What’s the use of a beautiful, visually appealing feature-rich website if it isn’t optimized for search engines? In fact, top search engines giants like Google, Bing, Yahoo and AOL are less concerned about your website’s design and all the catchy images incorporated into it. They focus more on quality content, file names, keywords, alt tags etc. In essence, if you’re looking to get a steady stream of visitors time your site from Google and Bing, then you’ll need to ensure that your content is optimized for those top search engines.
However, while ensuring that your content is Search Engine Optimized, it’s still imperative that the underlying structure of your site is also SEO friendly. The good news is that if you already have an up and running WordPress site, a significant part of your SEO duties is already covered for you.
While this implies that WordPress users are starting out on the right path when it comes to building and designing an SEO friendly website, there’s still another vital thing to consider. In essence, no matter how visually appealing your website is crafted, without proper SEO it isn’t going to deliver the best performance. An SEO-friendly site has greater chances of appearing on the first page of search results and drive massive traffic to your site.
So the bottom line is all about choosing an SEO friendly WordPress theme for your site. But how can you go about this? Well, to make the job easier for you, we’re going to let you into some excellent tips on how to pick the best WordPress theme for SEO results and also to ensure your choice is not affecting your site rankings negatively.
Before we proceed to the tips on how to choose an SEO-friendly WordPress theme, it’s essential to highlight why WordPress is an excellent choice from an SEO perspective.
Firstly, a WordPress site is built with a clean code. WordPress websites are free from inefficient code which can sometimes occur with DIY websites as well as those built with a visual editor. Since a WordPress website is free from this, files sizes can be significantly reduced and this help speed up load time. You should know that search engines have more interest in fast loading sites.
Another reason why using WordPress is important from an SEO perspective is that it comes with plugins that can help optimize a site. The two most popular options include WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast and the All in One SEO pack. the good news is that the both of them are free and can be installed directly from your WordPress admin dashboard. It’s highly recommended to add one of them to your site.
Irrespective of all the benefits offered to you as a WordPress user, you can still miss the mark by choosing a WordPress theme that hasn’t been designed with search engines in mind. To be on the safer side, here are some tips on choosing an SEO-friendly WordPress theme:
With the extensive collection of themes available, knowing the ones that offer relevant features cab be a herculean task. The list below will give you some points to consider to make sure your theme gives you better SEO results.
Back in the days, homepage sliders were one of the biggest web design trends. While the backlash against them is still evident, they are still a common feature on the most popular premium WordPress themes available today.
Well, the thing is that these content sliders are not only bad for usability and conversions but are equally bad for SEO. One of the primary SEO issues that is likely to arise when using these sliders is the use of several H1 headings per page as opposed to using just one heading per page.
Moreover, these sliders can affect the page’s speed due to their drain on resources. This inadvertent increase in load time not only annoys visitors but it also doesn’t look good with the search engines which tend to use site speed as one of their primary criteria for ranking a website. Overall, be sure to avoid homepage sliders if you’re looking for a WordPress theme for better SEO.
Be sure that your selected WordPress theme is responsive. A responsive WordPress theme has a fluid layout that re-arranges and re-sizes page elements to provide better usability for visitors accessing your site and viewing your content on devices with smaller screens such as smartphones and tablets. Today it’s evident that a lot of people tend to surf the web on a mobile device making this feature a must-have for all theme designers.
Now, from an SEO standpoint, failure to ensure that your site is responsive or mobile friendly could have a negative impact on its ranking in Search Engines Results Page which can inadvertently result in less traffic to your website.
In fact, years back Google announced that sites that are not mobile-friendly may not occupy a good spot in their listing. So it’s highly recommended that you look for a WordPress theme that is responsive so your site can rank more in SERPs. This is not only good SEO practice but vital usability practice too.
While the previously mentioned SEO plugins work well most WordPress themes, there are others themes that go the extra mile to ensure maximum compatibility. An example of such themes is the StudioPress child themes as well as others built on the well-known Genesis Framework.
You should also know that this framework comes with its own SEO options. However, when the WordPress SEO plugin is installed, it literally hides all its settings and allows the WordPress SEO plugin to take over. It’s pretty obvious that this popular plugin has a high level of compatibility and it’s something worthy of your consideration when choosing a theme or framework.
Choosing a WordPress theme that utilizes schema.org markup is sure to be beneficial from an SEO point of view. It can also boost the number of visitors who click through to your site from the search engine results page. Adding schema.org markup to your theme buying checklist is sure to be a worthy investment.
By making use of this markup, publishers can add documentation in their pages that can assist search engines in having a better understanding of their content. This alone can lead to a more relevant classification in their listing.
Conclusion
It’s pretty clear that there’s never been a better time to take advantage of the numerous collection of WordPress themes available on the market. With a lot of options available from theme shops, developers, and marketplaces, we are more free time avail tons of choices to our heart’s content. However, this rapid increase in choice is not free from its consequences as it can lead to a choice paradox which in turn leads to making the wrong decisions.
Hopefully, the few tips we have mentioned has given you some criteria to use when browsing through the massive collection of the best WordPress themes available today and can make the job a whole lot easier when it comes to choosing an SEO-friendly WordPress theme.
Roy Miller is a visual artist and spends most of his time conceptualizing off-the-rack designs at popular crowdsourcing company, Designhill. In addition, he's a social media enthusiast, online market analyst and blogger. When not writing, he loves spending his time playing video games and watching sci-fi movies!