Should WordPress themes be hard coded for better SEO?
-
In the interests of making my site faster I have recently come across the suggestion of removing unwanted PHP from my WooThemes WordPress theme. The suggestion is to hard code the choices I have made in the WordPress template to reduce on database calls.
Has anyone actually done this to their WordPress theme before and seen any measurable results?
-
Hey Ben,
Thanks. Am using a Wootheme called Simplicity. I have just left the minify box unchecked in W3 Total Cache since this was causing the problem. The site speed seems to be ok though even with this disabled.
-
Hi Sofia,
Not a problem, glad I can offer my assistance.
What slider are you using? I might be able to solve that problem for you, I know I had to fiddle with the code of my theme a little to make total cache behave but they were minor changes.
-
Ben, thanks for the useful follow up. I will certainly check out spitecow. Have found W3 total cache speeds up my site quite a bit, only problem is its breaks the image slider for some reason so have some looking into to do.
-
To help measure results one way or another you could use http://loads.in to test how long it takes your page to load from different geographical locations. I think Chrome's developer tools has a similar thing as well.
If you're trying to speed up your site then I would recommend grouping images (icons etc) into an image sprite and use css background positioning to show the respective image. I found that implementing this into a theme resulted in great speed increases as you make a single HTTP request for a single image, as opposed to loading up several images on page load.
If you're not savvy enough with css image sprites I would recommend using www.spritecow.com to produce the correct background-positions for the images so you can add them into your css file.
-
I have used WooThemes in the past and personally I think some of their code and their modifications are a bit overkill, sure it makes things easier for users but its not really following the way WordPress does things (Creating folders in WP-Content to put file uploads from their admin panel for example).
In general terms I think its better to hard code references to public resources (CSS Links, JavaScript links etc in header.php). For better speed increases I would suggest having links to JQuery or MooTools in header.php and any other JavaScript files should be put in footer.php just above the closing body tag.
The benefit to this is that the core JavaScript framework (JQuery or MooTools) is loaded first, the page can then render on the screen whilst the last few JS files are downloaded and put to use.
It maty be worth using WP SuperCache or similar to cache your pages and allow browser gzip compression for quicker page loading.
I think WordPress in general makes too many database calls anyway, so where possible I think its acceptable to hard code links.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Handling Pages with query codes
In Moz my client's site is getting loads of error messages for no follow tags on pages. This is down to the query codes on the E-commerce site so the URLs can look like this https://www.lovebombcushions.co.uk/?bskt=31d49bd1-c21a-4efa-a9d6-08322bf195af Clearly I just want the URL before the ? to be crawled but what can I do in the site to ensure that these errors for nofollow are removed? Is there something I should do in the site to fix this? In the back of my mind I'm thinking rel-conanical tag but I'm not sure. Can you help please?
Technical SEO | | Marketing_Optimist1 -
Acquired domains for SEO
hi there, For one of our insurance websites we acquired a domain, this domain is going to be redirected to our domain. After some research we discovered the domain we've bought also includes other domains which 301 redirect to specific 'insurance products'. These domains are also included in the deal. But what is the best technical solution for redirecting these specific redirected product domains? They already redirect to the product pages of the domain we've bought, so after redirect this domain, the sub (product) redirected domains will also link to us. It would be like this: A) www.sub-carinsurancesite.nl (301) -> www.domain-we-bought.com/car-insurance -> www.ourdomain.com/car-insurance
Technical SEO | | remkoallertz
B) www.sub-carinsurancesite.nl (301) -> www.ourdomain.com/car-insurance & www.domain-we-bought.com/car-insurance -> www.ourdomain.com/car-insurance etc0 -
seo moz crawl diagnosis
Hi seomozzers, We are creating a brand new website for a client and I would like to run an seo moz crawl to fix what has been done wrong. So my question is it ok to run an SEO moz crawl with a dev URL? Are final URLs and dev URLs will give me the same results or not? Basically, Should I wait for getting the final URL or is it ok to run a crawl under a dev URL such as www.dev2.example.com or http://183.2564.2864? Thank you 🙂
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
What is the best permalink structure for WordPress?
Hi, Does anyone have practical knowledge of the best permalink structure to use in WordPress? I have seen recommendations for just the post name or category and post name and then some who suggest having 3 digits as part of the structure for pick up in Google news. I am left a little confused - does anyone have practical experience of the best structure please?
Technical SEO | | Wallander0 -
302 Redirects & WordPress
Hi Mozzers- We started a WordPress blog for one of my clients to help improve the domain authority, increase visits, etc. a few months ago. I ran a crawl report a few days ago and noticed that the /trackback/ pages are getting redirected to the appropriate page using a 302 redirect not a 301 redirect. I've search through the forum looking for other similar questions and found one. The answer suggested that I use the TAC plugin and check for any malicious code. I did this and found nothing. Another response suggested using the Redirection plugin. I haven't tried this yet. Has anyone encountered this and if so, how did you deal with it. Thank you! LHC
Technical SEO | | lhc670 -
Site forwarding - seo friendly or not?
Recently i decided to change my domain name - and although i have written several useful and working .htacess files with 301 redirects, this one became more complicated by the fact that I went through TWO domain name changes, before settling on the second one. Having seen some issues with the browser not being able to interpret correctly the .htaccess file, i temporarily suspended the .htaccess file, and opted instead for site forwarding. I don't know the mechanics behind site forwarding, or whether it is seo friendly or just a method for ip addressing, a sort of pseudo domain name server record change.
Technical SEO | | highersourcesites
I let it lie for a few weeks, until the dust settled, and yesterday put back the basic .htaccess file, with a 301 redirect, which directs the original domain name to be forwarded to the new one ( also it has a conditional in place to solve canonical issues). It works fine. But right now i am not seeing the link juice, the domain age, the domain page rank that it has. It has gone to zero, when it used to be three, sometimes four. I also made the change of address using webmaster tools. How long ( forever?) will it take to see my old page rank come back, even if it loses 10% from the change? And does site forwarding help or hinder seo ranking?0 -
Javascript bad for SEO?
If we utilize javascript to pull information from a database to display on a site, is that bad for SEO? Can search engines still see the data?
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Domain Forwarding and SEO
I have looked around and only saw older and contradicting responses to this question but what effect does having a domain with VALUABLE-KEYWORD.com forward to MAINSITE.com or COMMON-MISSPELLING.com forward to MAINSITE.com in terms of SEO and is it considered spammy or looked down upon
Technical SEO | | treytt0