Should WordPress themes be hard coded for better SEO?
-
In the interests of making my site faster I have recently come across the suggestion of removing unwanted PHP from my WooThemes WordPress theme. The suggestion is to hard code the choices I have made in the WordPress template to reduce on database calls.
Has anyone actually done this to their WordPress theme before and seen any measurable results?
-
Hey Ben,
Thanks. Am using a Wootheme called Simplicity. I have just left the minify box unchecked in W3 Total Cache since this was causing the problem. The site speed seems to be ok though even with this disabled.
-
Hi Sofia,
Not a problem, glad I can offer my assistance.
What slider are you using? I might be able to solve that problem for you, I know I had to fiddle with the code of my theme a little to make total cache behave but they were minor changes.
-
Ben, thanks for the useful follow up. I will certainly check out spitecow. Have found W3 total cache speeds up my site quite a bit, only problem is its breaks the image slider for some reason so have some looking into to do.
-
To help measure results one way or another you could use http://loads.in to test how long it takes your page to load from different geographical locations. I think Chrome's developer tools has a similar thing as well.
If you're trying to speed up your site then I would recommend grouping images (icons etc) into an image sprite and use css background positioning to show the respective image. I found that implementing this into a theme resulted in great speed increases as you make a single HTTP request for a single image, as opposed to loading up several images on page load.
If you're not savvy enough with css image sprites I would recommend using www.spritecow.com to produce the correct background-positions for the images so you can add them into your css file.
-
I have used WooThemes in the past and personally I think some of their code and their modifications are a bit overkill, sure it makes things easier for users but its not really following the way WordPress does things (Creating folders in WP-Content to put file uploads from their admin panel for example).
In general terms I think its better to hard code references to public resources (CSS Links, JavaScript links etc in header.php). For better speed increases I would suggest having links to JQuery or MooTools in header.php and any other JavaScript files should be put in footer.php just above the closing body tag.
The benefit to this is that the core JavaScript framework (JQuery or MooTools) is loaded first, the page can then render on the screen whilst the last few JS files are downloaded and put to use.
It maty be worth using WP SuperCache or similar to cache your pages and allow browser gzip compression for quicker page loading.
I think WordPress in general makes too many database calls anyway, so where possible I think its acceptable to hard code links.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Menu impact on SEO
we have a single page web application for an ecommerce website. I think it is built in angular. One UX features we are exploring is the use of a "Products" Item on the menu with the categories showing on a menu rather than directly present on the header. The aim being to keep the header nice and clean. The result of this is that the categories which would typically sit in the header will now not be immediately visible until the menu is opened. Let's say I want to rank well for "building materials". Traditionally the view would be that this word would need to be in the header and marked up with the appropriate h tag. Will moving "building materials" into a product menu be detrimental for SEO? My initial thought is that as long as it is coded correctly there shouldn't be any impact on SEO. Can anyone give me their expert SEO view?
Technical SEO | | built_bot0 -
Ajax, SEO and Angular
Hi all! We have a platform which includes a housing area which is created by ajax and angular. You can see a sample here:
Technical SEO | | Eurasmus.com
eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-antwerp/student-room-accommodation It has a static version under which shows the first 18 rooms, the rest are generated by angular.
Also this static version has a dynamic text with around 400 characters. Is this the right procedure?
How would you suggest to do it?0 -
International Seo - Canada
Our organization is currently only operating in the USA but will soon be entering the Canadian market. We did a lot of research and decided that for our needs it would be best to use a subfolder for Canada. Initially we will be targeting the english speaking community but eventually we will want to expand to the french speaking Canadians as well. The question is - is there a preferred version in setting up the subfolders: www.website.org/ca/ -- default will be english www.website.org/ca/fr/ - french www.website.org/en-ca/ - english www.website.org/fr-ca/ - french www.website.org/ca/en/ -english www.website.org/ca/fr/ - french Thanks
Technical SEO | | Morris770 -
The impact of mulstisite wordpress on seo
hi there, i would talk about a specific topic: The impact of mulstisite wordpress on seo Do you think that penalize seo activity ? i make you an example : a wordpress network of sites, domain based let the possibility to manage two domain on a single wp install, but even if the domains are separete, how does google see them, as separate or as a sigle domain?
Technical SEO | | guidoboem0 -
Does server location impact SEO?
Hi, I am about to purchase hosting for my WordPress site which is primarily targeting the UK and wondered if server location still has an impact on SEO? Also can anyone recommend a reliable hosting provider with CPanel?
Technical SEO | | Wallander0 -
302 Redirects & WordPress
Hi Mozzers- We started a WordPress blog for one of my clients to help improve the domain authority, increase visits, etc. a few months ago. I ran a crawl report a few days ago and noticed that the /trackback/ pages are getting redirected to the appropriate page using a 302 redirect not a 301 redirect. I've search through the forum looking for other similar questions and found one. The answer suggested that I use the TAC plugin and check for any malicious code. I did this and found nothing. Another response suggested using the Redirection plugin. I haven't tried this yet. Has anyone encountered this and if so, how did you deal with it. Thank you! LHC
Technical SEO | | lhc670 -
WordPress & Page Numbers
Hi, I am working on a large WP site for a client and have an issue with duplicate content and page numbers. I am using the Yoast SEO plugin but can't seem to resolve the issue. Let me give an example: If I go to a popular category, for example F1, there are over 10 pages of content for the category and although the URL changes, the Title and Meta Description stay the same. Now...if I was using a template for the title and description I could add the page number variable, but as I am overwriting the template with SEO specific category information I can't use variables and hence the problem! This is such a common problem I know somebody will have an answer! Thanks
Technical SEO | | JonathanSmith0 -
Changing DNS -- SEO implications?
Hey Moz, We're migrating an old site on an old server over to a new server/DNS. The plan is to keep the same URL structure and reuse our existing URL's. As long as we make minimal changes to each page's content, we should be able to update our DNS entry and get all the pages recreated and assigned to their correct URLs without any reduction in SEO rankings. Is this correct? This site gets a lot of organic traffic and ranks highly on some challenging keywords, so it's key that we retain our rankings as much as possible. I've read that it's wise to lower the DNS time-to-live to one hour, about a day before the move, to help Google crawl the DNS a little quicker. Are there any other recommendations you guys can offer or past experiences?
Technical SEO | | stephen_reply0