How To Choose The Best WordPress Themes For SEO?¶

WordPress is the best CMS you will ever come across in the current scenario. You can consult expert developers, digital marketers, and business analysts, everyone will recommend you to use WordPress CMS. Even if you are a beginner, an intermediate, or an expert, you can use WordPress for developing your website. WordPress is versatile and you can use it for all types of business - blogging, travel, music, e-commerce, chemical, educational, etc. Since the last decade, WordPress has captured the entire CMS market. These days you will find that most of the websites are designed in WordPress. WordPress platform offers a lot of benefits to the developers and makes it easy and convenient to design the website. WordPress has numerous plugins and themes that make the development and designing process of the website simple.

Well, the problem is how to choose the right theme. When you are developing a website, it is usually to get an online presence for your business or start a blog. The aim is to get traffic for the website, generate leads, increase the number of readers, improve conversions sales, etc. All the things direct toward a single point. You need a theme that will support your Digital Marketing efforts. In short, you should get a WordPress theme that will give a boost to the SEO tactics you will integrate into the website.

But how will you choose the best theme? Here are some of the ways that you can follow to narrow down the search and get the best theme.

1. You Should Pick A WordPress Theme That Is Responsive:¶

If you get into the statistics, you will get to know that the website gets viewed from desktops and mobile devices. Almost 55% of the views are accounted for by mobile devices. This includes different types of smartphones but not tablets. So just think, when you are getting more than 50% views from mobile devices, you will need WordPress themes that are responsive. When the users are going through the website, they are looking for the home pages, about us sections, products, blogs, etc. They are looking at all these on the smartphone screen. If the website is not responsive, the visitors will not be able to visualize what is provided on the webpage. Sometimes the content gets cut off and sometimes the images. Would you like to get to such a website that you cannot access through your smartphone? Certainly No!

Just imagine, when you hear about the cool products or services and even blogs, will you wait till you get to see those on the desktop? Naah! You will immediately search for it through your phone.

When you are choosing the WordPress themes, you need to choose the themes that are SEO-friendly and have responsive layouts. Choosing the WordPress theme that is responsive will automatically adjust with the varying size of the screen.

You can test the responsiveness of the website through Google’s mobile-friendly test. This tool will help you to know whether your theme is responsive or not.

2. Ensure That The WordPress Theme You Choose Will Support The Plugins:¶

When you plan to design the website in WordPress, you are definitely going to use multiple plugins. With the help of plugins, you can easily unlock different features of the websites. The plugins are designed in a way that releases the true potential of the website. So while choosing a WordPress theme, you need to see that it will support different types of plugins. The most common plugins that you will always need for your website are WooCommerce, Jetpack, Akismet, and Google Analytics, YoastSEO, etc. These are used for optimizing the website for SEO. Therefore, the themes you choose should support the plugins regularly.

3. You Should Choose A Theme That Has Clean Code:¶

Every website is made up of codes - PHP, CSS, bootstrap, etc. You will find the code files on the WordPress theme section. It is available so that developers can easily customize it according to their preferences. When the code is easy to understand, it becomes simple for the developer to make the changes without errors. Moreover, if you choose a theme that has poor codes, it will affect the website severely. Poor coding of the theme will have an impact on the overall speed and security features of the website. When you choose a theme for a WordPress website, having clean code is essential. It will help to make your website secure and reliable. It will also help in reducing the downtime of the website. With the support of clean code, you can boost the page load and also enhance the SEO ranking.

Another benefit of a clean code is to enhance the use of the meta tags that include the titles, descriptions, and headers. When the themes have clean code, the search engine bots will easily reach the tags and crawl the website. But the thing is - how will you know whether the WordPress theme is using the clean code or not. A simple trick for this is to go for a Theme Check. The Theme Check will ensure whether the WordPress theme is choosing the right conventions or not.

All you have to do is install the preferred theme, install Theme Check and activate it. In the theme check plugin, you will get to see whether the theme is using clean code or not. Instead of Theme Check, you can use Theme Sniffer.

4. You Need To Choose A WordPress Theme That Will Be Compatible With All The Browsers:¶

People use different types of browsers to access websites. These browsers are Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari. There can be others but these are the most popular ones. You are not aware of what browser the visitor is using to access your website. It is better to choose a WordPress theme that is compatible with all the browsers. In simple words, the design layout and elements of the websites should not get misplaced when the browsers are changed. When you choose an SEO-Friendly WordPress theme, it will be easier to cater to different browsers without any major changes in the design layout. Apart from the browser compatibility, you need to know whether the website will look the same in all the versions or not. Every user will not be using the same browser and version. It is your responsibility to check whether your website theme will work similarly across all the versions and browsers.

Ideally, your website should work seamlessly on the last five versions of the most popular Windows, iOS, Android, and Linux browsers.

Now the thing is how will you check the compatibility of the theme? Well, you can use some tools that will help you to check the compatibility of the WordPress theme across different browsers. Some of these tools are PowerMapper and Google Developer Tool. You just have to add the website URL in the space provided, run the test, and know the results.

5. You Should Select A WordPress Theme With Integrated Page Builder Plugin:¶

When the themes are available with the page builder plugin, it will make it easier to create a website with a perfect layout and innumerable drag-drop features. Page builder plugin provides you with different layouts that are already designed for you. You just have to drag and drop the elements that you want. You can find most of the premium WordPress themes that are integrated with the Page Builder Plugin. Always ensure that you are choosing the theme that has in-built page builder features. In this way, you will not have to additionally add a Page Builder Plugin.

6. Check The Rating Of Theme:¶

Before You finalize a theme, you should check the rating and reviews provided to it by other users. It is one of the simplest ways to ensure whether the theme is for SEO purposes or not. You can check the reviews and ratings of the theme on the official website. Apart from that, you have the opportunity to check the reviews of the same theme on the reviews/rating portals. With this, you will get to know how other users found this theme. Whether they liked it or not, whether there are any issues with it or not.

Sometimes you can get the reviews and ratings of the website on social media links as well. It will help you to know whether the theme is mobile-friendly, compatible with a different browser, devices, etc. You can formulate an SEO checklist for the theme and check if all the points are satisfied or not. You can compare your chosen theme with that of other themes, it will let you know if there are any major issues that could affect the SEO of the website. You should focus on choosing the theme that has more positive review.

Best WordPress Theme for SEO¶

Divi:¶

Divi is considered one of the bestselling SEO-optimized WordPress themes. Divi theme has varied pre-built templates which makes it flexible for you to choose any template that you find suitable for your website. You can use this theme for niche websites, including SEO agencies and blogging. The best part of the theme is that you can customize it according to your preferences.

Divi Theme is created by Elegant Themes. They ensure that the theme is regularly updated, compatible across all the devices, and on all the browsers.

Astra¶

Astra is a widely used and powerful theme offered by WordPress. In the Astra theme, you will find the premade page templates that can suit every business. The theme has a lightweight code that helps in loading faster. It is best if you want to choose a theme that is SEO-Friendly. Astra is known for supporting different WordPress plugins of SEO. It includes YoastSEO and All-in-one-SEO.

Kadence¶

Kadence is also the most popular theme offered by WordPress. It is basically a multi-purpose WordPress theme where you can create a website that has the fastest load speed. You can use this theme for brands, influencers, small businesses, e-commerce, and agencies. In this theme, you will find the various plugins integrated in it. For instance, you can find Elementor, WooCommerce, and Beaver Builder already built-in the themes.

Kadence has a design and layout that follows the best SEO practices for markup and schema. You have the flexibility to customize the themes including the header styles, colors, and typography — easily.

Hello by Elementor¶

Hello By Elementor is a WordPress theme that is built with lean, non-intrusive code. It is perfect if you are considering SEO as the major factor. The theme is ultra-lightweight, responsive, and claims to load websites in a quarter of a second. With this theme, you will have a lower bounce rate and huge traffic. The theme is regularly updated, but you can customize it according to your preferences.

Summary¶

You can get more knowledge about the SEO and WordPress themes based on the SEO parameter by a digital marketing expert. The professional at CoderzColumn is one of the best digital marketers in India. You can check out the profile, qualifications and experience. For more updates on Digital Marketing -- Stay Tuned!