How to Pick an SEO Friendly WordPress Theme

There are thousands of WordPress themes to choose from, most of them designed for a specific type of website.

There are also themes designed to be used as a foundation for multiple types of website, from a formal corporate site to a personal blog. Having so many options doesn’t mean you can just pick any theme you like. There are still aspects to consider when choosing a WordPress theme, including whether the theme is SEO-friendly. Here are some of the things to look into when you want to pick an SEO-friendly WordPress theme for your next site.

How to Pick an SEO Friendly WordPress Theme

Royalty Free Photo

Responsive Design

Search engines now favor websites that work well on mobile devices, especially when the searches are coming from smartphones and tablets. Mobile-friendliness is one of the key features to look into if you want to keep your WordPress site SEO-friendly.

Fortunately, most of the themes available today either have a dedicated mobile site already built in or simply utilize a fluid, responsive design framework. This means you can use the theme to display content to mobile users without a problem.

Good Schema.org Markup

Another detail to look into when choosing a WordPress theme is the schema.org markup. You can usually run the demo version of the theme through the site’s tool and see whether the correct HTML tags – including meta tags and other SEO-related codes – are used properly.

A good theme must follow a set of guidelines provided for maximum SEO optimization. The right tags mean your site gets crawled much more efficiently and the search results will include all the necessary information.

Running a theme through schema.org test tools will also help you see if the theme is optimized enough in general. Wasted codes, bad scripts and other common errors can be discovered quickly. You can simply avoid themes that are not following the latest HTML5 and CSS3 guidelines.

SEO Plugin Compatibility

When reading the description of the theme, check to see if it is compatible with popular SEO plugins. It is even better if the SEO plugin of your choice is already implemented with the theme; this means the theme itself has been developed with SEO in mind.

Most of the popular SEO plugins, including Yoast SEO, are compatible with a wide range of WordPress themes. Some themes, however, choose to handle SEO-related tasks themselves, causing the used SEO plugins to cause conflicts and further problems.

Local SEO Optimization

Local SEO is the hottest trend in search engine optimization at the moment. If you’re working with the best SEO consultation agencies in Italy, like Eviblu, in Vicenza, or you have an agency based near you working around the clock on your site’s SEO campaigns, asking them to review the theme you want to use is also a good idea.

SEO experts will be able to tell you whether or not the theme offers suitable optimization options for local SEO. A dedicated field for location information on every page, for example, can help boost your site’s local SEO performance by a long way.

Cover these aspects, consult the local SEO agency you’re working with and pick a theme that suits your site and SEO goals best. You will be able to enjoy good SEO performance from the start with the right theme installed.

1 thought on “How to Pick an SEO Friendly WordPress Theme”

Leave a Comment