Building a WordPress website and choosing an appropriate theme for the site can be overwhelming for a beginner. There are thousands of premium and free themes available, and each one looks better than the other, which makes it difficult to pick one. So, how can you choose the best WordPress theme that will serve the purpose of your website? In this article, we will discuss a few things that you should consider to ensure maximum visual appeal and SEO benefit of your site.
WordPress is now used to create all types of websites ranging from simple blogs to highly featured e-commerce applications. Various themes cater to different markets and different unique purposes. The WordPress theme you choose should go well with the contents of your site and its functionality. For example, if you are designing a blog, you should choose a theme that offers the best readability. In any case, the theme must be optimized for the search engines.
Customization on WordPress
There are plenty of customization options when it comes to WP themes. Proper coding is at the base of all great websites. Good coding also allows you to change themes later on -without needing to use complicated tools and plugins. Some of the WordPress themes which look great may make your site extremely slow. None of the users like to wait for a slow website to load. Search engines like Google like to rank the faster sites higher.
TheWordPress theme plays a vital role both in terms of impressing the users and the search engines. The proverb “all that glitters is not gold’ is apt in the case of choosing a WordPress theme. Let us further take a look at a few successful steps you can adopt when selecting the best theme for a WordPress site.
Let simplicity prevail
When it comes to web design as a whole, the best rule to follow is simplicity. Many of the WordPress themes come with plenty of colors, flashy layouts, and complex animations. You may require some of these, but there is no need to take it all in every case.So, be picky and ensure sophistication and simplicity for the highest aesthetic value.
Always choose a theme which is optimized for SEO and has features that help you to meet your goals. It should look good without compromising on the functional aspects. Ensure that the presentation of the theme is not overtly complicated. Ultimately, the purpose of a website is to help the users get all the information they need and help the site owners meet their functional goals.
Responsive is mandatory
It is essential to choose a responsive theme to gain maximum SEO benefits. Responsive themes are those that can adjust the layout and styles for various devices and screen sizes. It is a fact that majority of the web traffic now comes from handheld devices and mobile phones.Â
As per the advice of Gilbert Arizona SEO Agency, it also needs to be noted that Google only shows mobile-friendly web pages on top of the SERPs. All developers should know how to make WordPress websites responsive and mobile ready to survive in the competition.
Interoperability and browser compatibility
Similar to getting opened on various screens, your website will be opened in various desktop and mobile phone browsers. So, it should work well and look perfect on the various browsers accessed by the internet users across the globe. Some WordPress themes may work well on certain web browsers, but they may not look or function the same on others. Browser compatibility needs to be tested before finalizing any particular theme to ensure user-friendliness as well as SEO effectiveness. There are many sophisticated tools for browser compatibility testing, which you can use for free.
Supported Plugins
WordPress plugins are the most crucial elements in web development on this platform. Plugins make almost anything possible with your site. Even though there are thousands of plugins available for WordPress by different providers, you need to be very careful when choosing the most functional and SEO friendly plug-ins. Some of those which can be used directly to ensure search engine optimization include Yoast SEO, Gravity Forms, W3 Total Cache and such.
One of the significant downsides you may face while using the free WordPress theme is that there is no guaranteed support. While some of the developers offer support to their free themes, many of them do not. So, ensure that you select a theme which has good documentation and support materials. On the other hand, the premium WordPress themes do offer detailed documentation and round-the-clock support.
Author Bio: Barrack Diego owns Gilbert Arizona SEO Agency, which offers excellent website development, maintenance, and search engine optimizations services to a fine line of local businesses. A great friend of the ‘corePHP’ family. He also used to write on technology blogs and SEO support articles.
