Is My WordPress Theme Hurting My SEO?

Is My WordPress Theme Hurting My SEO?

A properly configured and designed WordPress site can be awesome for SEO. As a matter of fact, WordPress is one of the leading CMS options for both experienced and inexperienced website developers and administrators because it’s so user-friendly and SEO-ready. It has virtually all you would need your website to possess for SEO purposes and integrates well with any external system you might want to use for your search engine optimization efforts. However, there is a hidden problem that often surfaces for most WordPress users. Usually, this red flag is something you’ll run into during the auditing of a new website and it’s an issue that must be fixed in order for you to experience the results of your SEO efforts:

Not All WordPress Themes are Supportive to Your SEO

One of the great selling points of the WordPress platform is the enormous variety of themes ready for you to pick from. These templates or skins allow DIY owners of businesses and new Web designers to develop professional, beautiful looking sites in just a few hours. Unfortunately, some of these themes do not lend themselves to acceptable SEO techniques. In fact, even some themes tagged as “SEO friendly” are actually below the standard for acceptable optimization.

In a lot of cases the label “SEO friendly ” is the only place that SEO was accounted for at all. It might put a damper on some of the themes you love visually, but the hard truth is that a lot of the WordPress themes were made with no comprehension of SEO. Not only are these themes not properly structured to increase SEO rankings, but often they hurt your site’s performance as well.

You’ll find that when an in-depth audit is done on the existing web presence of a WordPress site, the theme is usually found to be blamed for a lot of the challenges of the site’s SEO performativity. Though the mistakes that these themes create can vary so much that it’s difficult to generalize, here are two main problems that are quite popular:

Poor Use of Headline Tags

One of the standard rules for the optimization of each page is the inclusion of unique and single heading. This shows what every page is about and it aids search engines to understand the content of a page. It also has a role to play in the ranking of a page on a search engine for specific keywords – if you put a desired keyword in the heading tag, you’re more likely to rank for that term.

Most good themes for WordPress take the post or title of a page and add the tags automatically to it. Others provide the user the extra control of assigning the tags themselves. This works either way, though most savvy SEO-ers prefer to control the H1 themselves. Bad themes for SEO, however, don’t allow for any input to the tag at all – automatic or manual.

Some assign the tag to the logo of the website, which renders the tag completely useless in relation to the content and any potential keywords. These type of themes do not allow for every page to have a unique tag as well. Pyne themes utilize post and page titles coded in a way that causes them to use the header automatically. This makes the large bulk of the site to be without proper, keyworded headings and this is a major NO if you required search engine traction. Really, who DOESN’T want to rank their site for Google users?

It is vital to note: The only method that these issues can be fixed is by changing the PHP code at the back-end, so if you nice your theme cannot handle tags well, you’d need to consult a professional developer which could cost you extra money, time, and energy. Choosing a better and more SEO-savvy theme could solve this issue.

Loading Time

Some years back, it was announced by Google that the loading speed of a website is among the many factors utilized to determine rankings on the search engines. In clearer terms, the slower your website loads, the more improbable it would be to rank highly on any Google search result.

Some of the themes for WordPress are a making use of codes which are inefficient and get browsers bogged down. The acceptable time is lower than 3 seconds and if your page takes longer to load, many users will leave. This poor speed can easily frustrate users and cause your SEO ranking to plummet. Optimizing the speed of your website and making sure that it loads as quickly as possible is essential if you plan to compete in search results. A website that loads fast will also enhance the experience of your visitors. This means that there’s a greater possibility of them converting and purchasing your services or products and actually carrying out transactions with your brand. Not only are these conversions the end-all purpose for many websites, but Google also looks at this data and will hold back your rankings even further when your bounce rate is too high.

When a WordPress theme is very slow the only probable solution is the replacement of that theme with an efficient one. Utilize a new lightweight theme or – for a lot more money – get a developer to aid you to pare down the slow one. You’ll have to decide whether your current look and feel is worth the loss.

 

Original Article Here

The Ultimate Guide to HTTPS and SSL for WordPress

The Ultimate Guide to HTTPS and SSL for WordPress

Posted by B.J. Keeton on Oct 16, 2018 05:00 am
You have probably noticed over the past few years that many of your favorite websites have moved from HTTP addresses to HTTPS. The added letter, while adding very little time and effort to type, adds immense value and security to those websites. Not only will having a WordPress HTTPS site make your business more trustworthy to […]

How to Get Your WordPress Website Verified on Pinterest

How to Get Your WordPress Website Verified on Pinterest

Posted by John Hughes on Sep 18, 2018 05:00 am

A lot of people favor platforms such as Instagram over Pinterest, although the latter can be a fantastic source of traffic – particularly for image-heavy sites. However, without a verified website, people can share your content without others knowing where it came from. If you verify your WordPress website on Pinterest, you may get more.

A lot of people favor platforms such as Instagram over Pinterest, although the latter can be a fantastic source of traffic – particularly for image-heavy sites. However, without a verified website, people can share your content without others knowing where it came from.

If you verify your WordPress website on Pinterest, you may get more traffic back from the platform. In this article, we’ll talk about why that is, then teach you two methods to verify your website. Let’s get to work!

Why You Should Verify Your WordPress Website on Pinterest

Original Article Here

Wix vs. WordPress? The Data Doesn’t Lie

Httparchive published the First Contentful Paint scores of top content management systems. It showed Wix dead last behind every CMS in the analysis for the fastest scores.

However, Wix pulled ahead of  WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal in other areas.

The data reveals actionable trends.

First contentful paint (FCP) is a user experience metric. It measures how fast a webpage shows usable content to site visitors.

Wix performed last out of the four content management systems under consideration.

In the full analysis of the performance of 25 content management systems, including Weebly, TYpo3 and others, Wix performed the worst.

What the graph shows is that:

  • Only 7.99 percent of the Wix sites measured were able to earn a Fast ranking.
  • 30.94 percent the WordPress sites measured achieved a Fast ranking.

That’s a huge performance difference between Wix and WordPress – 7.99 percent versus 30.94 percent.

Fastest Mobile FCP Scores

Wix performance scores actually improved when tested in the mobile environment.

Of all the Wix sites measured, 9.01 percent were able to achieve a ranking of Fast on mobile.

Nevertheless, Wix is still ranked last out of a total of 290 content management systems analyzed for achieving a score of Fast.

The number of WordPress sites ranked as Fast on mobile was 19.12 percent.

Wix Beats WordPress, Joomla, Drupal

Among the top content management systems, Wix is a winner in the area of First Contentful Paint that arguably matters the most.
There were three rankings for the speed at which First Contentful Paint was achieved: Fast, Average, and Slow.
Every content management system analyzed had more sites ranking as Average than Fast or Slow.

Original Article Here

Google dedicates engineering team to accelerate development of WordPress ecosystem

The need for speed: Google dedicates engineering team to accelerate development of WordPress ecosystem

Google’s partnership with WordPress aims to jump-start the platform’s support of the latest web technologies — particularly those involving performance & mobile experience. And they’re hiring WordPress experts.

Google has invested heavily in shaping the architecture of the web, working with developers, the open-source community and the SEO community to ensure adoption of technologies and practicesas part of its mission “to contribute to the prevalence of a healthy, flourishing, and vibrant web.”

Most recently, Google has partnered with open-source content management system (CMS) WordPress, arguably the largest, with market share nearing 59 percent and an estimated 1/3 of all web content published through the platform — including our three publications.

Speed, mobile-first and WordPress

Google has been focusing on speed, speed, and then also speed, for eight years now. It formally announced a Speed Update that will roll out in July 2018, using mobile page speed as a ranking factor in mobile search results.

It has also announced that the mobile-first index has begun rolling out — meaning that Google has started indexing and using for ranking in SERPs, the mobile version of a website. The emphasis on mobile and speed is driven by data that demonstrates most searches are now performed on mobile devices. Slow, poorly performing sites result in a bad user experience and negatively impact site engagement, as well as conversions.

With the goal of assisting site owners in improving page load time for mobile visitors, Google launched the AMP project in 2015. Google has been aggressive in pushing adoption via the open-source community, working with platform plugin developers as well as providing large brand sites with developer resources to implement the technology. Even so, adoption of this mobile-friendly framework across the web has been slow: It’s estimated that fewer than .1 percent of all websites are using the markup language.

With its 59 percent CMS market share equating to 29 percent of all websites running WordPress, a partnership with the platform makes perfect sense for Google to advance its goals of a stronger, better, faster web.

Google participated this past December at WordCamp US, the largest of the WordPress developer events that happen around the country. From an article by Alberto Medina, Developer Advocate in the Content Ecosystems Team at Google: “Our goal was to engage with the WordPress community and start a discussion around the performance of the WordPress ecosystem.” At the event, Google shared data in a presentation that demonstrates a fundamental problem of the CMS: its poor performance on measures of speed and page load as benchmarked against non-WordPress-based sites.

To anyone who has developed or worked on WordPress-based websites, it’s no secret that the open-source platform has struggled throughout the years with code bloat, security and performance challenges. The past couple of years have seen significant improvements in the core code, but as the data below demonstrate, WordPress pages still lag behind non-WordPress webpages on most performance indicators.

8 Myths About WordPress You Can’t Afford to Ignore

8 Myths About WordPress You Can’t Afford to Ignore

You have probably heard about WordPress, but you may not have gotten all of the facts.

WordPress is the most popular CMS platform in the world, used on over 25% of websites on the Internet. It is considered to be the best among its competition.

Today, we are going to discuss some myths about WordPress which you can’t afford to ignore. Before choosing to use WordPress, like so many millions of other users have, it’s best to get the full story.

At the end of this post, you will feel completely free to start your business or personal blogs on WordPress and reap its benefits.

So, let’s get started and PROVE those myths about WordPress wrong!

1. WordPress Can Be Only Used For Blogging

Personally, this is the biggest myth about WordPress that I have heard. I really don’t know why people still believe that WordPress can only be used for blogging.

Thousands of successful corporate and eCommerce websites today are on WordPress. Yes, WordPress was born as a CMS for blogging, but it evolved to become the most powerful CMS in the world. It is now being used by top authorities in all types of businesses.

While most of WordPress plugins are used for customization, different post types, and other features, WordPress can be used for business websites, too.

WordPress can be used to build any kind of website. Whether you want to build an eCommerce store, a corporate website, or an online portfolio, WordPress is the best option.

Below are some big name sites built on WordPress:

  • TechCrunch
  • BBC America
  • Sony Music
  • Beyonce
  • The New Yorker
  • Bata
  • Xerox
  • Ford Social

Now, what other proof do you need?

2. WordPress is not secure

banner1

If WordPress is not secure, which CMS is 100% secure?

Unfortunately, small businesses are still very reluctant to set up their websites on WordPress because they feel it is not secured. This isn’t completely true.

Here, the problem of security doesn’t lie solely with WordPress. WordPress tries to make its site as secure as possible, but due to its popularity, it has become more prone to hackers.

It’s not just WordPress. This is a problem that affects other popular CMS as well. When you build a site on any CMS, it’s completely your responsibility to keep it secured by installing essential security plugins or get a third party service.

There are many other factors that affect the security of a site; even your web host is also a factor.

That’s why you should always go for a reliable web host. I always recommend WPEngine or CloudWays to people, because they use the latest technology to prevent your site from being hacked.

WordPress keeps rolling out frequent updates to make it sites secured, and it gets bigger and better by the day. If you’re a WordPress user, you will already know this.

Now, how you can you secure your WordPress website further?

If you’re just starting out, I would recommend you to install the following free security plugins:

  1. WordFence
  2. BulletProof
  3. iThemesSecurity

When the traffic of your WordPress site increases, you can move to a reputable third party service.

In addition to this, you need to backup your website regularly. Don’t rely solely on your web host to do the backups for you. You can install UpDraft Plus to take regular backups for your sites.

3. WordPress is Free

Aha… FREE. A word loved by all, isn’t it?

I also love the word ‘FREE’, but you should know what’s actually free, and what isn’t.

Yes, WordPress is free, and it isn’t.

WordPress.com is free, but WordPress.org is not.

When you build a website on WordPress.com, it becomes free since it is hosted on the WordPress servers. Your site runs on a subdomain of WordPress with limited features to work with.

And when you build a website on WordPress.org, which is a self-hosted WordPress blog, you’re hosting your website on a third party server instead of WordPress. When you host on WordPress.org, the complete responsibility of maintaining your website is now in your hands and not WordPress. You must ensure you do regular backups, fix every bug, and install essential plugins when necessary.

When you need to customize your dream website, but eCommerce plugins are not available in the WordPress directory, you may need to purchase your plugins from a premium WordPress club.WordPress is the most popular CMS platform in the world. Here are some popular WordPress myths which you can’t afford to ignore.

Not all WordPress themes in the WordPress directory are reliable. To be on the safe side, you need to go for a premium WordPress theme to build your website.

So what’s the real cost of running a WordPress website?

Domain:       $10/yr

Hosting:        $50/yr

Theme and Plugins: $300/yr (Optional)

Total: $360/yr

4. WordPress is complicated and not easy to Customise

WordPress, when compared to other CMS, is the easiest to customize. In the past, I tried to build an ecommerce store on Magento and it was really difficult to customize. But building that same eCommerce store on WordPress was really easy.

I also tried to build a forum on Pligg CMS and being a non-techie, I ended up shutting it down because it was a really difficult for me. But building a membership forum on WordPress was child’s play.

To do any customization in WordPress or make any changes, you don’t need to edit a single line of code. There are tons of WordPress plugins available to help you out with any additional functionality.

If you’re unable to find a suitable plugin, you can hire someone from sites like Elance, WPMatic, Freelancer, Fiverr, etc.

5. WordPress is not good for eCommerce websites

banner2

Before building my own eCommerce store on WordPress, I also had my doubts. When I started my research, I visited sites like Quora. In the comment section, when I didn’t find anyone recommending WordPress for an eCommerce site, I was shocked.

There were two reasons given for not using WordPress for eCommerce:

  1. WordPress is not secure.
  2. WordPress can’t handle a large number of products.

I’ve already discussed WordPress’ security issues and how to fix them.

Saying that WordPress can’t handle a large number of products is another big myth.

WooCommerce is a great free eCommerce plugin for WordPress which can easily handle about 2,000 products. Except, if you’re launching a series eCommerce site, 2,000 is still a relatively small number of products.

Case in point, here are some of the top eCommerce websites built on WordPress:

  • http://halliefriedman.com/shop/
  • https://citysurfshop.co.uk/
  • http://www.chopperskate.com/
  • http://fernwoodcoffee.com/

6. WordPress websites load very slow

As I said earlier, if you are building a self-hosted WordPress blog, maintaining it is completely your responsibility.

Some WordPress sites may load in milliseconds, while some WordPress sites may take much longer to load.

Improving the speed of your site involves technical approach and analysis. Optimizing your images, caching, etc., are some ways to increase the speed.

But if you’re just starting up, I would recommend you to go for a good quality host like WP Engine, as recommended above.

7. Bugs appear in WordPress

Bugs usually arise due to our carelessness or mistakes. Bugs may arise from installing faulty plugins, some free themes, or when codes in a theme are messed up.

If you find it difficult to fix a bug, you can get WordPress support.

The WordPress community is also available. Its forum has experienced developers and designers who are willing to help you.

If in the end, you don’t get a solution to fix the bug, you can hire a freelancer who would fix it at a reasonable cost.

8. WordPress sites are not responsive

It is completely wrong to say that WordPress sites are not responsive because it depends solely on the theme you are using. You can’t use a non-responsive WordPress theme and expect it to be responsive. WordPress is actually very responsive as far as CMS go.

Please feel free to share your views on the above myths about WordPress. Let’s discuss them in the comments!

P.S. For those of you who have never used WordPress, I am offering a Freemium Theme for you to test so you could know what it is to expect from the WordPress Dashboard. The Theme is Coup Premium WordPress Theme. You can test it for one week.