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Does Theme and design has anything to do with SEO

by fraakz
15 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have a question does the theme and design of a website has anything to do with the SEO. There are some SEO experts who say that always push the content as much upwards as you could to allow search engines crawl your website easily. I am not getting much results with the theme. Here is my WordPress blog

Fraakz - Reviews & Tips to make you smarter

Any suggestions for improving the design of my website and giving some tweaks to ensure my website is friendly for SEO purposes.
#design #seo #theme
  • Profile picture of the author Make Money Ninja
    There are much more important things to concentrate on. I would just concentrate on making the best site you can possibly make and forget about that.

    When you want to get traffic to your site. Your link building strategy will be the most important thing that will determine your long term success.

    Do some basic on-page seo. Dont over optimize. Figure out backlinking. Create an awesome website with lots of good content.

    That's the important stuff. Everything else should sort it out if you do these things correctly. Dont sweat the little things. Get the important things right.
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  • Profile picture of the author Vivers
    Actual design and layout? No
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by Vivers View Post

      Actual design and layout? No
      That's not true at all. The actual design and layout of a site can have a dramatic impact on SEO.

      For example. I'm looking at a PR 5 site in an auction right now. One of the internal pages is also a PR 5. It is the privacy policy. I can see the homepage in the Wayback Machine. Guess where the link to the privacy policy was? First thing on page.

      If you are using a CMS like Wordpress and have a sidebar on the left, some themes put the sidebar in the code first before the body of content. Other themes do it the other way. If the sidebar is first, it is what is seen before any other content by search engines. Have a sidebar with nothing but ads that is being read first on the page and see how that impacts your rankings.

      Internal linking structure, limited use of Flash and Javascript (which search engines are horrible at parsing), image layout and optimization, where your content appears, etc.... All of it impacts the ranking of your site.
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      • Profile picture of the author MatthewWoodward
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        That's not true at all. The actual design and layout of a site can have a dramatic impact on SEO.

        For example. I'm looking at a PR 5 site in an auction right now. One of the internal pages is also a PR 5. It is the privacy policy. I can see the homepage in the Wayback Machine. Guess where the link to the privacy policy was? First thing on page.

        If you are using a CMS like Wordpress and have a sidebar on the left, some themes put the sidebar in the code first before the body of content. Other themes do it the other way. If the sidebar is first, it is what is seen before any other content by search engines. Have a sidebar with nothing but ads that is being read first on the page and see how that impacts your rankings.

        Internal linking structure, limited use of Flash and Javascript (which search engines are horrible at parsing), image layout and optimization, where your content appears, etc.... All of it impacts the ranking of your site.
        I have to second this, theme & design is everything when it comes to SEO and is the foundation of your onpage efforts.

        Some themes use H1 tags correctly, others don't!

        Heck I've even seen some themes with noindex,nofollow hardcoded into the header!
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        • Profile picture of the author Make Money Ninja
          Originally Posted by MatthewWoodward View Post

          I have to second this, theme & design is everything when it comes to SEO and is the foundation of your onpage efforts.

          Some themes use H1 tags correctly, others don't!

          Heck I've even seen some themes with noindex,nofollow hardcoded into the header!
          Kind of have to disagree. When u have a page with a picture and 50 words on it, using the default wordpress theme, ranking for a 10k a month money term, just through a bunch of links... kinda just shows its kinda irrelevant in some ways.

          I am not saying links are the be all and end all, and if you make total shit sites you wont get canned... it just seems to me, newbies are much better spending time actually doing stuff that helps than mental masturbating over which theme might give them a 0.5% seo boost.
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          • Profile picture of the author yukon
            Banned
            Originally Posted by Make Money Ninja View Post

            Kind of have to disagree. When u have a page with a picture and 50 words on it, using the default wordpress theme, ranking for a 10k a month money term, just through a bunch of links... kinda just shows its kinda irrelevant in some ways.

            I am not saying links are the be all and end all, and if you make total shit sites you wont get canned... it just seems to me, newbies are much better spending time actually doing stuff that helps than mental masturbating over which theme might give them a 0.5% seo boost.

            That's just wasting time/money on only using external links. We have 100% control over the on-page SEO (text/links), it's silly to not take advantage of the things you can control.
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          • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
            Originally Posted by Make Money Ninja View Post

            Kind of have to disagree. When u have a page with a picture and 50 words on it, using the default wordpress theme, ranking for a 10k a month money term, just through a bunch of links... kinda just shows its kinda irrelevant in some ways.

            I am not saying links are the be all and end all, and if you make total shit sites you wont get canned... it just seems to me, newbies are much better spending time actually doing stuff that helps than mental masturbating over which theme might give them a 0.5% seo boost.
            Nobody said that site design will prevent you from ranking. The question was does it have an impact on SEO, and the answer is that without a doubt it does. Doesn't mean that a piss-poor designed website cannot beat out some of its competitors. It's just going to be harder than it needs to be.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        That's not true at all. The actual design and layout of a site can have a dramatic impact on SEO.

        For example. I'm looking at a PR 5 site in an auction right now. One of the internal pages is also a PR 5. It is the privacy policy. I can see the homepage in the Wayback Machine. Guess where the link to the privacy policy was? First thing on page.

        If you are using a CMS like Wordpress and have a sidebar on the left, some themes put the sidebar in the code first before the body of content. Other themes do it the other way. If the sidebar is first, it is what is seen before any other content by search engines. Have a sidebar with nothing but ads that is being read first on the page and see how that impacts your rankings.

        Internal linking structure, limited use of Flash and Javascript (which search engines are horrible at parsing), image layout and optimization, where your content appears, etc.... All of it impacts the ranking of your site.

        That's what I tried to explain in an old post about how Wikipedia has their pages structured (ex: automobile history), they load the actual content on the page first, the header text/links are loaded at the bottom of the HTML source code with CSS Floats. In this Wikipedia Cache (text version) search the Text Cache page for the keyword Create account & you'll see it's towards the bottom of the Text Cache page, do the same search on the original Wikipedia page & the keyword (Create account) is at the top/right of the web page. Wikipedia puts all the things that are useless for SEO at the bottom of the page, even If traffic see's that text/link at the top of the page.

        If people would pay attention to the Google Cache (text version) they would see these thing's happening. I've also posted a Firefox plugin that will simulate a very close looking Google Cache (text version) of any page online or offline. The plugin removes all the fluff on the web page (images, javascript, etc...).
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    The site isn't very focused.
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  • Profile picture of the author trevord92
    You need to work on basic things like your title tags and meta descriptions.

    Even if you got high in the results (not exactly likely for anything competitive as the site stands at the moment) you need to encourage real humans to click and visit.

    Which, with the best will in the world, they're not likely to do at the moment. But then the site does look MFA to me.
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  • Profile picture of the author ProSence
    Theme plays very important role in SEO, first thing you have to understand that your site should load faster, if it is not loading faster then you should check the problem..... it may be due to theme.

    Try using SEO friendly theme, if you are using Wordpress then you can find many SEO friendly themes.
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  • Profile picture of the author Shaolinsteve
    I too agree with Mike and Matthew. Not saying I knew it, in fact I actually learnt a valuable tip so thanks guys
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  • Profile picture of the author RyanLB
    Not just the theme, but navigation and innerlinking in particular. When people say 'theme' they don't just mean the looks of theme (although that can effect bounce rate and other SEO factors), but actual on-page aspects of the theme.

    Use a good on page scanner (I use Woorank) and see where your combination of theme and plugins are lacking on page. Stick to themes that have validated code.
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  • Profile picture of the author stephenwaldo
    Here are six ways that your design and/or your theme will affect SEO, just off the top of my head:

    1. The speed that a given page loads
    2. The order in which a spider crawls links and content
    3. The efficiency/accessibility with which a spider crawls links and content
    4. The time a visitor stays on a page before returning to search results
    5. The redundancy of on-page elements, e.g. many free themes misuse H1 tags
    6. The likelihood of a visitor sharing or linking your website

    You want to find a theme that is clean and efficient in both form and function, and you probably want to use plugins to make sure that your basic on-page SEO is spot on. Then, you want to make sure that you structure your website in such a way that it is easy to navigate for both search engine spiders and visitors alike.

    Look up SEO silo - it is a somewhat dated, but still relevant concept that you would do well to learn about.

    I recommend either Thesis (if you don't mind learning about hooks) or Genesis.
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  • Profile picture of the author manishak
    After researching a lot on Warrior Forum, I have concluded two things:

    1. Site structure and design is important. It's like a virtual mart whose interior decor will make or mar your mood. Too much clutter or too little substance will ward away your visitors.
    2. Content should be interesting and engaging.

    And both the site design and the content are important ingredients of SEO.
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