SEO-ready WordPress Theme? What defines a theme to be SEO Friendly?
SEO-ready WordPress Theme? What defines a theme to be SEO Friendly?
Once you have created a website, you will want your page to be found by users on the web. To ensure that, you need to have search engine optimization (SEO) in place. The theme you choose for your WordPress site can significantly affect your SEO outcomes, so you want to choose one that is ready for SEO. In this article, I’m going to help you puzzle out which requirements SEO WordPress themes have to meet.
You’ll Learn About:
- Why SEO is important
- Valid coding
- Upload speed
- Responsive design
- Social Media Integration
- Website structure
- Schema Markup
- SEO Plugins
- Top SEO WordPress Themes
1. Why SEO is important
New site owners often make the same old mistake. They begin to think about search engine optimization (SEO) after the website has been launched.
Unfortunately, in most cases, it is much too late. Such sites end up being built with many mistakes, which, in turn, makes it hard or even impossible for search engines to find and index the content of the site. As a result, Internet users do not see the sites in search results and do not find them.
A website without search engine optimization is like a roadside motel hidden behind trees with no sign pointing to it. It may be offering a better service than its brightly-lit competitors down the road, but most travelers will never know it’s even there.
How are people going to find you? That is the question you, as a website creator, should ask early on in the phase of website planning and then make it a priority throughout the whole website building process.
Understanding how search engines operate will help create your SEO strategy.
Basically, they work the following way. When a site is launched, the engine bots called “spiders” find it and “crawl” the pages, going from link to link. They try to “comprehend” the information on each page that they can access, after which, that information is stored in the search engine’s index.
When a user searches for something in, let’s say Google, entering a word or phrase in the search field, the search engine analyzes millions of pages stored in its index which contain that word or phrase and gives out SERPs (search engine results pages). The user then looks through the results and follows the links he or she thinks are relevant (usually the top three). That is how sites get organic (free) traffic (visitors). You can learn more about how search engines work in the unbeaten Beginner's Guide to SEO from Moz.
For your site to land on a SERP, it needs to be present in the engine’s index and to contain the keyword.
But its position in the search results (whether it is going to be first of 475th) is determined by a range of factors that search engines “deem” important.
So, first, you want to make the site accessible and understandable to search engine bots, so that they can store the information in the index and present it when a search is done.
Second, your site needs to pass the quality standards that engines set so that, when a search on one of your keywords is done, your site appears higher in search results than the sites of your competitors, who are using the same keyword.
The theme you install plays a role in both of these aspects. Although no template by itself can guarantee good SEO for your site, it is a building ground for your ongoing SEO efforts. It can either facilitate or hinder them.
Let’s see what makes a WordPress theme a SEO friendly theme.
2. Valid Coding
For the site to rank higher in search engines, the theme you are going to use has to be developed according to up-to-date coding standards. Check it to make sure it is compatible with all popular browsers, that it has valid HTML, CSS and that it works well with mobile devices. You can utilize these code validators:
3. Upload Speed
Site load time is one of the essential criteria in Google’s site ranking algorithm because it plays an important role in users’ experience. In other words, search engines favor faster sites.
Make sure your images and other media files are not too large, optimize CSS files (you can use online CSS optimizers like CleanCSS.com or GiftofSpeed.com or install CSS optimization plugins), use hosting with quick server response time and choose a theme that is originally fast-loading. Do everything you can to make your website load in 1.5 – 2 seconds.
You can test the template and your website load speed at:
4. Responsive Design
Why is it important to have responsive design? If Google indicates your website as responsive, it boosts up the site giving it a better result on SERP.
If a user is surfing the web via a mobile device, a mobile optimized site will be higher in his/her search results than one that isn't. Moreover, more than 50% of traffic comes through mobile devices. Would you like half of your visitors to have a bad experience with your website?
Check responsiveness and mobile optimization at:
5. Social Media Integration
When choosing a WordPress theme, remember about social media integration. Strictly speaking, social media is not part of SEO, but it is another very important channel for acquiring site traffic, closely interrelated with SEO.
Make sure the theme has an option to link it to social media profiles like FaceBook, LinkedIn, Youtube, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.
Moreover, being a blogging platform, WordPress has blog posts, so check whether these posts can be shared via social networks using special “Share with …” buttons at the bottom of posts. This way not only you, but also your visitors will be able to advertise your website.
6. Website Structure
Your website architecture - the way pages are linked together - should be an essential part of your website planning. Well-structured navigation, inner links, and content will make it easier for bots to crawl and index your pages, improving their chances of ranking higher in Google’s results. It will also increase the quality of your visitors’ experience, helping them find information more quickly.
So, when choosing a WordPress theme, pay attention to the layout structure - its navigation and logic. Examine the live demo of the template you are going to purchase, for usability, i.e. if the way of finding what you want is intuitive and simple.
7. Schema Markup
Schema markup is a way of enhancing the code of your site to make its content not just visible, but also “understandable” to search engine bots. As a result, the content will be better indexed and presented more attractively in search results, increasing the likelihood that the user will follow the link to your site. This Markup is provided by Schema.org . Check this resource to get a better understanding of how to promote your content with structured data.
How can you see whether a theme has Schema Markup included? Open the template demo, right click the page and click “View Source Code” (“View Page Source Code”). Once you get a new tab with the page source code, click CTRL+F to activate page search and type “itemscope” or “schema.org.” If you find this type of code line: it means that this theme has Schema Markup.
8. Plugins
No matter how well a WordPress theme is optimized for search engines, you will benefit from using additional tools. So let’s review some plugins that will help you to utilize the website's full potential to rank better in the search engines:
- W3 Total Cache - increases the upload speed of your website.
- Yoast SEO - an amazing plugin, which helps you to write better content, generate site maps, add social media and much more.
- WP-Optimize - this plugin will clean up and optimize your database.
- Google Analytics by Yoast - helps to add Google Analytics to your website to analyze your traffic.
- WP Smush - reduces image file sizes without losing quality.
- Broken Link Checker - this plugin checks your website posts and pages content to see whether there are any broken links as they harm SEO.
- Google XML Sitemaps - this plugin creates an XML sitemap for your website
- All in One SEO Pack - this one comes with a bunch of tools for SEO: site map, Google Analytics, titles optimization, and many more.
Just follow this simple guideline and make sure your WordPress theme is responsive, uses valid coding and schema markup, and uploads quickly. Do not forget that WordPress can be upgraded with dozens of plugins that will help you to boost your website and increase your ranking.
Have comments? Feel free to share your SEO tips and tricks for WordPress with us.
SEO audit by TemplateMonster Service Center
Do you need your website be visible to your target audience in search engines and you don't know where to start? SEO audit is the first step to creating an online marketing strategy that really works. You will get the analysis and guidelines on how to implement the given recommendations within your website.
Top 25 SEO WordPress Themes In 2019
SEO WordPress themes presented in this review are created using all modern technologies and are focused on search engine optimization. A site created on the basis of such a theme will not only work confidently, but will also be able to achieve high positions in the search results and will become popular among the audience. If you have long wanted to launch your own website but were not sure which solution will allow you to make it as up-to-date as possible on the Internet (in particular, SEO-optimized), then we recommend paying attention to this WordPress collection. You will get a huge number of advantages if you give your preference to one of the suitable WordPress themes, which we specifically selected in this article.
BeClinic – Medical WordPress Theme
This is a first-class modern solution for a private medical project. It has all the necessary ready-made pages. There is even a blog. But there is something that many WordPress themes lack. The design here is very beautiful and stylish. Here minimalism is successfully combined with powerful functionality, colorful web components, and, of course, the ability to customize anything according to individual requirements. If you have a desire, you can use the Elementor designer with a drag & drop interface and a set of modules that include a huge number of unique web components for the design of the site. This option of creating a website is very simple and affordable. Your site will work perfectly on any devices with any screen size. The code is written cleanly and efficiently.
Goroad – Travel Agency Modern WordPress Theme
This is a very beautiful template, designed carefully and efficiently. It has everything you need for a confident presentation of the company and its services to potential audience on the Internet. Everything is easily customizable. Using a ready-made theme, you can seriously save not only time, but also the money needed for development. And the result at the output is almost identical to the development of the site from scratch by professional agency. And, as you already understood, everything is done easily, without any initial skills and knowledge. SEO WordPress themes like this won't let you down!
Turbolink – Web Hosting Company WordPress Theme
This theme has very beautiful sections, blocks and grids. In particular, the block for services provided by your company looks very beautiful. Here, in addition to the unique icons and quality of the performance, the effect is used when hovering the cursor, which provides the user with brief information about the services and offers with the ability to go to a separate section to learn more. There are also blocks for recent blog entries and recent completed projects. There are also logos of companies with whom you have collaborated. This is an excellent theme, which can be downloaded directly from our website. It was specifically created for hosting providers, as well as network professionals.
RockyHotel – Hotel Modern WordPress Theme
The theme aimed for SEO can't be non-optimized for search engines, so you can be confident in its quality and fast load of pages of your future website. The theme code is written according to a very high standard, and the theme itself is constantly checked for errors. It works great with any browsers and devices. It also supports a large number of cool icons and illustrations that are available for free. You will also get access to a variety of premium plugins for forms, sliders, menus, social buttons, maps, and icons. We should also mention a Live Customizer for editing a site.
Dental – Medical Modern WordPress Theme
This is a ready-made WordPress theme for a dental website. It will help you to create a presentable and functional medical resource. Design and content can be customized to suit the individual preferences. This theme is adaptive and SEO-optimized. The theme supports various variants of headers and footers. Many icons and fonts are available. The theme is mobile-friendly. Such a theme is an ideal solution for medical website. This solution will suit a private dental company of any kind. It works equally fast and stable on any type of devices, from PCs to smartphones.
Wedding – Wedding Salon Modern WordPress Theme
The theme is designed for wedding business, but it can be used for other purposes. It uses HTML5 and CSS3 as the basis, which allows you to implement many spectacular features. Like parallax scrolling and complex animated elements. Uploading posts can occur as you scroll, without overloading the system of the user who entered the site. It's a beautiful basic theme with neat Google fonts. Always in touch technical support, in addition, offers a selection of documentation that allows you to easily install and configure the theme. It's also SEO optimized. With removed excess garbage and good optimization. The theme is very light. It's also easy to set up and suitable for beginners.
Itiner – Transportation Minimal WordPress Theme
Powerful theme, which is built using the latest Elementor designer. All advanced WordPress users, as well as beginners, have already appreciated this way of creating pages. It allows you to make great sites considering the smallest nuances and settings without plunging into the subtleties of web coding. Also the theme offers several different designs, demo pages made by professional designers, and installation in one click. Professional development will appeal to both newcomers who use WordPress for the first time and those who are already familiar with the system. There are also tools to create a portfolio. It’s also adaptive and SEO-optimized.
Perfect Rent – Apartment Rent WordPress Theme
This is a ready-made WordPress theme for a website for a renting business. It will help you to create a presentable and functional resource. Design and content can be customized to suit individual preferences. This theme is adaptive, SEO-optimized, and supports various variants of headers and footers. The theme is also mobile-friendly. It works equally fast and stable on any type of devices. With this theme, you can easily create a renting business website that you always dreamed of. It also has support for social networks and newsletters.
Imperion – Corporate WordPress Theme
This Multipurpose Corporate WordPress Theme is easy to edit and tune. So users won’t have much trouble adjusting the theme to suit their needs. For the background, you can load any image instead of the default one. This theme has SEO-optimized code and well-organized pages. A clear structure will help the site visitor to immediately find all the necessary information. The interface of the theme will help visitors to deal a large amount of data. Also, it’s worth mentioning such an excellent thing as a cross-browser compatibility. This parameter is necessary for our time because technologies are rapidly developing and the share of mobile users is growing.
JohnnyGo – Home Services WordPress Theme
Premium design of this theme will provide all your visitors with the best user experience. It provides all the necessary functions for an ideal house maintenance website. In particular, it allows you to easily configure everything in the admin panel. It also provides the Elementor designer to create a site from scratch. There is also a slider and a powerful grid. There is a convenient system for organizing content. And also a collection of pages decorated in a contemporary style. And several options for Google maps. Huge collection of cool icons and Facebook integration. And, of course, the most important thing is the support of the convenient search system.
BuildWall – Construction Company WordPress Theme
Just select this theme and customize it as you like. No need to do anything else. The theme has a portfolio designer that allows you to manually configure all the blocks of a portfolio without programming. In the admin area there is a huge number of options for customization. In particular, there are collections of beautiful icons and fonts. Stylish buttons and SEO optimization will help you with promotion. The theme layout is responsive, so your potential customers will be able to easily access your site from mobile devices. With this theme your possibilities will be unlimited!
Brian's – Consulting WordPress Theme
This theme has a stylish and attractive design for a consulting company website. With it, you can easily create such a site. You can reveal your creativity with the help of the Elementor designer, which creates pages from scratch, or you can choose any of already included pages, upload your content and further customize the site to your taste. Among the built-in functions, it is worth noting the support for videos from YouTube, a rating system, support for Bootstrap, and compatibility with premium social interaction plugins. There are many AJAX features that greatly simplify the work. The theme also includes a premium slider plugin for promoting interesting material. If you want to create a popular consulting resource with trending content, use this theme.
24.Storycle – News Portal WordPress Theme
Clean design and amazing user experience is exactly what you'll get if you decide to create your site using this theme. SEO optimization and responsive layout are also present, so you will surely get promoted. Thousands of potential visitors will learn about you. Several layouts for the list of entries and individual articles. Various slideshow options. Full support of social networks with beautiful icons. Convenient main menu and navigation. The theme is very flexible and allows you to customize the site settings at your discretion. You can get exactly the design you so long dreamed of. At the same time, unlike the development using a web agency, you will control the whole process yourself.
Worky – Architectural Bureau WordPress Theme
This is a creative theme for professionals. It also offers free updates, so you won’t have to pay for them every time. Unique page layout styles will be of great help if you want to stand out and show your work at its best. I advise you to take a closer look at this theme. It has convenient settings, so it will be easy to understand them even without the experience. You can also use it as online store to offer your services as products. The developers have thought out a convenient product card and a minimalist product filter. The theme is high-quality and universal.
Machir – Marketing Agency WordPress Theme
Here is a unique theme that will allow you to create a corporate site with a strict and concise design and all the advantages of a modern blog. You can create a regular corporate website with a blog function, as well as make a one-page website. Among the features of the theme there are stylish slide shows, powerful widgets and shortcodes, and a responsive design. There are also page categories and tags. And also an integrated AJAX search feature with auto-prompt. You can add a Google map, a subscription form, and a panel with social network buttons. The theme is SEO-optimized and has excellent page load speed. This will help you attract more customers than you might expect. If you have a startup and you want to be noticed, choose this theme to design your site.
Skywer – Architecture WordPress Theme
Skywer is a WordPress theme for a clean and beautiful architecture website, suitable for both personal and corporate use. Easy to install and use thanks to an intuitive interface and detailed instructions. Skywer is a great WordPress theme. The built-in SEO functions are ready to make your website easily accessible to the entire world. The theme has a huge number of options, excellent documentation, and we provide good support when needed. A modern WordPress theme for the architecture website, neatly designed for ease of use. Easily customizable WordPress theme with dozens of variations of layouts. It’s also optimized for all devices. This is a decent theme if you are looking for many customization options.
Fair Wind – Car Repair WordPress Theme
This is one of the new themes which features a stunning UI design and a handy assistant for the rapid development of a new website. It includes a visual page builder and a slider plugin. The design is fully responsive, which means your site will by default adapt to the screen size of any smartphone or tablet. The theme has the following features: a quick preview, promotional banners, and support for various currencies. Services catalog and filter are based on AJAX. It also includes a blog and a stylish menu. It will help you achieve success in online business. Learn more about it right now!
Smixor – Business WordPress Theme
Smixor is a modern theme for WordPress, in fact, a business website, ready for use. After you buy a theme, you can use it for various purposes, not denying yourself anything. This is the best WordPress theme. It has a lot of features. The theme comes with the Visual Composer plugin and Elementor page builder plugin, which expands the functionality of the design and allows to add new elements (shortcodes). The theme is perfect for business. With some additional premium plugins you can make beautiful pop-ups and banners to offer subscriptions and packages for payment. It's SEO-ready and mobile friendly, which means it's optimized for SEO and is well adapted for mobile devices You can choose the variant of the header both on the computer version and on the mobile one.
Meltony – Minimal WordPress Theme
This is my another favorite theme. This is the most developed and the most complete minimalistic theme for general purpose, with cool demo and other elements. It has several options for displaying pages, just choose your style. Also, various effects when hovering over the item, many options for the social networking icons, the ability to integrate a video as the preview. And almost everything is already tuned! The settings take effect instantly and you immediately see what your site will be like. And you can customize almost any detail on the site. And the included Elementor builder is the only designer that allows you to set up a site so flexibly!
Hazel – Clean WordPress Theme
A highly customizable and high performance WordPress theme. The developers have included in this theme all that may be required when creating a modern website: diverse styles, advanced options, support for premium plugins, cool search filters. If you are interested in universal WordPress themes, this one definitely deserves attention. It has an adaptive design, exhaustive documentation, many stylish page elements, and advanced blog and portfolio functionality. It's a professional theme for business. The theme is also equipped with a special management system. With it, you can customize and maintain a database of your business data. For universality it is often chosen as the basis for business sites, portfolios, and blogs of various topics. And a powerful administration panel is designed to help users without knowledge of the code to assemble a site in minutes.
Respes – Lawyer WordPress Theme
This is one of the best themes in the lawyer websites category. It looks great on any device and thanks to a clean code, the page load speed is always fast. All demos are made in a pleasant style, creating a sense of professionalism, seriousness, quality, and scale. The set also comes with a premium plugins, with which you can create page elements with a neat descriptions and make an appointment function to get new clients directly from the site. Do you have several offices in different cities or countries? The theme has the function with which you can set several addresses on Google maps.
Environmental WordPress Theme
This is a specialized theme for an environmental website. It’s built on WordPress and its code is written in HTML5. This theme is perfect for an environmental project. The theme works in conjunction with the best plugins, with which you will make a very cool environmental project. Clean and neat design with demos on various subjects. The theme has already proven itself very well. If you want to see which features you can use, then you can open the main demo and walk along the main menu. For a more convenient search of the items, there is an autocomplete function. You can also use a pop-up window. There are also pages for categories of provided services.
4News – Magazine & News WordPress Theme
This theme is ahead of sales in all paid WordPress solutions for mass media websites. This theme is an excellent basis for an online magazine or news website. Limitless options included in the revolutionary Elementor constructor of adaptive pages will allow you to make a quality website without knowing the code. You can easily customize any demo page to suit your needs. To create a simple and beautiful website for your magazine, it's enough to buy this universal and adaptive theme, one of the fastest and most compact on the market. Modular architecture and improved memory management make the theme fast and efficient.
Proman – Business WordPress Theme
This universal theme is suitable for any business. The theme has a very beautiful design, made in the spirit of minimalism. There is a ready-made home page and also service and contact pages. There is also a page for carrying out maintenance work on the site. It can be used as a landing page before the start of the company. This theme uses the Elementor builder, which has one of the best options for the drag & drop interface among all existing tools. There is a whole library of useful web components for creating a site from scratch and its customization. But it's not necessary to create a site from scratch. It's just a worthy alternative. If it seems to you that it's better to save time and spend it on promotion, just install a demo theme, set it up and don't bother. Theme also has pop-up windows to attract attention. It offers everything you need for a confident online business presence.
Webion – Minimal WordPress Theme
Design of this theme, made in the style of minimalism, allows you to focus on your products without distracting on unnecessary details. The functionality of AJAX will give your potential customers an incredible pleasure from the time spent on your site, because the theme is adapted for any device using a responsive layout. Images can be made in the form of a full-screen gallery with the ability to pan and zoom. The same effects can be added when hovering over an object. The theme is optimized in terms of speed and SEO. The theme code is written in accordance with modern standards and taking into account the best SEO techniques. There are many options for site header. You can also add a portfolio.
50 Shades of SEO for Copywriters
Hey there! My name is Irene and I work as an SEO assistant at TemplateMonster.
Do you want to be a successful copywriter in public and a monster in SEO?
Today I’m going to teach you some basic SEO tips for writing a blog post that ranks on search results.
Promise, this knowledge won’t hurt you at all, my dear bloggers and copywriters.
On the contrary, this is going to be a sheer pleasure.
Listen closely!
This brief guide will teach you some keyword research basics, which will eventually raise the search traffic to your blog from ordinary to extraordinary.
Once you’ve defined the goal and topic of your post… And you’ve done that already, right? I’m sure you’re staying on top of things, so you probably chose the most burning topic on the minds of internet users. 😉 In case you have no idea about the latest happenings getting the online community excited, you surely know who’s your daddy. So, don’t be shy to ask Google!
Know your audience
Darling, you know what they say. You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince.
So, before we start optimizing like crazy, tell me who do you want to reach with your blog posts? You should know your audience well enough to push the right buttons! Are you writing for:
- potential new readers
- regular readers
- the industry influencers
- specific audience targets
Just focus on a specific segment and hit them hard with your creative writing!
Keep in mind, there is such thing as a search intent. Why do people go online to look for things? All the keywords that you target should have the same search intent. People who search for those three to five terms and phrases are all trying to accomplish the same goal or very, very similar goals.
Knowing who you’re trying so hard for is also good for your safe keyword research practices.
Search for keywords
And now for the cherry on top of the cake - keyword research.
What you need is - 3 to 5 keyword phrases for a single blog post.
But where do you get the keywords? Patience! We’re almost there!
1 - Keyword suggestions
You don’t have to use complicated tools to get ideas for keywords.
As a foreplay, use Google Suggest (autocomplete) - it always suggests something exciting. For example, it offers variations and searches phrases that people used before searching for information related to your post.
Keyword Planner from Google AdWords is like getting to the second base of your keyword research. It will give you the pleasure of more keyword variations as well as statistical data - such as search volume, competition levels and pricing policies for advertisement.
SEMrush is by far the most popular one — and, in my opinion, it’s like getting to the climax of your keyword search. It’s a very versatile tool used for assessing the keyword rankings, site positioning and content creation with keywords.
Ahrefs is for those who want to get their SEO to a new level. It’s a powerful toolset for exploring backlinks and conducting SEO analysis. Ahrefs has Site Explorer that allows you to enter a URL and check that URL’s backlinks – and, everything from organic keywords to social data to pay-per-click data as well.
Actually, there are plenty of other tools for keyword research. Play with all of them to choose the one that suits you best.
2 - Select the right keywords
Now, we will be crunching the numbers you get from the keyword research tools. Numbers are boring, I know, but blogger SEO optimization is not all fun and games, darlings. If you’ve done your homework well, you should have a list of keywords to select from.
Ideally, you have the following data to analyze:
Search Volume (average monthly searches) shows how much these keywords are searched for. When it comes to keyword search volume, there are two primary factors to take into consideration: volume and competitiveness. Keywords with higher volumes mean more potential exposure, but will likely be much more competitive. So it will be harder to rank for these terms.
Competition data tells how many advertisers are bidding to show their ads in the search results for a given keyword.
If your blog is brand-new, start with targeting low-volume, low-competition keywords to gain some domain authority. On the contrary, if your blog already has strong organic rankings, try more competitive keywords to maintain your positions.
Also, there are a few other criteria you could consider if you’re using a combination of keyword research tools:
For instance, SEMrush has ‘Keyword difficulty’ data that shows how hard it will be for you to rank for a specific keyword.
Google AdWords provides the ‘Click-through rate’ metrics. The Click-through rate opportunity shows what other features are in the search results. Things like images, news boxes, ads, videos up at the top, instant answers that's going to draw clicks away from your competition to get users to click on your result.
If your blog can’t compete in popularity with Google yet, what you want from your keywords list is relevance to the topic, medium to high search volumes, low to medium competition rates. Don’t forget about the low keyword difficulty and a high click-through rate opportunity to contribute to your success.
Your keyword phrase should be no longer than 3-4 words.
Remember, people are lazy, and you have to think from their point of view.
Make lists and match the keywords with a particular search intent. And, remember - practice makes perfect, my dear copywriters!
On-Page SEO
Okay, after hours of mixing and matching, finally you get your magic keyword phrases!
But how do you use them for a blog post, you may ask?
One of these keywords is your primary keyword phrase. So, that's going to be matched in the title and the headline and the URL.
Also, you need 2 - 4 secondary keywords to insert into the meta description and image alt tags and the content itself.
Now, what if you’ve already written a post on a similar topic, let’s say, in the past 6 months or a year ago? Show your people what a writer you are! For this, link the older posts to the new one - that’s called internal linking. All it takes is to include the link into the body of your new post and use one of the selected keywords as an anchor.
Links? Anchors? What? Oh well, now we’re going to talk about a few common mistakes some bloggers and copywriters make once in awhile.
The First:
- No outbound links in the body of your post. So, if you link out to another website, it’s an outbound link. I'm sure that throwing a few relevant links into your post will be a picnic when you have the right keywords at your fingertips.
Google has officially removed the limit of 100 links per page. But don’t get too carried away. The count of links in your pages should be proportional to the amount of content. Let’s say, if you’re writing a 25.000-word post, then even 250 links would be sufficient.
- Long anchors. This is when the size does matter. The average length of an anchor text is up to 8 words, but know your limits - keep it as short and relevant as possible.
- Too many links to the same page within a single blog post. One is enough! Lots of similar links pointing to the same place can be seen by Google a sign of automation.
- Broken links. How is that even possible? All it takes is to copy & paste the link address from a web browser input field into the code!
- Mismatched links and anchors. Why on earth would someone put a link to Google and anchor it as Wikipedia? Makes no sense, right? Anyway, the experts suggest that keyword rich anchor text still continues to influence search rankings. Even though, as everything in SEO, you can take some information with a grain of salt, but don’t take that it lightly!
As you see, SEO for copywriters is no rocket science. Hopefully, you will use these tips further on. Good luck with that. Laters, darlings!
P.S. Don't forget to take a pick at our SEO company templates.
A Guide to On-Page SEO [Free ebook]
SEO audit by TemplateMonster Service Center
Do you need your website be visible to your target audience in search engines and you don't know where to start? SEO audit is the first step to creating an online marketing strategy that really works. You will get the analysis and guidelines on how to implement the given recommendations within your website.
If you’re a website owner who relies on online traffic to generate leads and revenue, you probably know all too well that SEO mistakes—even the smallest ones—cannot be a laughing matter. They can become very costly.
The only way to ensure that you’re not making inadvertent mistakes with your content is to regularly analyze its performance using Google Analytics and continually stay up-to-date with the latest SEO templates.
To get you started, here are six simple but common mistakes that you might be making:
1. Failing to consider search intent
Long gone are the days when stuffing your content with keywords could get you anywhere in Google’s search results. But the mentality behind this outdated and ineffective tactic still exists: That you can achieve impressive results by creating content for algorithms rather than people.
This is why many content creators often make the mistake of targeting keywords or key phrases with content that doesn’t match search intent; or, worse still, they make the mistake of targeting keywords that don’t even align with the content of their posts.
Let me give you an example: If you search for the key phrase “best video editing software,” you’ll find several informational blog posts comparing top tools for editing videos, not commercial pages.
Since Google is constantly tweaking its algorithm to satisfy searchers’ needs, it’s a safe bet that the intent of most people who search for this term is to find software reviews rather than the landing page of any specific tool.
But a content creator who fails to consider search intent can easily make the mistake of creating a landing page to target this key phrase rather than an informative blog post, which would have a much better chance of ranking on page 1.
So, next time you want to target a key phrase, make sure to look at the other pages already ranking for it to decipher the actual intent behind the search terms used by people.
2. Targeting general keywords
Another common mistake is targeting keywords that are too general, instead of going after long-tail keywords that convert better.
Here is an example from personal experience: A few years ago, we were considering optimizing our presentation landing page to target a keyword like “presentations” so that it would bring in a massive amount of consistent traffic year-round.
We didn’t realize at the moment, however, that a long-tail keyphrase like “best presentation software” would convert at a much higher rate and bring in more qualified leads, rather than readers who were merely looking for information but were not ready to purchase.
To avoid this mistake, make sure you plot your keywords along a search intent funnel like this one:
Long Tail Keywords [Free Ebook]
3. Not using semantically related keywords in your content
One of the ways Google determines if your content will be relevant to a searcher is to detect if other topically related keywords appear in your content.
For example, if your post covers the basics of infographic design, you might also mention related search terms such as “infographic design ideas,” “infographic design templates,” “infographic design inspiration” and “infographic design tips.”
An easy way to find these semantically related keywords is to do a quick Google search and then view the “Searches related to...” section at the bottom of the page:
Some SEO tools such as Moz also come with built-in Related Topics features.
4. Not formatting content to appear in Featured Snippets
Everyone wants to rank in position number 1 for a keyword, but what about so-called “position zero”? Many content creators overlook the possibility of earning this coveted position because they haven’t taken the time to research these high-traffic (and, many times, high-converting) opportunities.
A few years ago, we were lucky enough to appear in one of these, and our traffic for that particular post increased exponentially overnight. Without knowing it, we had formatted our post to be “Featured Snippet friendly” and were reaping the rewards not only in traffic, but also added credibility due to appearing in a Google SERP feature. We wrote all about our experience in this post.
To start, you should use an SEO tool like Ahrefs to detect SERP feature opportunities. While it is not guaranteed that you will appear in one of these, you can increase the likelihood by structuring your content to match the format of the SERP feature you are aiming to “win.”
For example, if you want to appear in “position zero” for the key phrase “how to make an infographic,” you should first do a quick search of the term and then analyze the format of the Featured Snippet. In this case, you should use the key phrase in an H1 or H2 tag and then, directly below it, insert numbered steps in H2 or H3 tags, with clear directions for each subheading, within paragraph tags.
Content Marketing 101: The Must-Know Essentials [Free Ebook]
5. Not ensuring a high CTR by making your title stand out
Another common mistake is not ensuring that your headline stands out among dozens of others just like it on Google’s Search Results Page.
Let’s say you’re targeting a keyword like “best presentation software.” You’ll find several headlines with the same exact structure and wording. Now imagine you’re the person searching for informational pages on best presentation software reviews. Which headline would you click on? If all of them look very similar, you’d probably just click on the first one.
So, to distinguish yours from the rest, make sure to adjust it so that you’re targeting your key phrase and, at the same time, also appealing to human readers. Just remember not to fall prey to clickbait and deliver what you promise in your headline.
6. Not paying attention to “visual SEO”
You’ve probably read plenty of studies that assert that content with at least one image performs better than content with no images at all. But many website owners and bloggers forget to make the most of their images when it comes to SEO.
If you create custom images for your site (as we always do), then you want to make sure that all the hours invested in your unique content are also paying off on search engine results.
For example, if you’ve created an informative, standalone graphic, like the one above, then you should use a descriptive title with keywords and relevant alt tags to explain the content of your image to increase its chances of appearing at the top of Google Image Search results.
Another frequently overlooked aspect of “visual SEO” is the fact that informative images such as mini infographics and well-designed charts are often picked up by sites and bloggers who have published related content in the past. To get the highest ROI for your custom graphics, pitch mini infographics and well-designed charts to external sites and watch as the links back to your site start to roll in.
Lastly, make sure to claim any backlinks from sites that have used your images without adequately citing you as the source. How do you find them? Do a reverse Google image search for your infographic or custom graphic and look at the top pages that include matching images. If you happen to find any that don’t link back, reach out to them and politely ask them to provide the attribution you rightly deserve.
SEO audit by TemplateMonster Service Center
Do you need your website be visible to your target audience in search engines and you don't know where to start? SEO audit is the first step to creating an online marketing strategy that really works. You will get the analysis and guidelines on how to implement the given recommendations within your website.
Conclusion
Here are all the SEO WordPress themes that we wanted to show you today. You will find even more SEO WordPress themes for yourself in this section of our website. If you liked any of the presented themes, share your impressions with us in the comments. We are very interested to hear the views of our users. If you have already liked some theme, feel free to click a button and make a purchase. Why wait until tomorrow? To achieve the most effective results, it's better to act right away.
TOP 25 SEO WordPress Themes In 2019
Simon Morgan
Simon is a TemplateMonster sales operator who helps small businesses and startups by day and passionately rocking on the stage with his bass guitar by night. Simon is a truly creative spirit and idea generator who can draw almost everything he imagines.