SEO-friendly WordPress Templates
-
Hi,
I usually build WordPress sites and I was thinking about buying one of those ready-made Wordpress templates I found on a site that sells them to the public. FYI, the site at issue is: yootheme.com. I'd like to make sure that building sites using ready-made templates is NOT a bad thing. Could you please confirm?
Thank you.
-
Thank you, Dan!
All the best to you.
- Sal
-
Not bad at all! Unless there is a very similar site in your industry of a competitor and risk being accused of "copying".
-Dan
-
Hi Dan
Thank you for your detailed answer. Since you seem very prepared in SEO and SEO related to WordPress, please answer this quick question:
Let's pretend I want to build a new site and I like the WordPress template that you can find on this site:
Is it bad, as far as SEO is concerned, that I build my site using the same template I find on another site? Of course, the content and all the structure will be different; the only similar thing is the template.
Thank you very much.
-
Its not bad at all, I would just recommend using free themes available only within WordPress. Maybe someone else knows of a trusted source of free themes. And yes, you can use the free plugins just the same.
-Dan
-
How bad is it to use a free Wordpress theme and just get the plugins as needed for free as well?
-
Thanks for the responses John and 'walrus'
The only two sites I trust to buy themes from are;
You're right, pro perks discounts are here - and woothemes are included.
Then be sure you read my post on WordPress, and look under the "Themes" section for the best way to set up themes once installed. I've never seen a perfect one for SEO. They're all a little wonky.
Basically I say;
"DO use themes for design elements;
- Colors
- Fonts,
- Page layout
- Headers
- Footers
- Basic social media button stuff
Do NOT use themes for SEO stuff, such as
- Indexation
- Analytics codes
- Titles and descriptions
- RSS feeds
- Menu structure (ideally this is done with WordPress Custom Menus)
Let the Yost SEO plugin handle this stuff! Shut off / do not use these types of SEO functions within the themes."
Hope this helps!
-Dan
-
Agree with John, and you have a WooThemes 40% discount code in PRO Perks section!!!!
-
Hi there,
Yep you can find some excellent premium themes that are SEO friendly - WooThemes has some great ones. I'd also recommend installing the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast to ensure your titles and descriptions (as well as other elements) are properly optimised.
Hope that helps!
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
-
Lightboxes and SEO
Do lightboxes (AKA popup boxes when you click "learn more" type CTAs) have any negative effect on SEO? We are looking at revamping our sites to have more of a tiled approach, and a lightbox with summary content popping out with additional CTAs, directing to pages with more information or free trial pages. Is there any downside to this approach from an organic perspective? is there anything specific to keep in mind when creating these if not?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris81980 -
SEO for multiple languages [Arabic]
Hello all, I am currently managing a Marketplace that comes in two different languages: English & Arabic. The English website is, fortunately, doing quite well in terms of SEO performances but, not the Arabic one. The website has two kinds of content: Static content: controlled by me. It includes menu items, navigation, static pages etc which is properly translated among the two languages User-uploaded content: It includes ads/news posted by the user which may not be translated to Arabic if they chose not to do it. Now if somebody goes to the Arabic website and check a news item that doesn't have an Arabic translation, it will show the English title. I am assuming, serving content in a different language that is specified in the hreflang is a straight no, right?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozammilStorat0 -
Move Pages From One Domain To Another - The SEO Friendly Way
Hi All, One of our clients is a hair salon, that's currently dividing into two separate entities. For over 10 years the hair salon has been for both men and women, but that's now changing. The company is splitting into two, the original website contains pages for both men and women, but will soon only contain pages for women's hairdressing. The problem I have here is that there's probably around 20-30 service pages that get really great, targeted traffic on the men's side. There's a brand new domain for the men's hairdressing company and I'd like to know how you'd go about retaining the SEO value instead of just culling the pages. I'm thinking that we should maybe take the content from the original website, re-write it slightly to match the new brand, add it to the new website and then 301 the pages on the original website across to the new website. Has anyone had any experience in doing something like this before? and will the SEO value move across to the new domain? Also, I'm scared that the internal pages of the new domain may hold more authority than the home page and could cause problems. Any ideas on this would be great.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Townpages0 -
Top SEO Influencers 2015
Hello! I'm doing a little bit of research into key SEO players and thought I would get some opinions from the Moz community. Who's your go-to SEO guru? Who's up-and-coming in the world of SEO? Who are your favourite SEO influencers on Twitter? Cheers, Lewis
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Hosting and SEO
Hi all, Does the hosting of an website affect your SEO? We have a dynamic hosting currently, taking in account your knowledge and expertise, do you believe that this can affect SEO in any way? Thank you for your time. Good day. Monica
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monicapopa2 -
Django and SEO - Multicountry site - Is Django really SEO friendly?
Hi Everyone, Our client is requesting that we use Django for her project. I am really uneasy about this for several reasons. The client wants a multi-country site that is completely SEO friendly. I love Wordpress and if I had to do this project it would be a Wordpress site with WPML + Yoast plugins site. Questions Is Django SEO friendly and what "plugins" should I be using? Is there a multi-country plugin for Django that keeps or adds typical SEO features? Can you recommend any great articles? Any example sites would be GREATLY appreciated Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
SEO and former site
Hi, my client had a site built and hosted with Avvo but we now shut it down and are using a new server. My concern is that Avvo's internal link structure is causing SEO issues. For example, his site will list for "San Diego Criminal Defense Attorney", but is then removed for no reason. Far worse, while he had the AVVO site, it would never rank at all on Google. He's got great content, and no spammy links. This is the site: www.thesandiegocriminallawyer.com. Any thoughts of what I could do to disavow the AVVO pages that Google still has indexed? Does it matter? Or, is it simply a function of time? Thank you for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400