Recommended Wordpress themes for great SEO
-
Hi there, I'm trying to decide which theme to use. My main concern is if the theme has been built using a stable framework to ensure plugin compatibility for SEO. Also a general question, does the homepage need to have a certain amount of text content for SEO, or can other pages be SEO optimised with text / keyword? Some of the nicer themes seem to have a sparce text to image ratio on the homepage. I quite like this as an initial 'welcome' but worry this isn't great for SEO. Any suggested themes / advice will be welcome. Thanks
-
Hi,
Old thread, but wondering if you're able to generate an XML sitemap through Yoast with your Avada theme. There's an open thread on the Theme Fusion forum about the Yoast sitemap returning a 404 error. Just tried and I'm getting the same thing. Wondering if you came up with a workaround.
Thanks
-
Actually, I just finished a website design using Avada theme - strange coincidence! I just logged into the backend and the traffic lights are working fine. Have you used Yoast before? Avada works fine with Yoast - I just this minute confirmed that. PM me if you have difficulty but if you're entering your post, focus keyword, etc. then hitting Enter on the focus keyword, it should show. I just got a 'traffic light' green though, so it works.
-
Thanks everyone,
Appreciate the helpful comments and suggestions.
Matt, thanks for the reminder about comparison tools.
I'm new to Wordpress & after a some consideration opted for a Theme called 'AVADA' on Themeforest (http://themeforest.net/item/avada-responsive-multipurpose-theme/2833226). I think it looks great but I wasn't aware of the frameworks e.g. Genesis which Yoast mentions on his blog.
I've added Yoast SEO but the traffic lights don't all seem to work, e.g. content doesn't contain keywords, when the content clearly does. I thought this could be due to a conflict with AVADA not being on the Genesis et al frameworks, but I'm guessing here. There seems to be a general problem with Yoast not accurately displaying the results - anyone else find this and is there any suggestions?
I'm easing over to the Genesis framework to avoid issues. Bede you mention you don't get compatibility problems, ever used Themeforest or Themes outside of these frameworks?
Thanks again...
-
+1 for Yoast and the comments about it being more important than the theme. I've yet to encounter compatibility issues with the plugin, and we do a lot of development work in WordPress.
Personally, I think a decent paragraph of text is good to have on the homepage. That said, if you've got sub-pages that are more appropriate to your keywords, ranking them is most likely going to yield the best long-term results, even if it takes a bit longer.
-
I agree with Sara Thesis and Headway but I'd also recommend the Genesis Framework from Studiopress too.
As Matt stated the Yoast plugin is by far the best WordPress SEO plugin to use on your sites.
-
Thesis is a good theme with built in SEO advantages. Headway is great if you are looking for one with the most flexibility.
As Matt said, using Yoast and ensuring everything is set up important is just as important as picking a good theme (if not more)
-
I've had a number of clients ask me this lately and I keep going with the same advice. I recommend the Genesis framework (over Thesis for MANY reasons) and then I recommend making sure your layout is right. Title/logo H1, post titles and related headings H2, subheadings H3, etc.
Check any theme demo against the WC3 validator and Pingdom and run it on one of the many on-site analysis sites, such as http://www.woorank.com/
Once you've seen a demo you like that checks out on those 3 links, Wordpress is mainly a matter of Yoast's Wordpress SEO, a sitemap plugin if you don't like Yoasts. As far as the low text to image ratio, don't forget that most of the themes these days are customizable to let you add more text than you may see to the front page.
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
-
Metered paywall & seo
Hello In our site we are planning to add a metered paywall, a kind of soft paywall, in which users can see X pages on the site with no restriction, and then on the next page (X+1) they are blocked and need to register. How will this affect SEO? Should we cancel the block on search engine spiders? If the block is just JS popping up a full-screen popup, but the actual content is loaded, is that ok? or another method should be utilized? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | idosmaccount0 -
Lost SEO contract, new SEO wants us to do the following - can you explain why?
1. Make prokem.co.uk the master domain rather than prokem-corrosion-protection.com 2. Ensure each http URL is 301 redirected to its https counterpart via htaccess rather than in plesk 3. 301 redirect each www.prokem-corrosion-protection.com URL to its co.uk counterpart via htaccess. I can provide a list of pages to redirect as there are a number of duplicate pages that will need removing. It probably makes sense to implement these other changes at the same time: Remove all of the canonical tags currently on the site. Leverage browser caching by following Google’s page speed recommendations - https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/LeverageBrowserCaching Losslessly compress all of the website’s images. Combine and minify the website’s JavaScript
On-Page Optimization | | Simon_VO0 -
Theme create category page stuffed with Keyword
Hi All, Quick question and I think I already know the answer but wanted to get a second opinion. We have a ecom site running woo commerce and the theme is coded to insert the product category name under the product name on the category page. This has resulted in the category page being stuffed with my keyword 'sofa beds'. Am I right in thinking that in the eyes of Google this page will be penalised for over use of my keyword or does Google view category pages differently? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | Jon-S0 -
SEO optimization for popular long-tail content
I was wondering if you all have tips / best practices to SEO-optimize new pages created for popular long-tail queries, as well as recommendations to assure we don't have duplicate content issues.
On-Page Optimization | | CuriosityMedia0 -
Do Blog Comments On Your Site Help SEO?
There is a lot of debate as whether or not having comments on your blog is helpful from an SEO perspective. Proponents believe that more comments (1) creates more content, which search engines love, (2) creates more relevant keywords that can be searched, and (3) helps with "freshness" of the site/content leading to greater site authority. Others like Joost de Valk believe that comments can actually hurt SEO because keyword density cannot be controlled. He argues that his top SEO content are pages not posts for this very reason. What is your opinion?
On-Page Optimization | | marcperry0 -
Drupal SEO Question
Still trying to get a handle on all this...a lot to figure out! My site is Drupal and a few weeks ago I had my developer install an SEO Module so I could add a meta description and keywords for my pages. I have done that for the majority of the landing pages and the product pages as well. Earlier I posted a question about the use of adding the meta description and keywords to each product. The answers were mixed and pointed out the problem of the duplicate content which I am trying to figure out how to fix. BUT...when I went through my On Page Analysis grading for my campaigns one of the reasons my grades were low were because of the use of meta keywords tag. That the search engines ignore them and competitors can use them against you. So now I am thoroughly confused. I should optimize each product page with the meta description and keywords or i shouldn't? Keywords should show up in the title tag and the content....anywhere else? Help! Thanks much, Shara
On-Page Optimization | | Confections0 -
References and SEO?
Hi Everyone, I am really new to the SEO world (having come from paid search), so if this is a stupid question, I apologize. I noticed in Webmaster Tools that the top 25 keywords or so that Google thinks my site is about are keywords pulled from our references pages. Our site has a ton of authoritative content, most of which have corresponding reference pages with overlapping sources. Is this a problem? I am a little concerned that the keywords Google thinks are the most relevant to my site are really the least relevant. Any thoughts or suggestions? Thanks! nina
On-Page Optimization | | dirigodev0 -
SEO Plugins for WordPress
Hi, Mozzers- I'm re-evaluating my SEO WordPress Plugins. What are your favorites and why? Are there others that you avoid and why? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | lhc672