Does my website theme make a difference to SEO

8 years ago

The answer to the question in the title is yes, of course.

The answer to the question in the post is no. There's a ton of sites that use the same WordPress themes.

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HCFGrizzly

8 years ago

Originally Posted by nettiapina

The answer to the question in the title is yes, of course.

The answer to the question in the post is no. There's a ton of sites that use the same WordPress themes.

=)))

It`s like he`s trying to trick us in reading his thread.

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mathompson

8 years ago

Originally Posted by mikeandtomphoto

Hi, I have recently built a new website theme, I was wondering if there would be any implications to using the same theme across multiple sites? I would change the content, images etc

it is good if your theme is friendly for seo
you do not use the same hosting and build backlinks around

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fastreplies 8 years ago
Originally Posted by mathompson

it is good if your theme is friendly for seo
you do not use the same hosting and build backlinks around

You do realize that for algo your site is plain text?
Meaning:
- it doesn't care what colors you're using
- amount and size of images
- if you're using tables or divisions and so on
So, how look or layout or hosting or backlinks can effect SEO?

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- nettiapina 8 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by fastreplies
  
  You do realize that for algo your site is plain text?
  
  You're not far off, but Google nowadays also takes a graphical snapshot of the site. And images in HTML are there even if you're only looking at the source.
  
  Layout has multiple ways to affect SEO. Backlinks obviously affect SEO. Hosting can have a negative impact too.
  
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  Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
  Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.
  
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LucidWebMarketing

8 years ago

Echoing fastreplies, search engines read your page's text and indexes it. That's because people search using keywords, text.

Why would they care what your site looks like (it can't "see", it's an algorithm, much less have an opinion if it's "pretty" which is subjective anyway) or what colors are used? Why would it care who your web host is? These sort of things have been spread for years but nobody gives a reason why nor any sort of tangible proof.

What does that mean "an SEO friendly theme"? That doesn't make sense to me so explain what you mean.

Search engines look at your text. There is no reason to affect your rankings based on looks, colors, images, themes, a certain way of coding or any other thing other than text.

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Whintaked40

8 years ago

Originally Posted by mikeandtomphoto

Hi, I have recently built a new website theme, I was wondering if there would be any implications to using the same theme across multiple sites? I would change the content, images etc

I think there is a trick in your question. Title of your thread is different then your post description. any how yes theme can make a difference to SEO.

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fastreplies

8 years ago

Originally Posted by Whintaked40

yes theme can make a difference to SEO.

Can you be more specific?
Would you mind to tell us how?

You see, any idiot can say "yes" but if you can offer facts or even anecdotal proof,
then at the very least we all will learn and benefit from your knowledge.

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irawr

Banned 8 years ago

Originally Posted by fastreplies

Can you be more specific?
Would you mind to tell us how?

You see, any idiot can say "yes" but if you can offer facts or even anecdotal proof,
then at the very least we all will learn and benefit from your knowledge.

I don't know why I bother. You're just going to argue.

The Importance of Page Layout in SEO - SEO by the Sea

Matt Cutts said at one point that Google renders the page and does a visual analysis.

It's known that sites with lots of ads in the top of the page layout were penalized awhile back. Not going to bother finding a source since you probably won't listen anyways.

So were sites that push the content far down the page, ideally you want as much content visible when the user lands on the site as possible.

Also obviously using a responsive theme is important for the indirect SEO benefit since roughly 40% of web traffic is on mobile phones now. There's no evidence a responsive theme directly improves rankings (as far as I know) but it's defiantly a good idea. All my sites are now responsive and mobile friendly.

Also, this technology is old. It's called DOM (Data Object Model.) Circa 2005?

So the concept that site's visual appearance doesn't matter is outdated by at least eight years. Which obviously it did before that for anybody concerned about the user experience, which was every major company.

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fastreplies 8 years ago

Originally Posted by irawr

I don't know why I bother. You're just going to argue..

First of all, I didn't ask you (if you know what I mean)
Second, explain technical data, where there is nothing but text
and maybe a few graphs on top in SERP.

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Mike Anthony

8 years ago

Originally Posted by irawr

It's known that sites with lots of ads in the top of the page layout were penalized awhile back. Not going to bother finding a source since you probably won't listen anyways.

So were sites that push the content far down the page, ideally you want as much content visible when the user lands on the site as possible.

Yep. I have seen multiple sites over the last few years not doing well because the design pushes the content down below "the fold" with images.

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Mike Vick

8 years ago

A theme that is not optimized for SEO can have a huge negative impact on your search engine results. Here are some of the things to look for in a theme:

Proper use of H1, H2, and H3 tags
Compatibility with Yoast SEO or similar plugin
Proper HTML5 tag implementation
Doesn't have too much non-content related HTML at the top of the page
Good load times

Of course, if you have strong backlinks, none of the above matters.

However, if you rely more on on-page SEO than off-page SEO, consider getting a theme that is known to rank.

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DoubleIT

8 years ago

Using a theme that makes your website mobile friendly helps in gaining higher positions in search engines.

Quote from the web page: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/6196932?hl=en

Starting April 21, 2015, Google Search will be expanding its use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in Google Search results. Users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results optimized for their devices.

If you want to know is your website mobile friendly, check using this google tool: https://www.google.com/webmasters/to...bile-friendly/

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irawr

Banned 8 years ago

Originally Posted by DoubleIT

Using a theme that makes your website mobile friendly helps in gaining higher positions in search engines.

Quote from the web page: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/6196932?hl=en

If you want to know is your website mobile friendly, check using this google tool: https://www.google.com/webmasters/to...bile-friendly/

I think it will in the future, but the geeks that carefully study the SERPS have not seen any significant difference yet. I'm willing to bet they gave a public 1 year heads up on this. I'm sure it was extremely difficult for some large sites to convert to a mobile friendly layout.

Google likes to phase in stuff like this.

On April 15, 2015 it might have made a .1 difference, on April 15, 2016 it might be a 1% difference, 2017 it might be 10%. I'm not looking at any rankings anywhere thinking "It's because my site is mobile responsive!" No it's because the site is quality and it has respectable links. Those factors are not ranking factors, those are "why it ranks." The "ranking factors" will always be relatively minor factors.

I converted all my static sites to responsive sites because I realized it was about 40% of the traffic and after seeing the sites on a phone, I admit it definitely was not the best user experience.

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onehalf

8 years ago

Yes. Not all themes are created equal and could support your SEO needs.

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nsdrk

8 years ago

theme does not make much difference .s e

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davejarvys

8 years ago

Google says:

Use Schema.org markup to give your content more prominence in search results

So if your theme already incorporated schema then it will have a positive impact on seo.

I've seen a couple of themes advertising this feature and noticed a bump in rankings when I changed one of my personal sites.

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nettiapina

8 years ago

Originally Posted by davejarvys

So if your theme already incorporated schema then it will have a positive impact on seo.

That's only one tool you can use. If your site has some content that benefits from schema then it's probably a good idea to use it. Doesn't do that much for most sites.

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Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
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Does my website theme make a difference to SEO

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