Ever question if WordPress themes influence SEO? You may not believe that the WordPress theme you want for your website and search engine optimization have a great deal to do with each other, but, the reality of the matter is that your website theme influences SEO.
Your WordPress theme has a massive effect on site speed and eventually how good your site executes in Google rankings.
At some moment in your website’s lifecycle, you will end up altering your WordPress theme so it’s vital to understand how a new WordPress theme can impact your ranking and the particular SEO components to keep your eye on.
WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme is basically the “skin” that suits over top of the CMS to describe the appearance and style of your website. In principle, the theme is the website design that individuals see and interact with.
The theme is a key image brand component that provides life to your website content and an important highlight that defines how user interface elements relate with website purposes.
There are infinite themes to select from to make your WordPress website distinctive. In fact, WordPress itself (at the time of writing) has over 8,800 free themes accessible.
Or, you can consider a financial strategy in your business for a premium theme from a marketplace like ThemeForest to choose one that suits your needs.
It’s essential to recognize two things here:
First, the theme you choose influences your SEO. Second, the theme can both negatively or positively effect where your site ranks in search engine ranks, as well as how your site operates from a user understanding viewpoint.
Themes Can Affect Your Bounce Rate
If your website design is not visually pleasing, your visitors are most likely to leave your website. If your website is inadequately organized and guests can’t find what they are looking for within the first 30 seconds, they will leave and look for a website that is simple to pass through and delivers clearer, faster answers to their request.
If your website traffic doesn’t remain on your page, it signals to Search Engines like Google that your website doesn’t present a positive experience or deliver value content. This strengthens your bounce rate, which damagingly influences your SEO.
WordPress Themes Impact Site Speed and Performance
The speed of your website is one more key ranking factor. Should your site have a lengthy loading speed, users will shut down that website and search for a website that offers a faster loading experience.
The final goal for your page speed should be 1-2 seconds, however, if your site loads under 3 seconds, it’ll still be quicker than about 50% of all websites.
Changing WordPress themes impact your SEO and the total loading time of a website, so it’s crucial to select one that loads as rapid as possible without compromising other crucial SEO aspects.
WordPress Themes Affect How Search Engines View Your Site
An additional reason why your WordPress theme is so important is that an inadequately developed theme can confuse search engines creating the achieving top rankings. The code behind the theme needs to be well constructed so a search engine can distinctly comprehend it.
The HTML tags should be placed correctly so that Google sees precisely what your website is about. When Google acknowledges that you are supplying value info and services to your guests, your SEO will instinctively develop.
Even after a theme change, there are various enhancements you can make to adjust your WordPress website. You can also execute various SEO best practices to preserve and enhance your website ranking.
Search Functionality
Your next WordPress theme may alter or eliminate the search functionality on your website. For example, if your existing website utilizes a search bar, guarantee your new theme establishes this function.
If you don’t have previously have a site search function and the new WordPress theme encourages it, combining it may have a helpful effect on your SEO rankings because it increases how navigable your WordPress website is – the simpler users can discover what they are looking for, the better.
You can make purpose of Site Search Tracking which helps you follow and understand what your web visitors are attracted in and maintain to enhance your website.
HTML for Search Engines
An essential part of an SEO-friendly theme is the HTML markup. Your latest theme must use proper HTML5 tags so the extremely vital components of your content are properly accentuated for Google.
For instance, if the title tags are near the end of your web page instead of at the top, Google won’t be happy (and your HTML won’t make sense). This can cause problems with the default managing of your site.
Professional web developers mostly fulfill with HTML coding value guidelines, but it’s vital to be informed and remain on top of all characteristics within new themes as some designers can cut corners or don’t follow SEO basics and it can create troubles for your SEO ranking.
Plugins
Try to prevent themes that involve multiple plugins to operate correctly as this slows down your site’s speed and can harm your execution.
The brief answer is excellent themes do not need plugins to perform ordinary functions – be informed, and choose sensibly!
Look for an SEO-Friendly Theme
Some of the initial steps to altering your WordPress theme is to discover a practical theme that is SEO-friendly. This will assist you retain your overall SEO results to rank above average in SERPs.
Guarantee that the new theme for your WordPress blog or website has a rapid loading speed and provides your guests with a wonderful experience.
The theme code should be well-coordinated, picture sizes must be improved, and your other traditional SEO settings should be in place.
Test First
Before you go live with your latest theme, make sure you test it out before you execute. Find out what works and exactly how it may affect SEO.
Check how user-friendly and well-formatted your site is by creating a staging site. Ensure your plugin usage is minimum as too many plugins (especially unnecessary ones your website doesn’t need) only reduces the functionality of the site and the sites pace.
Take into consideration additional elements, like loading time, structured data, content formatting, and user experience.
Test and optimize, and maintain testing until you are absolutely positive all elements is SEO-friendly.
Find a Web Designer for Custom WordPress Design and Theme Development
The simplest approach to guarantee that modifying themes doesn’t have a damaging impact on your website’s ranking and SEO optimization, is to hire a web designer to design a custom WordPress theme.
How does this benefit you?
You don’t need to spend hours looking across 10,000+ themes for your WordPress website. You also don’t need to explore for an SEO-friendly theme.
There is no need to worry about your SEO settings, ensuring optimal image size, page load speed. Hiring a web designer permits you to devote time concentrating on your company while the experts take care of all the important functionality.
With a custom WordPress design, you can also guarantee you get all the functionality you want to run your company straight out of the gate.
Conclusion
Understanding how WordPress themes affect your SEO rankings is crucial. Let’s get you great results from the start. One mistake and you could website drop in the search results and your website is harmfully impacted.
Want to learn more about WordPress Development? We can talk about WordPress for hours, give us a call or drop us an email.