Securely Online

Some text here describing the section to the user.

[steve82]

Thanks again Aeronet : )

That really helps me - obviously image alts always need to be set to the best possible for SEO. As I say, I am just looking from the outside and haven't talked at all with the developer yet. But will be great to point out specifics to the website owner at the first proper meeting. Only thing I'm slightly confused by is the rest of the alt's are written in a way that suggests SEO was considered - I'm going to guess that the adding of the "visit camp26.biz" prefix is hidden in the Joomla interface and happens at publishing. I will hopefully be able to sit down with the developer and identify exactly what's happening. When I have an answer I will update here. Think this will make a nice little informative blog post in the future as I've found it's not a subject that there's readily available information on. Will be sure to mention you both and share for you to re-produce if I do.

Thank you both.

[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.