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
-
Problems with Wordpress and Yoast SEO Plugin
Hi, I've been working with a Wordpress site and the Wordpress SEO plugin for a few months now and I've managed to get pretty decent results for some of the keywords I was targeting, however since last week I've lost all my rankings sharply and everything dropped out. This had happened once before and the problem was that the plugin was somehow stopped but not this time. I've had a look through all of the MOZ resources and I cannot find what the problem might be. Page optimization hasn't changed and the on page rankings are the same here. Everything seems to be the same except that all my top 10 ranking disappeared. I'm new to all of this and I'm still learning so I'd appreciate if anyone could help me on this. I'm up for trying any ideas you might have but I've tried almost everything I could. I've reinstalled, updated and done everything I could with the plugin, I've checked that Google is indexing the pages and it is. I've monitored for errors on the pages and critical issues, nothing major to report so I don't know anymore what to do. Thank you so much in advance for your help. M3rgAcQ paFNOlb
Technical SEO | | rodcunha0 -
Keyword place in page HTML code? Higher is better?
Hello, is it important to place keyword more higher in html code Our situation: item page. H1 and all text about this item with keyword mentioned three times is in the end of html code? Competitors pages with info about item, but higher keyword place and description in html code make better in SERPS. Could it be reason? Could we change place of text about item in html code ? Giedrius, Lithuania
Technical SEO | | Patogupirkti0 -
How can i do SEO For Ecommerce site
I am doing SEO for my WP blog but now I am starting my recently launch an eCommerce site where I am selling electronics products. I want to know how can I do the SEO so at least I can top 10 position for my google India. Second how can i avoid duplicate content about copying manufacture contents. Please help
Technical SEO | | chandubaba0 -
What are your thoughts on Twylah and SEO?
I recently signed up for Twylah. If you are not familiar with it, Twylah creates a summary of all your tweets, which you can then add to your site to make them easily accessible for humans and for search engines. On first glance I am really liking this idea, however after adding Twylah to our site, our crawl diagnostics took a major spike in errors and alerts: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/90501/static/Diagnostics%20After%20Twylah.png Here is our Twylah page: http://tweets.hingeheads.com I am not a SEO expert, but the number of errors is worrying me. Are we getting penalized by Search Engines/Google because of the high number in errors/alerts? Curious to hear your thoughts. P.S. I have fwd this to the Twylah team. They will get back to me in the next few days.Diagnostics%20After%20Twylah.png
Technical SEO | | hingeheads0 -
SEO mark-up language
Hi there, i have been looking into schema and noticed some articles on it recently too. Who here has used schema/mark-up language in their code? I heard Google will be looking for at this soon to interpret data better. Is it schema .org where i can get the code information from? Any help much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Mobile Theme Switching
Hi - wondering what one should do with a mobile theme in relationship to Google. We are using wordpress and then a plugin that detects whether or not the user is on a mobile device. Should you no-follow the mobile theme since it is effectively the same content as the main site? Or just leave it be and not worry about it. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | leeg0 -
Yoast canonical SEO question
Hi I've installed Yoasts SEO plugin. I've just set it up as a campaign in SEOMOZ pro and i now see 14 notices about rel=canonical. I haven't added the rel=canonical myself and is in connection with the Yoast code on the site. Why does it do that and should i do something about it?
Technical SEO | | infocell0 -
What are the SEO implications of using Interstitials?
Hi, I want to implement an interstitial similar to http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/defaultinterstitial.cms. Within few seconds it gets redirected to http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/. What are the SEO implications of having this sort of arrangement? Regards
Technical SEO | | IM_Learner0