Once you’ve got your hosting account set up, you need to set about getting your site or blog built, and one of the big decisions you’ll need to make include the choice of web hosting templates.
A template is a shell that your web site resides within, the look that is evident to the public at large when they bring up your site. It’s important not only to have a web hosting template that is reflective of your product, service, or subject, but also that it is search engine friendly, and doesn’t actually hamper visitors from coming around. Let’s look at some of the things you’ll want to make sure are in order.
Your web host may indeed have site templates for you to use. There is good and bad here. The good is that while they are very likely to be quite easy to install, they do have some shortcomings. First, you will probably be sharing the same template as many other website owners on this host, and while this isn’t in and of itself the kiss of death, it does keep you from standing out in a crowd.
Then there is the fact that most of the time, these templates are not very SEO-optimized, and could in fact be hurting you on several levels. They may lack metadata, the code may not be clean, and many other factors could be weighing against you before you even upload any content.
There are a number of sites that sell web hosting templates, and many of these have been optimized and constructed well. There are also many templates out there for various purposes, like affiliate templates, squeeze page templates, video templates and more. The bottom line here is that what you might find for free in the area, should automatically be suspect. Assume the worst; be surprised if that’s not the case. But the deal is, you probably wouldn’t even know if there was a problem until it was too late. Not worth it in my book!
Spend a little time and a few bucks, and get a web hosting template that will not only be search engine friendly, but also relatively unique and good looking. Try and avoid flash and javascript if your site will be textually driven, as the search engines have a hard time indexing through those two.
If you are using a blog, especially WordPress, the news is a lot brighter. WordPress “themes” (their name for templates) are very well optimized and clean coded out of the gate. Further, they are constantly updating the software. Your biggest problem with WordPress will be in choosing; there are literally thousands of themes out there, and many of them free. Do try and make sure that the theme you choose plays nice with the latest release of WordPress. Many of the older themes still out there won’t work well with it.
It’s not just about looking good, though that is very important. You want your web hosting template to be SEO friendly, fast loading, readable and useful. Find one with all of that going for it and you’ve got a winner!
