Are Dreamweaver templates Spider friendly?

Bohak · #1 (**permalink**) 05-04-2004, 11:54 AM

I am currently managing 200 websites, constantly making changes to try and keep rankings as high as possible is a constant battle.

I started working with Dreamweaver Templates to speed up modification, and duplication time. This seemed to be working well until the respected Head of Marketing began chopping out lines of code which contained the template's instructions, such as:

<html>

He pointed out that any excessive code that gets in the way of the search engine's ability to find keywords, will drastically decrease the sites ranking.

I guess my questions are:

1)Are Dreamweaver templates impractical for sites depending on their keywords,content,and header tags to stay ranked?

2)Do tables' effect a spider's ability to find keywords which would be in the header tags, content, or navigation?

3)Is it smarter to use Front Page to build sites for this type of marketing?

4)Does the HTML coding that is displayed as a result of any design elements such as CSS styles, Dreamweaver Templates, bolding of fonts, font color and size etc., effect a spider's ability to find keywords or hurt a website's ability to get ranked?

5)What programs would a programmer or internet marketing specialist recommend using to build a spider friendly site?

6)Did I ask way too many questions for my first post?

Thanks.

-Bohak

carju1 · #2 (**permalink**) 05-05-2004, 09:43 AM

Hi Bohawk,

About the only 1 can answer is 6) No not too many questions BUT they are as much Search engine type Q's as theya re site design so I have copied this post to the SEO forum as well.

AS for the other questions ANYONE a Dreamweaver Template expert on here??? (FP I can do but Dreamweaver is still only embyonic for me)

Carju1

voodooboy · #3 (**permalink**) 05-05-2004, 11:25 AM

Here is my shot at answering your questions as simply as possible:

1) No. Not at all.

2) No. Tables have been used since before I started in 1995. They (their coding) have no direct effect on search engines.

3) NO!!! FrontPage adds more irrelevant coding than any other editor on the market. Dreamweaver is hands down the industry standard application staying closer to strict code than any other app. (aside from hand coding the site yourself.)

4) The more coding you have, the less relevance your content holds when you go down the page. That is why most designers use includes for JavaScript’s and cascading style sheets; so all that code resides in outside files and not within your page coding. Keep in mind that most all font tags are depreciated, meaning they are being replaced by style sheet code. I strongly suggest you start looking at linked style sheets and get away from font tags all together.
A great resource for style sheets is here:
http://csszengarden.com/

5) Research the spidering process and basic site optimization. You will find that not any one given app will give you the perfect site. A spider friendly site is all based on placement of the relevant content. A site that I have used for an overall review is SEO-Doctor; found here:
http://www.instantposition.com/seo_doctor.cfm
Another good site is here:
http://www.sitereportcard.com/
I have used both with great success in my targeted search terms.

6) Not at all. That is the whole point of these forums; to ask questions and seek answers.

And on a personal note, not all Marketing directors know enough about SEO to go cutting code. Make your point that your job is to deal with the code and let him/her deal with marketing. Dreamweaver does not incorporate enough coding in their templates to do any damage to page ranking.

I hope this helps.
Let me/us know if you have any more questions.

Best of luck.

southplatte · #4 (**permalink**) 05-05-2004, 11:59 AM

Most of what I notice with the dreamweaver templates is almost as a comment

example:

<title>Page Title Here</title> *se should get this
*not this

Don't most search engines ignore html comments due to overwhelming spamming of the search engines in the past by people placing 10-mile long comments in the docs with keywords, search terms and such?

I agree about FrontPage, it adds so much proprietary and extra coding, comments, and who knows what that DW is definitely better.

Ghstdrgns brings up an important point, put the css and javascript in external files and reference them from the html file. This will keep them separate for easy editing, and also keep just the relevant content/coding on the page.

crashingflwrgrl · #5 (**permalink**) 05-05-2004, 01:35 PM

Quote:

6.Did I ask way too many questions for my first post?

aaaawwww That is soooo cute!! I remember being a newbie and thinking the same thing.

burkey · #6 (**permalink**) 05-13-2004, 01:52 PM

I only started actively about six months ago, or so and I finally got one page up to a #1 (yahoo) and one at #2 (Google) yesterday. That never would have happened without me asking too many "stupid" questions form forum member who gave their advice and made contributions to my effort.
It can be a cold, cruel world, but one thing you can count on...You aren't in this alone.

As for being a "newbie"...as long as they continue to change algo's and update so often, I suspect everyone will always feel something like a newbie at least some of the time.

lucks · #7 (**permalink**) 05-14-2004, 03:15 AM

Hi Bohak,

Below is the URL of Lynx viewer which will help you view your site as the SE's will see it.

http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html

To tell you i've also been using Dreamweaver to design my websites which i promote as well and never had a problem with that.
and using Dreamweaver Templates for designing does reduce the duplication of efforts and chances of errors too.

Thanks
Lucks

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bohak

I am currently managing 200 websites, constantly making changes to try and keep rankings as high as possible is a constant battle.

I started working with Dreamweaver Templates to speed up modification, and duplication time. This seemed to be working well until the respected Head of Marketing began chopping out lines of code which contained the template's instructions, such as:

<html>

He pointed out that any excessive code that gets in the way of the search engine's ability to find keywords, will drastically decrease the sites ranking.

I guess my questions are:

1)Are Dreamweaver templates impractical for sites depending on their keywords,content,and header tags to stay ranked?

2)Do tables' effect a spider's ability to find keywords which would be in the header tags, content, or navigation?

3)Is it smarter to use Front Page to build sites for this type of marketing?

4)Does the HTML coding that is displayed as a result of any design elements such as CSS styles, Dreamweaver Templates, bolding of fonts, font color and size etc., effect a spider's ability to find keywords or hurt a website's ability to get ranked?

5)What programs would a programmer or internet marketing specialist recommend using to build a spider friendly site?

6)Did I ask way too many questions for my first post?

Thanks.

-Bohak

lspence · #8 (**permalink**) 05-14-2004, 08:46 AM

Thanks for that great link to Lynx Viewer, lucks! :)