There is a lot to be said for learning basic html. It allows you to "see" how a page is built. Try looking at a frontpage page with a basic html editor the page is all over the place! and FP uses empty cells and tables for layout without you ever knowing.....text readers love those!!
The handy thing about templates is it is fast but none the less the lazy option. It is also recognisable and therefore not unique, and whilst I use elements from templates I still built each page. Most of the time I do not need to look at the source of other peoples pages to see what software built the site as Frontpage and DW templates are so obvious. The main problem is the template software dictates to me the designer as to what is or what is not possible. Learning basic HTML can help with templates when the template will not do exactly what you want layout wise so you end up with a dodgy compromise.
Try starting with a blank page but no one here has mentioned doc type declarations....still important. This will vary according to what the page is built with.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>your site title here</TITLE>
<META name="Description" content="your site description here">
<META name="Keywords" content="your keywords here">
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META name="objecttype" content="your page name here or if homepage use....index">
<META name="Category" content="Travel">
<META name="Distribution" content="Global">
<META name="Robots" content="index, follow">
<META name="rating" content="General">
<META name="Language" content="EN">
<META name="Author" content="your name here">
<META name="Copyright" content="your copy right name here">
<META NAME="title" CONTENT="your page title here">
</HEAD>
If using a template put it here
..................and off you go with the document properties
Hope this is of help, by the way I used to panic about
SEO, then with my hair line receding naturally pulling any more out no longer became an option! so I no longer care what my page rank is or if my site is in the top 20 on some search engines and directories or in the top ten in others. Because it means didley squat when it comes to being in the first page of results. I also no longer care what Google is doing to rank pages they change the rules so often they annoy me. (google who?)So I now ignore the search engines. Who are they to tell me how to build my website anyway?
Chill........relax.........stay cool....
LEARN HTML! your page will rise!!!!
</ASTRO>