I am designing a website and I have absolutely zero knowledge about any of this stuff. I have been able to create the site but have realized that the templates available via Google look too amateurish. I found some websites that sell templates but I was wondering if I downloaded one of these templates how would I make it work? Any advice is appreciated.

Those templates are probably beyond your level of expertise since you state you are a beginner. Your're right, they are amateurish but they are easy and that's what Google is going for. Try something like coffeecup or Xara maybe. Unfortunately, if you want to do this yourself, you'll need to learn how to write html and understand it, otherwise pay someone to do it for you, could save you hours of frustration.

If you figured it out, please post here to let others know how you did it. ;)