Your WordPress theme encapsulates your model and helps present a great person expertise. However folks typically neglect in regards to the search engine optimization side of it.
A WordPress theme that isn’t Website positioning-friendly (or worse, is bloated and sluggish) generally is a actual hindrance within the fiercely aggressive battle to land on high of the search engine result pages (SERPs).
And since greater rankings can drive extra natural visitors, leads, and income — that is one ingredient you actually need to get proper.
On this information, you’ll be taught what an Website positioning-friendly theme is, what it is best to take into account when deciding on one, and which 5 WordPress themes are finest for Website positioning.
The Fundamentals Of A Search-Pleasant WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme constructed with search engine marketing in thoughts helps web sites obtain higher rankings on SERPs.
Optimized WordPress themes are constructed to raise your Website positioning efforts and supply a terrific person expertise.
There are thousands of themes for WordPress customers to select from and 1000’s extra from third-party suppliers.
Most of those themes make your WordPress web site look beautiful, however a look beneath the hood might inform a unique story.
Poor coding, sluggish loading speeds, and an absence of plugin help could be hiding beneath a gorgeous facade. All of those flaws have an effect on search engine rankings.
When you may have important technical Website positioning points, Google received’t belief your web site as an trade authority, and also you’ll doubtless battle to succeed in the primary web page.
Then again, the perfect WordPress themes for Website positioning are each beautiful and optimized with the latest SEO techniques in thoughts. They’ll have:
- A responsive design.
- Clear code.
- Quick loading speeds.
And so they’ll allow you to optimize your WordPress web site effortlessly.
How To Select The Greatest WordPress Theme For Website positioning
So, how do you select an Website positioning-friendly WordPress theme?
It’s best to:
1. Decide A Responsive Theme
Cell units (excluding tablets) account for practically 60% of internet web page views worldwide.
A majority of smartphone customers lookup web sites, merchandise, and associated content material on their telephones. In spite of everything, whenever you hear a few cool product, you often don’t need to wait till you’re dwelling to test it out.
Website positioning-friendly WordPress themes have responsive layouts. A responsive WordPress web site will regulate to various display sizes throughout units with ease.
That manner, cellular customers aren’t greeted with a poorly adjusted ecommerce homepage once they click on via.
Google prefers mobile-friendly web sites and offers a tool the place you’ll be able to take a look at how your web site fares and performs on completely different units.
Screenshot Google Lighthouse, November 20242. Decide A Theme That Helps Most Plugins
WordPress plugins assist unlock your website’s true potential with extra options for each customers and web site homeowners.
WooCommerce, Jetpack, Akismet, and Google Analytics are fashionable plugins. You may also obtain the perfect SEO plugins to make optimization simpler.
The WordPress theme you decide ought to help fashionable plugins, particularly these you employ usually.
W3 Super Cache is an instance of a plugin that’s all the time energetic as a result of it maintains optimum web page pace. You don’t need it to fail since you switched themes.
Screenshot of W3 Whole Cache dashboard in WordPress CMS, November 20243. Decide A Theme With Clear Code
Your web site is made up of code. If code is poorly written, it may well have an effect on your web site’s safety, pace, and assets.
The identical applies to WordPress themes.
The perfect WordPress themes for Website positioning have clear code that makes them safer and dependable, with much less downtime.
Clear code and Website positioning go hand-in-hand. It is because clear code WordPress themes enhance web page load pace and Website positioning rating.
For instance, an optimized theme with clear code hastens updates of important Website positioning parts like meta, title, and header tags. This helps serps to:
- Discover these tags shortly.
- Crawl your web site simply.
To research your chosen WordPress theme and guarantee it has clear code that conforms to the usual WordPress coding conventions, you may make use of themecheck.info.
Add a theme to the web site utilizing a zipper file, and it’ll consider the theme for safety and code high quality.
Word that free WordPress themes don’t have the cleanest code and would possibly pose safety threats, particularly if the developer copies and alters code from a web-based supply.
4. Select A Theme That Works On A number of Browsers
Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Opera are frequent desktop and cellular browsers, however there are a number of extra. You don’t have to cater to all of them, however your theme ought to work throughout the preferred browsers.
An SEO-friendly WordPress theme caters to all fashionable browsers, making it handy for customers to learn and share your content material, no matter their browser alternative.
In addition to supporting completely different browsers, verify model compatibility. Not everybody makes use of the most recent browser model. Usually, updates are delayed primarily based on the machine or working system they’re utilizing.
Ideally, your web site ought to work seamlessly on the final 5 variations of the preferred Home windows, iOS, Android, and Linux browsers.
You should use instruments like PowerMapper to verify browser compatibility.
Screenshot of powermapper.com, November 2024Builders may manually run checks to find out compatibility.
5. Consider Web page Builder Plugins Fastidiously
A web page builder is a WordPress plugin that makes creating your web site’s format simpler via drag-and-drop options. You may shortly select from premade format choices and drag and drop the weather to put them the place you need.
Web page builders are a superb choice for straightforward web site creation, and most premium WordPress themes supply them.
In case you’re a digital advertising company working with a number of shoppers, you should utilize web page builders to arrange a number of web sites shortly.
However web page builders do have a couple of points.
Web page builders generate loads of code, and, as talked about earlier, bloated web sites are sluggish. That is unhealthy for Website positioning.
Extra importantly, whenever you create a web site utilizing a web page builder after which swap themes, the format – and consequently, the content material on it – would require a number of edits.
Your technical and on-page Website positioning may very well be affected, so be sure you account for SEO during a rebuild.
You’ll need to weigh the advantages of drag-and-drop web page builders towards the event assets required to repair any bloated code. In case you’re constructing web sites for shoppers you’ll need to expend assets to make sure that the websites carry out properly by fixing bloated code.
6. Select A Theme That Hundreds Shortly
Customers have very brief consideration spans. Many will depart if a web site takes various seconds to load. Web page pace is essential for Website positioning.
Enhancing web page pace has proven great outcomes. A examine from NitroPack in partnership with Google confirmed that in comparison with a 2-second web page load pace, 50% extra guests drop off when a web page hundreds in 3 seconds. And a 0.1 second enchancment led to an 8.4% improve in ecommerce conversions.
It’s tempting to go for a cheap theme with a laundry listing of options, like customized widgets or Google Fonts. However when you don’t really use these features, then they’re simply slowing your web site down.
It’s best to decide a quick, light-weight, and customizable WordPress theme with solely the options you want. Alternatively, you’ll be able to decide Website positioning-optimized themes that allow you to disable features you don’t use.
Use Google Search Console to learn the way quick your web site is and see if it’s slowed down after you’ve put in a theme.
7. Choose A Theme That’s Up to date Often
Common theme updates are essential for safety and bug fixes. You don’t desire a WordPress theme that’s up to date annually.
Builders use updates to offer the most recent safety patches, repair bugs, handle compatibility points with the most recent browsers and plugins, and clear up previous code.
Your Website positioning takes a success whenever you use an outdated theme. In case your theme isn’t appropriate with the most recent model of Google Chrome, it received’t load. You’ll lose out on the potential visitors generated by Chrome customers and provides your opponents an opportunity to leapfrog you.
Outdated themes may additionally have restricted performance on newer units and browsers.
8. Select A Theme With Good Scores
The best solution to determine the perfect WordPress themes for Website positioning is to verify person evaluations and rankings.
Don’t simply verify the evaluations and testimonials on the theme’s official web site – verify for rankings on third-party web sites and social media, too.
Customers may not depart Website positioning-focused evaluations, however they’ll typically listing issues like “sluggish loading pace” or “not mobile-friendly.” Evaluate these to your Website positioning guidelines to know how usable and well-built the theme is.
Evaluate frequent person issues with points that might have an effect on your web site usually, and keep away from these themes.
Whereas a small variety of speed-related complaints in a sea of constructive evaluations is OK, it is best to keep away from themes with principally poor evaluations.
Greatest WordPress Themes For Website positioning
- Divi.
- Astra.
- Kadence.
- Howdy by Elementor.
- GeneratePress.
In case you’re searching for the perfect WordPress theme for Website positioning, these are it. Let’s take a deeper look into every of them:
Divi
Screenshot of www.elegantthemes.com, November 2024Divi is an Website positioning-optimized WordPress theme with a variety of pre-built templates to go well with web sites throughout most niches, together with Website positioning companies and running a blog.
It helps you to customise nearly each side of your WordPress web site.
Created by Elegant Themes, Divi has built-in Website positioning optimization and is usually up to date, so that you by no means have to fret about compatibility.
Astra
Screenshot from wpastra.com, November 2024Astra is a strong WordPress theme with retina-ready premade web page templates to go well with completely different companies.
Its light-weight code and quick load speeds make it a superb choice for an Website positioning-friendly WordPress theme.
Astra helps fashionable WordPress plugins, together with Yoast Website positioning and All in One Website positioning. It additionally helps drag-and-drop web page builders resembling WPBakery.
Kadence
Screenshot from kadencewp.com, November 2024Kadence is a multi-purpose WordPress theme that allows you to create lightning-fast web sites in minutes. It has templates for manufacturers, influencers, small companies, ecommerce, and companies.
It additionally integrates with main plugins, together with Elementor, WooCommerce, and Beaver Builder.
Kadence is constructed with the perfect Website positioning practices for markup and schema and allows you to customise each ingredient of your web site – together with header kinds, colours, and typography – simply.
Howdy By Elementor
Screenshot of elementor.com November 2024Constructed with lean, non-intrusive code, Hello by Elementor is the right WordPress theme for Website positioning.
It’s ultra-lightweight, responsive, and claims to load web sites in 1 / 4 of a second. A sooner web site results in decrease bounce charges and happier customers.
Regardless of its give attention to pace and utilizing minimal assets, Howdy nonetheless affords lots of of templates, loads of customization choices, and common updates. It additionally has RTL help.
GeneratePress
Screenshot of generatepress.com, November 2024Whether or not you’re a freelancer, startup, or company, GeneratePress is a superb WordPress theme for Website positioning.
It’s quick, light-weight, and accessible. The free model of the theme is targeted on pace and efficiency, that are important Website positioning parts.
Upgrading to the Premium model offers you entry to GeneratePress’ block-style web site builder (so that you by no means must be taught a line of code), professionally designed starter web sites, and customization controls.
Closing Ideas: How To Decide The Greatest Website positioning-Optimized WordPress Theme
WordPress themes are an effective way to spruce up your web site, however they shouldn’t hinder your Website positioning efforts. Don’t let the overwhelming quantity of theme choices intimidate you into shortly selecting one and settling.
As a substitute, preserve your cool and decide an Website positioning-optimized WordPress theme after doing all your analysis.
In case you want any extra assist with WordPress Website positioning, try our comprehensive expert guide.
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Featured Picture: PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock
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