If you are a Blogger, SEO developer or anyone who have interest in Search Engine Optimization may once have asked this question to yourself. Does Theme affect website search engine ranking?
Well, so far while search engine optimization experts believe the ranking of a website also depends on its theme, yesterday, Google Search Advocate, John Muller also agreed with the same.
In a short YouTube Video, John accepts, the ranking of a website also depends on its theme. He described the qualities of a good theme which I listed below.
Qualities of a Good Theme for Search Engines
- The theme must properly display the content of a website.
- It must take less page load time.
- It must have well-defined structured data.
- The theme must link the internal content of a website properly.
Now, you might be thinking, how to select a theme that properly displays the content of a website in the eyes of search engine?
Don’t worry I am here to help you with that.
How to check whether a theme properly displays the content of a website in the eyes of search engine?
You can check the quality of a theme in terms of how it displays the content of a website using search engine’s URL inspection tool.
Take Google URL Inspection Tool as an example which is present inside your Google Search Console account. Bing has its Content Submission API that performs the same task.
With URL Inspection tool, you can check different things (listed below) and checking how your website displayed in front of the search engine bots is one of them.
- Coverage: Shows whether the inspected link is indexed in the search engine or not.
- Mobile Usability: It shows whether the URL is mobile friendly or not.
- AMP: If a website is using the Google’s AMP technology to amplify their website, this section explains whether the URL is a valid AMP page or not.
- Breadcrumbs: If the URL has any breadcrumbs attached or not.
- Sitelinks Search Box: If your website has a search box that searches the content for a user query then, this section explains whether your website’s search box is valid or not.
Do note that all these things are part of a website’s structured data as well. That means with Google URL inspection tool we can also evaluate the structured data (if any) present in the URL.
In the URL inspection tool, once you feed your website URL and entered it for fetching, the search console displays a TEST LIVE URL button at the top right corner in the URL Inspection windows.
Click on that button to send your request to the Google server which in turn commands the search bot to see the webpage (URL). And lastly the search console displays you how the Google Search Bot sees your requested URL.
So, this is how you can check, how a search engine bot sees your website’s content.
How to test your website’s page load time?
Now, talking about how to evaluate your website’s page load time, you can do so with the help of Google Page Speed Insights or Chrome Light House tool.
Although there are plenty of webpage speed test tool out there, I recommend only the above two tool as I have taken Google as my reference for the search engine. And Google Page Speed Insights and Chrome Light House is the best tool to test your website speed for ranking in Google search.
Tip: In addition of a webpage speed test tool, Chrome light house is a website auditing tool as well.
Now let’s move on to the next part.
How to test the structured data of your website’s theme?
Google recently has depreciated its Structured Data Testing Tool and moved it on the schema.org platform.
You can visit this link to access the now called Schema Markup Validator on schema.org website.
Once you open the above link, feed different URLs of your website to test your theme structured data.
For example, in the image below you can see that the theme I tested have structured data for its header, sidebar, content etc.
If you are using a CMS like WordPress, then it would be extremely easy to add schema (structured data) to website even if your site doesn’t have a well-structured-data defined theme. There are plenty of plugins out there that can perform this task for you.
Last, but not the least, Internal Linking. John said, if a website theme properly links the internal content with each other then the theme is optimized for ranking in the search engine.
Our website is optimized for internal linking as you will notice a previous and next link below each of the post pages. See the screenshot below.
These two links basically connect the previous and next posts of a post. So, this feature promotes internal linking on our website.
Again, if you are using a CMS like WordPress then, there are a plenty of plugins that better links the internal content of a website.
Conclusion
So, if you were confused so far that Does Theme Affect Website search engine ranking? Then, the answer is a big YES!
In order to boost your search engine ranking, choose a theme that displays the site’s content well, have well-defined code and structured data, promotes internal links and other SEO perspectives.
That’s all for the content. Don’t be shy to post your opinion or query (if any) in the comment box down below.
