Bought website template hurting rankings

[lgt]

A couple months ago I went out and bought a subscription to one of those websites that offers 1000's of templates for websites. I thought it was a great idea because now I could spend less time on the design of the site. After some tweaking I was able to get the site format I wanted out of one of the templates.

Since then I have gone through the steps of SEOing the site from converting underscores in filenames to dashes, picking titles, keywords, cleaning up image tags, etc.

Since I have implemented the template my site rankings and traffic has drastically dropped over the past month.

I just want to know, is it the template or is there something else that is causing me the headache?

Thanks!

[RobHughes]

Hello,

Are you able to provide the domain so we can have a look at the code and everything that's going on here?

[lgt]

Hey Rob,

Yeah sure, check it out at linksgolftravel.com or you should be able to find it in my profile as well.

Thanks for looking at it!

[alexb5784]

I was wondering the same thing, since I'm considering buying a template for my site.

[RobHughes]

Hey LGT,

I seriously doubt the template you implemented has anything to do with the changes you are experiencing.

Implementing a different site structure will have a drastic effect on any website... this includes changes in page organization/naming, on-page optimization (text), etc, etc, etc... all will have an effect on your SE placement and therefore traffic.

If you had pages that had good page rank/search engine results - you should make certain that 301 redirects are set up to point to your new pages.

Golf (vacations) is highly competitive (to say the least) - as I'm sure you are aware. You may want to consult with a good SEO person to get your new site in order.

[RobHughes]

Also, you can build sitemaps and submit to Google and Yahoo to expedite a crawl from these engines... www.google.com/sitemaps

For the most part - when you build a new site - you are sometimes really starting over as far as SEO since your pages/code appear differently to the search engines.

Of course quality inbound links and many other factors (advertising/marketing)should maintain some reputablility and results on your site/domain.

[lgt]

Thanks for taking a look at the code! Now I can cross that off the list of possible suspects to what happened when I made the change.

I have already posted the sitemap and done the 301's.

I am not sure what is next, maybe a rewrite of some copy. You mentioned I should find a good SEO for some help. Got any suggestions?