Website templates or Start from scratch, which is best?

[donkeysheep]

Hi

 

as an absolute beginner to web design I have been considering using a template (like the ones you get from main stream hosting companies). SEO is top priority for me so my question is: Are said templates optimizable in terms of google finding it or is it best to start from scratch?

 

Any help appreciated - Donkeysheep

Edited December 12, 2009 by donkeysheep

[Wickham]

I don't think the template itself will have much effect on the SEO, unless it's very badly constructed.

 

It's just a framework and SEO depends on what content you put in the template.

 

Search engines analyse all the content, not just the meta tags for description, keywords and title.

 

SEO depends on how many people visit your site and how many other websites link back to it.

 

The domain name can help SEO; for instance shenfield-village-butcher.com will mean more to a search engine than xyz.com.

 

Make headings descriptive of the site's purpose and put a h1 tag first.

[donkeysheep]

Thanks Wickham, I am considering a fasthost template - have you any views on these?

[Bud]

I have used templates that came with the hosting service but modified them a lot. I did that because I'm not that good with HTML code. I agree that using a template shouldn't impact your ability to do SEO or the rating given by Google.