Here’s a trap to be aware of when implementing an ‘SEO friendly’ CMS, Template or Theme on your website. Some CMS’s, Templates and Themes claim that their pages are SEO friendly – but then break the rules the very instant they are installed. 

As an example, I recently used a WordPress template that I thought handled a lot of the mundane SEO really well. Great, this will save me hours of work I thought! But after awhile of really negative SEO results and scratching my head, I began to smell a rat and investigated further.

As it turns out, the template I had installed was using a <H1> (main header) tag in the footer for the name of my site title. That would be fine, if it was the only <H1> tag on any given page. However, every page on the site also has a page title which was also assigned it’s own <H1> – and rightly so. And herein lies the problem – when any web page was opened it would compile the requested page along with the header, sidebar, footer etc (with it’s extra <H1> tag) and present it all as one page to the web browser.

Now, this meant I had two <H1> tags on the same page (as seen via the source code). One <H1> tag assigned correctly to the page title and another assigned incorrectly to the site title in the footer! This is against SEO 101 best practice as there should only ever be one <H1> tag on any given page. This simple oversight – firstly, by the WordPress template maker – and secondly by me for neglecting to pick it up (and just trusting that the template maker would ‘get it right’) – meant all the pages on my site were breaking the most basic of SEO rules! 

Well, I’m embarrassed to admit as an SEO specialist that this all went on undetected under the hood for quite some time – but I’m very happy to report that it’s all sorted now, and our SEO is safely back on track. 

It just goes to show how easily bad SEO can derail your website when the slightest little things are left undone. Fortunately, we can recover from these hiccups and a website can bounce back when you know the rules, apply them correctly and play nice! 

(Metaweb is a Brisbane web design and development company specialising in SEO and SEO copywriting)