Todd Donald

Free website templates for web design.

Included with my standard designs are free website templates. When I build a website, I spend a ton of time in the beginning browsing through website templates to get ideas for new designs or to modify and use for the site I am about to launch. If you can afford a few extra bucks, I also offer premium templates, but beware that most of the really snazzy designs that people are attracted to are Flash, which is SEO suicide. When choosing a template stick to plain old HTML or better still is XHTML or CSS.

Please feel free to browse through these free templates, (no pun intended), to get ideas for your website, or you can choose some of your favorite designs and then contact me to see if I can modify it for your needs and launch your site for you. To see what I can do with these templates, to customize them for your needs, see my web design portfolio.

The free website templates that are provided at these free template sites are not associated with BEST SEO WEB DESIGN, but only provided for reference if you are trying to find a free website template. If you see a template that you like at one of these sites and want me to build that website for you, please contact me.

• Free Templates Online – Rich selection of carefully selected and properly organized free templates.
• Free Web Templates – Web designers are invited to share their free templates and show their talent to the world.
• Free Dreamweaver Templates – Small selection of free DreamWeaver templates provided by AdesDesign.net.
• Steves Free Web Templates – Free web templates as the name of the website suggests created by Steve.
• Andreas Viklund Free Website Templates – Minimalist style, clean, content-oriented web templates and WordPress themes.
• Free Power Point Templates – Free PowerPoint template kits for your personal use in the presentations.
• Interspire Free Website Templates – Dozens of free web site, newsletter and logo templates.
• Zymic Free Templates – Nice selection of free website templates they’ve also got some webmaster goodies for download.
• Open Source Web Design Free Templates – Popular resource of free templates submitted by web designers.
• Free Web Templates – Free web templates available for immediate download. Daily updates.
• Free Layouts – Free web and free Flash templates along with WordPress themes, MySpace layouts.
• Six Shooter Media Free Templates – Custom web design services and a selection of really nice free web templates.
• Solucija Free Templates – Solucija is devoted to web standards. Free XHTML / CSS website templates available to use.
• Open Web Design Free Website Templates – A place for designers to share their designs.
• Master Templates Free Website Templates – Professionally designed free website layouts and Power Point templates.
• Free Website Templates – Free website templates – some of them really nice.
• Free Photoshop Templates – The place to find free Photoshop Website Templates provided by specialized websites.
• Free Web Layouts – Probably the biggest free template site on the net with over 3666 free layouts within their database.
• Free Web Page Templates – Directory where you can see thumbnails of various free templates from different designers.
• Template Yes Free Website Templates – Free HTML templates that are rather simple in layout.
• Art for the Web Free Web Templates – A selection of free templates, which are rather nice.
• Free Blogger Templates – Free blogger templates for blogspot powered blogs.
• Free Css Templates – First-class css templates plus an imposing collection of premium website templates.
• Get Free CSS Templates – SEO friendly cascading style sheet templates. Designs are flexible and universal.
• Free Css XHTML Templates – Nice selection of website templates that are compliant with modern browsers.
• CM Simple Websites Templates – Hidden treasure of a resource for finding free website templates that are rather nice looking and neutral.
• Stylish Template Premium Free Website Templates – Maybe you can’t say that 10 times fast, but this site has some nice templates available for immediate download, so check it out.
• WebGazzette Free Website Templates – Nice selection of XHTML and CSS website templates available free of charge, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
• Templates 4 Net Free Website Templates – The place where you can find free templates and submit your own template.
• Template Navigator Free Templates – The templates offered by the company’s partners are picked and checked out.
• Template Workz Free Website Templates – Free website templates, plus free logo templates and newsletter templates.

The free website templates that are provided at these free template sites are not associated with BEST SEO WEB DESIGN, but only provided for reference if you are trying to find a free website template. If you see a template that you like at one of these sites and want me to build that website for you, please contact me.

The unfortunate truth is that although waiting is the hardest part, it does take time for a new website or rebuilt website to show up on search engines. Sometimes it takes weeks, sometimes months for a website to be “included” on a search engine and certainly at least several more months for the search engine results for your website to stabilize. For example, if you have a painting company in Dallas, you’ll probably want to be seen for search phrases like “dallas painter”, “dallas painting”, “painting contractors dallas”, etc. In order for this to happen, your site must contain relevant information that pertains to those searches first of all, and then when the search engines display your site for those key phrases, and people click through on your site, then the search engines will start to “learn” that your site is relevant for those terms.

Obviously there is a lot more to it than just that, but be assured that is the very basics and the essence of what you want to happen. Once again though, this takes TIME… Maybe a short time, but more likely a long time. Don’t anticipate launching a website and having it show up on search engines in just a couple of days or weeks, its simply not realistic.

If you absolutely need to drive traffic to your site immediately, (that means getting site visitors – not having your website show up on searches right away),  then you can opt for the sponsored pay per click ads offered by Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. The cost is usually $100 +/- to start an account and the “cost per click” is typically between $1.50 and $15.00, but usually averages out to roughly $5.00 per click-through depending on your particular market. Bidding on search terms for something common and competitive like Dallas Painter will be more expensive than something more obscure like Kokomo Candle Maker.

Over the long haul, you want to establish a solid back-link strategy to build up your website’s “link popularity”, which is term that describes how many websites link to yours. Search engines measure these back-links to establish your “popularity”. A website with 1000 other sites linking to it, will show up better on search engines than the site that has only a few. Keep in mind that the quality of the links matter too. You want links from reputable sites that are similar in content to your own.

One of the coolest parts about my job, is that when I am asked a question by a client, I am forced to think about what I naturally take for granted and summarize that into words… Therefore I can make posts like this that other people with websites might find interesting.

This question came from one of my newest clients, his website was launched within the past couple of weeks. First, I will post the question from that client and then my answer, allowing you to enjoy the full breadth of the conversation.

I am still not showing up in google searches until the 3rd or 4th page. What can we do about that?

The following was my answer. Keep in mind that it was specific to his website and application, but the subject material can be related to any search topic, or any geography.

As far as showing up on search engines, that is a really deep subject and this may not be the easy answer you seek, but the process typically takes weeks for the site to be included and begin showing up during searches, months for the search engine to determine what the site and all the pages within are relevant for and years for the site to become firmly established on search engines. Nobody, except the search engines themselves have any control over how sites are included or considered relevant. We’re talking about billions and billions of website domains worldwide, with potentially a seemingly infinite number of electronic documents to compare.

Here is the overview of the process that I provided to the client:

1. Website URL is submitted to search engines, (I submitted yours to Google, Yahoo and Bing).
2. Major search engines process the submission.
3. Search engines “include” the URL in their list of websites to crawl, (for example nobody knows how many websites Google has indexed, but it is believed to be in the order of 10′s of billions).
4. Search engines “crawl” or “spider” the website and catalog it’s content based on URL, Page Titles, Meta Descriptions, Textual Page Content between tags.
5. Search engines begin to display the website and pages of the site, during live searches, in the organic results, for what it considers potential relevant matches.
6. Search engines track the human click factor, to determine if the website and pages within are thought to be relevant by people actually searching for information.
7. Search engines track the quality and quantity of inbound links, (other websites that link to your website).

Ultimately a search engine’s number one goal is to return organic search results that are as accurate as possible, as quickly as it can. Your website and it’s pages are displayed in what the search engine determines to be the correct relevance order for any given key phrase inputted by a search engine user, based on the following factors:

• Person inputs a search query (search phrase or search word).
• The search engine quickly compares that search string to all it’s indexed sites, (this will be billions of sites).
• Search engine compares the URL (does the URL of the page match the person’s search query?)
• Search engine compares the Page Title (does any page within the site have a page title that suggests it matches the search query?)
• Search engine compares the Meta Descriptions (do any pages in the site have a description that matches the search query?)
• Search engine compares the Body Text (does the page contain the search string?)
• If the page is a match, the search engine compares the density combination of URL, Title, Description, Body Text against all other potential matches (millions or 100′s of 1000′s of sites).
• If the page is a match, the search engine compares the quantity and quality of inbound links against all other potential matches (10′s of 1000′s of sites).
• If the page is a match, the search engine compares how many real people have clicked through to the potentially matching sites, based on that search string? (1000′s of sites).

If several pages and / or websites have possible relevant matches, the search engine will also consider factors such as:

• How long has the website been indexed at the search engine? (older sites show up better).
• How long is the domain name registered for? (people that register domains for years at a time, are more likely to be serious and are in it for the long haul).
• Where is the website hosted? (this is especially important for geographic related searches).
• What is the average bounce rate of the site? (pages that nobody wants to look at for very long do worse, pages that people stay to look at perform better).

With that said (and I know that is a whole bunch of information to absorb), the fact that your site is ALREADY showing up on Page 2 at Google for as broad a search (and as valuable), as Fort Myers DJ is amazing. To put that into perspective, that means that Google considers YOUR website to be HIGHLY relevant for that term. So much so that it displays it in the Top 20 results of over 300,000 relevant matches. Imagine all the other web pages you might be competing against that have the words “Fort”, “Myers” and “DJ”.

As time goes by, you will be more an more impressed. Actually, based on my experience I’ll bet even right now I could find your website for a myriad of other RELEVANT key phrases. That is of course the main point… If you are searching for something, is YOUR page relevant for that term? Is it HIGHLY RELEVANT? Keep in mind that search engines ONLY KNOW TEXT. They can only understand words exactly as they are spelled, spaced, abbreviated, punctuated, etc. by the searcher at the end of a keyboard.

What I would suggest, is that if you open up a Google Site Analytics account, I can install the tracking code and you can then begin to see what Google thinks your site is relevant for and analyze your traffic.

If you find that your site is showing up for things it should not show up for, or not showing up when you think its should, there could be a very, very, good reason and we can then look at changing or adding to the site so that it does reflect what you want people to find it for.

My website client owns an HVAC company and his distributor handles air conditioners and furnaces, but the logic in this can be applied to ANY business quite effectively.

The territory manager for the distributor, has an extensive background and has become and expert salesman. With relation to the heating and air, he had actually started his own HVAC company that he grew from one guy and a van, to a huge multi-million per year company that was purchased by a major utility company in the Chicago area. He also ran that division for several years for that company.

He mentioned that when he first started his company, he spent $0 (zero dollars), on marketing or advertising and yet during the first three years his company grew exponentially. That was back in the hey-day of the “Yellow Pages”, so the Internet was not around and things were slightly different in that people were not so quick to find things they needed at that moment, like today. Unlike today’s business person he was not able to advertise his business in an affordable manner like we can today via the web, however the cost of phone book advertising was so staggering he knew he would have to market his company some other way. This is truly where his marketing lesson begins… Born of necessity and PROVEN to be effective if diligently employed as he did.

1. When you start a business, your identity must become that business. YOU are your business. Your business is you. There is no longer a separation between your job and your personal life, or your company and your career. It is virtually impossible to look at things as if you were an employee, or even a manager or executive of the company any longer… No – You must eat, breathe and sleep your industry. When people think of you, they must think of what you do.
2. Meeting new people and letting them know what you do, (i.e.; who you are / your business / your identity), is no longer an option. Being shy will not work. If you have a shell, you MUST break out of it. The reason for this, is that beyond any other form of advertising or marketing, relational business is the absolute best kind, most effective and best of all FREE. We’ve all heard someone refer someone they know or trust “… I know a guy who…”, but this takes that mentality a step further. The person you meet RIGHT NOW, (at the car wash, at the grocery store, at a picnic, at a party, at a ball game, at a wedding, etc), MIGHT be YOUR NEXT CUSTOMER!
3. Lastly, a business card and pen on hand at all times is imperative. The reason is simple and your business card needs to be too and here is why: In order to gain immediate trust, you have to make this person you just met feel immediately important and special. A very simple business card with your logo, your name, a bullet point or two about what you do, your website and an OFFICE number only is what you want.  WHY you ask? Simple: Because you’re going to physically write your CELL number on that card along with a quick 10% off or other freebie that makes that person feel like they are the only one in the world that you’d do that for. Your personal cell number? Wow – I’m special! It must be written in front of the potential client however. If the cell number, (or even email address), is already on the card when you hand it to them , it means nothing.

There was a whole lot more we learned from this seasoned expert that perhaps I will share very soon, so make sure that you are subscribed to my site update feed CLICK HERE and keep up to speed with site updates and valuable posts like this one.