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Are Free Templates From Hosting Providers Bad?
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The funny thing is, they actually aren't - in fact there is absolutely nothing wrong with using a template website as a low cost alternative to a custom design while you are getting started and don't have the budget for a full blown custom. Users often operate under the mistaken assumption that because the source code (The html not the content) is the same, you can run into duplicate content issues. However, search engines are concerned with the content contained within the html, not the html itself.
The Generic Design Issue
So what is the problem with template farms. The first is most are down right ugly. Find me an out of the box Homestead or Godaddy website that looks unique and I will edit all that mass duplicated content for you - in other words its not gonna happen.
You look just like everyone else: Here is the big problem. In todays world wide web you need something to set your company apart from the rest, and you can't do that if you are restricted to a template. Sure you can add graphics here and there, make pages unique to your product or service, but remember this, the template base will be used by possibly thousands of other small businesses just like yours.
Lack of flexibility: Most templated websites (In fact all that I know of) come with content management systems in order to add and modify your content. Now this in and of itself is not a bad thing if the CMS is robust enough to allow you to do all the things you need to do to achieve great rankings and a nice design, however most of these systems are take it or leave it and the operators of the template sites are not going roll out a custom change to their entire network of customers just because you needed the CMS tweaked to allow for some new SEO technique, or because you needed more control over certain graphic elements.
Don't get me wrong they will provide some custom work but guess what, its gonna cost you. One for instance charges $49.95 PER MONTH for custom work on five pages. Sure they skip the intial big payment for a custom design by allowing you to pay monthly, but that translates to almost $600.00 per year. And guess what? If you leave, you don't get to take it with you.
And what about the others? I looked over one with 2000 free templates, 250,000 free images, toll free help, and it was only $4.99 a month. How could you go wrong? 2000 templates to chose from, 250,000 free images to use, and toll free help whenever you need it. And all for $4.99 a month. As you have heard before if it sounds to good to be true it probably is. Lets break down the reality of it all. I had a customer who was hosted with this company so I checked on his server stats, it had over 200,000 users. Thats 200,000 websites on ONE server. Talk about slow. Ok they had 2000 free templates! Well if you figure just his server, and I am assuming they had many, was hosting over 200,000 sites then that would translate into an average of 100 sites that where running on the exact same template. So much for unique.
And heres the biggy, that $4.99 a month bargain, not so much. If you have a personal account yes, but if your a business then no. This host charges $19.99 a month for business accounts, something they don't plaster all over their advertising. It states $4.99 and start for free, so you do. You get it all done and rocking then stop the presses, your a business? Sorry but that deal is for individuals, didn't you see the fine print, but hey no problem we have business plans right here for you.
There are problems with Search Engine Placement
Poor coding: Most templated websites were created on a framework quite some time ago and not with any regard to search engine optimization. They are chalk full of very poorly formed (And many times just incorrect) html, are very bloated (Which makes for a slow loading website with high html text ratio and can cause issues with proper spidering) and their architecture is just plain bad. Plain and simple - you will never be able to do a great job optimizing your website if you are starting with a poorly coded non-search engine friendly platform.
But what about all those templates that rank well even with really bad code? It is true that you can achieve "decent" rankings with the main page and perhaps a few sub pages even with a poorly coded website - however the effort required (And the amount of extra links you have to get) means a much harder job and your time is worth money - in the end you will realize that you need to drop your poorly coded site for something with higher markup standards and it is better to start right from the beginning than to have to switch later after putting all that extra work into a bad site because a lot of it is wasted time you could have spent selling your product or service.
Inadequate access to create and change content and meta data: In the previous point, we talked about how most template providers are unwilling to change their systems to accomodate your needs, which you would never need them to do in the first place if they had built from an SEO perspective out of the box - but remember these sites (And the content management systems that power them) were made for mass production and I can guarantee you when version one rolled out, they did not have a tallented search engine consultant there giving them advise on what needs to be built into the thing, or how to plan for future SEO considerations.
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