Are Accounting Website Templates Really Bad For Search Position?

Generally accounting companies have little option but to use website templates to get their business a website. Custom websites are ludicrously expensive. Few smaller firms can sincerely be expected to build a website from the foundation up. A superior, content rich custom accounting site can cost a fortune to complete, whilst most templates sell for around fifty dollars per month.

So why would any accounting firm shell out thousands of dollars a month for SEO?

Website templates have been around for years and they've always been an inexpensive and effective alternatives to expensive custom sites, but they've traditionally had problems getting good rankings in search engines like Google and Bing. It's a pretty common to trade off power for simplicity when designing software for "end users". Template providers, however, in making their content management systems easy to use, often glossed over or ignored features that would make their templates more appealing to the search engines.

There are three problems traditionally found in website templates, and many providers still have not addressed them... but some have. These problems include...

* Using Duplicate Content
* Universal Meta Tag Settings
* I-frames

As the web has become more competitive some of these template providers have shifted gears, successfully overcoming these limitations without substantially increasing the complexity of their content management tools. Others have not, and are still selling templates that are not adequate to proper "SEO", or Search Engine Optimization.

So how do you know what to look for if you want to find accounting website templates that are SEO, or "search engine optimization", friendly? Here are a few pointers...

Let's look at the "duplicate content" first as all template driven sites will have this problem. When you first get them even the best accounting website templates will have hundreds of pages of "standard" content. This content is identical between all the websites from a given provider and this creates problems getting pages "indexed", or "listed" by Google. Search engines don't want duplicate results coming up in searches, so as a rule they will only list such a page ONCE and they ignore every page they see after that with the same content. This means to get a "standard" page to actually appear in the search results you need to modify the content of that page. In order to do this you need to be able to edit the content in the template, and not all providers let you do this. It's vital to make sure that accounting website templates allow you to edit all your pages so you can make the important ones unique enough to get picked up as a search result. You don't need to modify the entire site, but you do need to modify the pages you want the search engines to show people. You will certainly want to modify your home page, and if you have time modify your more important service pages.

In website design the term "meta tags" is a reference to invisible tags hidden in a search engines code that are meant as messages to search engines and other website programmers. Search engines use these tags to identify a web pages meaning and intent, but on many template driven sites these tags either don't exist, cannot be edited at all, or can only be changed using a "universal" setting. On most accounting website templates there is only one setting for meta tags like page titles, page descriptions, and keywords that affect all the pages on the site simultaneously. If you want to succeed in the search engines make sure the meta tags on your website can be changed separately on every page of your site.

The last problem traditionally associated with accounting website templates is also the hardest to identify. Many sites use a coding trick called IFrames, or inline frames, to deliver content to your website. Template providers like I-Frames for a lot of reasons, but their primary advantage is that using them makes it very easy to keep site content updated and make changes to hundreds of websites at once. Unfortunately search engines don't much care for sites that use them. If your content is being presented to your clients in IFrame format the search engines will basically look at the page as blank. They will follow the inline content in very much the same way they might follow any other link. This means if the content gets indexed it will be credited to the template provider rather than you. Since it can be hard to tell whether or not a website is using these "framed links" you might want to ask but verify. Find out from the provider if they deliver content using inline frames, but before committing to a site have a web professional examine their product and make sure that they aren't using them.

Don't be put off by a casual examination of a provider's sample sites. You'll need to dig a little to find out whether or not an accounting website template is SEO friendly or not. An SEO friendly site with a lazy owner may not be taking advantage of a template providers search features. Many of my clients have "Universal Meta Tag" issues. The problem isn't that they can't optimize them, the problem is that they often just don't bother.

To be sure about a template's suitability for SEO call each provider separately and ask about these features. There are some very expensive "premium" accounting website templates that are actually pretty lousy in terms of their SEO potential. If your vendor hasn't specifically addressed all three of these issues Google won't be likely to take your site seriously. This might be tolerable for some businesses in less competitive towns, but make sure you consider it when measuring the cost benefit. Always keep an eye on the future. You are likely to retain your site for quite some time, so make sure you use one that will grow with your firm.