Your WordPress Theme is KILLING Your SEO!
 

Recently I started cheating by using WordPress themes. It saved hours of development time, and the sites look great. But for some reason, as much as I did to optimize them, they never ranked well. Every SEO report I ran ranked them extremely high, but they never reached better than page 3 or 4 in SERPS. Other pages that looked like shit, and not nearly as streamlined as mine were ranking much better. I was baffled. So I started to cross test sites on search engines, and my conclusion was that the themes I used ABSOLUTELY CRUSHED my SEO implementations. And you could be having the same problem.

Especially if you're using Themeforest themes! - which are probably the most popular themes to use. They look great and they're super cheap @ $40 a pop. But are extremely bloated, and SUCK for SEO.

There are a number of reasons, and for the sake of a shorter post, I won't go into great detail. But if you're using WordPress themes, do your research. Don't use a theme just because it looks nice, make sure it "works". Otherwise you'll have a great looking site that no one will ever see, much less find.

Here are some great articles to read at your leisure. Most of us are developers and this is our living. I took the time to test and research this to help myself, but I wanted to post here to save everyone else the time and headaches. So if your WordPress site isn't ranking well, or it is losing ranking...look no further. :thumbsup

I hope this help!

Why I No Longer Use Themeforest

10 WordPress SEO Questions That Took Me 10 Years To Answer!

Best SEO Optimized WordPress Themes to Use

Nice post. Thanks

I found a great plugin that tests your theme for SEO compatibility. I ran it on a site that has been giving me SEO nightmares, and now I know why. :disgust

http://s13.postimg.org/bulnps5on/theme.jpg

Link to the plugin.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/template-seo-checker/

While themes are great in terms of making design easier, you can never fully trust them for SEO purposes.

You almost always have to dig in there and customize shit on your own.

So you are recommending a plugin that is has NOT been updated for over 2 years AND is untested with the current version of WP...Good luck with that! :1orglaugh

Love that report, first it says that you should put everything into css files, then it bashes you for using css files :)

Also for speed Google (the mobile thingy mainly) recommends to put the important stuff into the HTML (js/css)

Nice post. Thanks

Very good info. Thank you very much for the update

Thanks for the info, Rob. More of these threads. They're a good thing. :thumbsup

For SEO plug-ins I like Yoast the most.:2 cents:

themeforest themes are a nightmare. You said it all in the OP. Bloated as fuck, slow as fuck, etc. Every themeforest theme i have worked with has these same issues. Simple, free themes are a breath of fresh air.

Thanks for the report, I know many wordpress sites which ranks for the first page keywords...

I prefer to not use wordpress because they are not good for SEO !

Being a WordPress author does not mean they are automatically SEO experts too.
Some themes are good for SEO some are terrible - do your homework.

I've got a site with a cheap WP theme and it is ranked #2 on Google on a two words search with one of the word being "porn".

I hope it will help anybody expecting to purchase a cheap theme.

Some themes will have options to turn the built in SEO off, but if you keep it on and enable another SEO plugin on top of it, everything can get messed up..

Just look at the code and all options of themes that you use to be sure. I prefer a minimal theme to build on without extras, and avoid bloated themes like Suffusion unless you have time to go through every setting and know what you're doing.

Every theme is different, regardless of price for the most part.. :2 cents:

Plugin definitely has issues. Just tested it.

Did not recognize Bootstrap theme as Responsive Ready 0/100
No heading tags were found though there is plenty 0/100 perhaps it doesn't recognize css classes
Title 70/100 no explanation. FAQ link dead.
Get docked if I don't used CSS for print 0/100 what does that have to do with SEO?

Author blog has no mention of this plugin anymore.

Hmm, something to look into.

Read it again.

It says "use css but make the number of css files less insane".

:2 cents:

I'm not the author of that plugin, and I'm not saying the results are 100% accurate. But it's a good reference source. I ran the plugin, printed the results, then deleted the plugin. No one was harmed and it gave me a good reference to start, or determine if I wanted to do a wholesale design change for a site. It confirmed something I already knew; the theme was fucking up my SEO strategy.

If your only take-away from this thread is the fact that a plugin I found and posted is outdated and not supported, then I'm sorry. That wasn't my intention. I installed it and ran it without issues, so I really didn't look into the version compatibility.

Why would you use a WP plugin and not just test directly through Google and the other systems out there?

Thanks a lot Rob.

What about the themes that come out of the can when opening a fresh install?

Love the wording on that plug-in. You almost expect it to start swearing at you.

agreed :thumbsup

I'm working on that. I did a fresh install and using the standard default theme to build on. I'll let you know the results when I start recording them. :thumbsup

When you buy a theme it does not mean you bought it from a SEO expert.

It's just a website FIX and optimice it.

Onpage SEO....Not that hard.

Any thoughts on WordPress Themes & Website Templates by Gorilla Themes Plan on using the automotive theme for advertising my car lot and want to focus on getting it high on the SE's.

Some of my best ranking stuff I use NO SEO plugin :)

Themes by Automattic (company behind Wordpress) are generally really nice.

That's been my experience also.

How to control my SEO if I have a self-made template?

Normally..

Any recommendations?

you can fix all that shit yourself. took me 1 day and i just reuse the theme change css and logo bam! :2 cents::2 cents:

Agreed. All it takes is a little time to get the site working fine.

5000.00 for mainstream site using a Themeforest theme. Another 500 to 800 a month for SEO. Another 500 to 800 for social media and content marketing... Another 50 a month for hosting and maintenance...

and another one...

Great advice! Lots of template designers can make a beautiful theme, but not all of them can set it up to rank well.

Having webmaster skills is haram

thx for sharing

Is that what you do? Buy mainstream sites for $5000 and then pay monthly marketing fees?

This is scary :(

Your business model? :)

Yes.. that is the business model currently... I average about two to three sites a month.

How do you choose what site to buy for $5000?

How can you be sure of the income and can't you just make one yourself after you have had a few already?

I don't buy sites...My company charges for web design and development services.

LOL ... I should have read your sig.


That's good monthly income charging $1000-$1600/month for SEO and Social Media promo.

BTW, can you recommend any good wordpress themes that are visually appealing but not bloated and load lightening quick?

Wordpress is an awesome CMS with a ton of great plugins. We recommend using wordpress for our clients and then do a full SEO audit before making the site live.

There are plugins for SEO (someone mentioned yoast) but if you're serious about SEO you really need to know/research what the best ways to optimize are. Yoast, for example, doesn't set meta keywords on your homepage. The meta keywords may play less of a role with Google today but they still contribute to your keyword density and the other meta crawler search engines depend on them. I've never understood firms that only optimize for Google. They're definitely king but a couple of small additions will help in the other engines as well.

Wordpress is a great CMS, you still need great optimization to audit it once it's got the themes and plugins setup to ensure you're maximizing your search presence :pimp

Any recommendations on something like this that works on any template?