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WordPress SEO theme guidelines

Joost de Valk 31 May 2011 60

It seems every premium WordPress theme these days calls itself “SEO-friendly”. They’re usually not. So, I thought I’d lay down some WordPress SEO theme “rules” or “guidelines”. These guidelines will consist of WordPress SEO theme do’s and don’ts, starting out with the don’ts:

WordPress SEO theme don’ts

  1. Put the site’s name first in the title tag.
    The title tag should be post title – site title or a variation on that, but the only variation you do not want in a WordPress SEO theme is the exact opposite: site title – post title.
  2. Add a static meta description to pages.
    I see this so often now: people complain that my WP SEO plugin doesn’t work because the meta description isn’t showing, but in fact, their theme contains a static meta description that is the same on each bloody page.
  3. Don’t add static robots meta tags or anything else that’ll hamper search engines.
    Same as above, please don’t add meta robots tags, “index,follow” is what Google will do by default and if you include it in your theme statically, a user cannot use a plugin to make a page un-indexable, for instance.
  4. Use the H1 for the logo, on every page.
    The H1 should be used for the most important heading on the page. In most cases, that is the article title, not the logo, on every page but the homepage. There’s a lot more to say about headings, which I’ve done in my post The heading structure for your blog.
  5. Don’t hide links in the theme.
    This one might be obvious but still: don’t hide any links in your theme that don’t belong there. One link to you as the theme creator: ok, anything else: nonsense.
  6. Have sidebars above the content in your code.
    In an ideal world, the first content in the HTML is the content of the page, followed by related navigation, then sidebars, then site navigation, then utilities like sitemaps and privacy statements. Having sidebars above the main content of a page though is a straight violation of the WordPress SEO theme guidelines.

WordPress SEO theme do’s

  1. Allow taxonomy descriptions to be shown.
    In most themes, taxonomy archives are boring as hell. They have no unique content whatsoever and just contain the latest posts for that taxonomy. WordPress has a core feature that allows for a description of a taxonomy though, and a good WordPress SEO theme should allow the user to display that description, topped by an H1 with the taxonomy title in it.
  2. Show excerpts on archives.
    Archive pages with full-length posts are not really any good for SEO, doing so on your front page for the last few posts might have some usability benefit, allowing users who come to your homepage to read posts immediately, for archives that benefit doesn’t outweigh the SEO.
  3. Allow for breadcrumbs.
    Most SEO’s these days will tell you breadcrumbs are a nice and easy way to create a good internal linking structure (provided the user uses the taxonomies etc. right, of course) so embedding breadcrumbs is important. Making sure they work with custom taxonomies is important too!
  4. Use the post title as the first anchor text.
    Don’t use “read more” or “continue reading” as the first anchor text towards a post, not in the body, not in widgets, nowhere. Just use the post title.
  5. Clean, cleaner, cleanest.
    Your theme code should be as clean as humanly possible, don’t overdo it on divs, etc. for styling, just keep it simple and solid, to allow for fast page loads and easy crawling.

Unneeded functionality

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there’s no need to put SEO functionality for titles and descriptions in your theme. There are a couple of very good plugins that can do that better than your theme ever can. While I wouldn’t distract any points for it, I’d rather you focus on great code for your theme.

Read more: What is a headless CMS and what does it mean for SEO? »

Avatar of Joost de Valk
Joost de Valk

Joost is an internet entrepreneur and the founder of Yoast. He has a long history in WordPress and digital marketing. On our blog, he has written a lot about SEO in general, technical SEO and important topics related to SEO.

Discussion (60)

  1. Yoast, is it possible to have a wordpress theme that’s originally poorly optimized (focused more on design), but improve it simply by installing your wordpress SEO plugin? Or do you need to at least start with a decent SEO theme?

  • Thanks for for the fantastic plugin. I wish it was preloaded with defaults though because I did have to do some googling to figure that out.

  • Yoast, help! “Generate SEO title” is creating page titles with smashed-together words, i.e. Thiefhunters in ParadiseThiefhunters in Paradise » or,
    High and Dry on the Streets of Elsewhere

    Notice “ParadiseThiefhunters”.

    Is it something I’ve done wrong?

  • Not a bad start for a list of do’s and don’ts.

    You missed a few.

    Don’t add rel=”nofollow” to ANY links, nofollow deletes link benefit.

    Don’t use headers for sidebar headings, why so many theme developers use H2 and H3 for menu headings and call the theme SEO’d is scary.

    Don’t link back to Home with anchor text Home, anchor text is so important don’t waste it.

    Don’t add social media links that pass link benefit to sites like Twitter and Facebook (such a waste of link benefit). There’s plenty of javascript based plugins for social media ‘linking’. Speaking of which are you using a plugin for the iFrame based social media links at the bottom of posts or is that custom?

    Do use headers with SEO in mind, for example use a lower header (H3 for example) to reuse the title of a post for the Respond to comments heading. but, don’t use too many headers within the theme, leave most post/static page level header use for the user to add manually.

    Do add support for useful plugins, like the Hikari Comment Title plugin (adds titles to comments), related posts plugins, etc…

    Do remove rel=”nofollow” from comment author links, nofollow deletes link benefit.

    David

  • Please help a Newbie this weekend?

    I have installed YoastSEO and want to use the export your settings feature. Unfortunately I am getting the following error:
    Warning: chdir() [function.chdir]: No such file or directory (errno 2) in /home/xyz/public_html/xyz.com/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-seo/inc/wpseo-non-ajax-functions.php on line 93

    Any advice much appreciated.

  • Your explanation is very simple and help me about the themes that said they are very good with SEO. I always believe that your contents is the important thing to get better rank with search engines. Thanks for the article.

  • This is the same thing that design agencies have been doing for years.

    They sell “SEO Services” with their design and know absolutely nothing about SEO and prey on ignorant clients, who then get turned off by SEO.

    So frustrating

  • Yeah I’m totally fed up with “SEO” themes which are not! And I’m another user of “Elegant Themes” who is fed up of their graphics heavy SEO light approach”

    But really with these “Do” and “Don’t” lists you really should publish even a small list of themes which are SEO friendly!

    Or are you just trying to tease us?

    Heck Joost you’re succeeding!

    :-)

  • Excellent stuff as usual, will be implementing these tips in our next projects. Thanks!

  • Now I have YOAST SEO plugin together with askimet can anyone please recommend the best WP security plugin – thanks

  • I’ve often read that breadcrumbs are good for SEO and internal linking–though they don’t always look attractive.

    With the Google Panda update, I’ve decided to reduce my site’s internal dupe (duplicate content)–by adding no index tags to category and tag archives. Since breadcrumbs link to categories (which are now no indexed), it seems like they’ve lost their purpose for internal linking. Thoughts?

  • Chris is there a fix for this? I use a lot of twenty ten v1.2 – I am assuming h1 there is utilised by the logo also?

    It would be great if we could have an initial list of themes to positively avoid; it is tough being a newbie.

    If you guys have not seen it Joost has posted an excellent video with ppt slides on SEO. As a newbie this has been hugely valuable to me – you can see it on this site url + wordpress-seo-video. 52 mins long filmed at A4UExpo London. This video gives you a chance to get closer to Joost and understand his style and where he is coming from. Priceless! I have ditched the old WP SEO plugin and am now using YOAST.

    Please Please Joost tell us which WP theme is best for newbies to consider when starting out with your excellent plugin?

  • The default WordPress twenty eleven theme uses h1 for their main logo.

  • Great idea. I agree with Mark; themes are often overlooked for SEO potential. People need to combine a good theme with other tools to maximize effect

  • Good stuff. Some nearly fatal, some minor but helpful. All 100% Joost genius ;) (Yes, I saw your bit above.)

    That said – and maybe it’s already understood – but I think it’s worth mentioning that the theme is just a tool. Yes, it should have certain capabilities. But there’s also some responsibility on the user’s part to do their home work, learn the basics, etc. That is, to know how to use the tool properly.

    Obviously, not so much directed at this community as much as some who might stumble through. Maybe it’s just me but I sometimes find people (read: clients) expecting maximum SEO bang while not being willing to invest the time/effort to make that happen. In other words, it’s not always the theme’s fault.

    Thanks again. Always a pleasure.

  • I would also like to know rating of theme so that in future I can decide to use a paid one or a free one.

  • I would love to see your rating of my fav paid for drag and drop theme – Headway, and my fav free wordpress theme – Weaver

  • You should be consistent in your use of the word “Don’t” at the beginning of each bullet in the “Don’t” list. Leaving it out on some makes it look like some are Dos and some Don’ts. Or leave it off all and just put a prominent Don’t header at the top of the list. Either way it needs clarification as I was quickly scanning the article and didn’t get it quickly. Or maybe this was an intentional speedbump to slow me down and get me to read more carefully, in which case you are a genius, carry on.

  • Excellent article – I will circulate

  • What do you think about woothemes, especially Fresh News? They claim to have some integration with Yoast SEO WordPress plugin :)

  • Joost, thoughts on Twenty Ten & Twenty Eleven?

  • Hi Joost,

    Great article – I wish more designers took these things into account.

  • Good information. I have my site logo (which is my main keyword) in H1 tags on every page, which means I have two H1’s on article pages. :(

    I already have custom header code, looks like I need to tweak it so the logo is H1 only on the front page. Good thing I like hacking code. :D

  • I use your SEO plug-in and love it! Do you have a list of themes compatible with it? I use Thesis and they don’t seem to play well together at times.

  • As said in the past I’m a fan of your WordPress SEO Plugin and I’d like to use it as much as possible, yet some themes are playing up when using the plugin. I’d like to know what do you think about Elegant Themes? I’m looking to buy membership and I’m interested to find out if they do their coding right.
    Many thanks!

  • Just great idea Joost, it is very often that after buying a theme I find that is going to be a nightmare to un-use it for SEO purposes (functionality for SEO must go outside the theme!!).

  • Thanks for your useful advices. Could you do a rating for the twentyten official wordpress theme? So many users (like me) starts their theme from this. What do you think?

  • Good article! I know there’s not too long ago your old theme used the H1 for the logo.

  • great post! that static meta description was on my header.php and i bloody didn’t like it. H1 for every page is reallt a very good addition. i used to see in the Linkdex that there were no Heading tags in my page..now i m gonna implement it! i m also making use of your awesome yoast breadcrumbs!!! they are seriously very cool! thanx for the suggestions…and about ur plugin..it is just mindblowing! :) :)

  • Sounds like Genesis is batting 1.000 on you list. Good stuff!

  • Good article. I might not be the author of a theme, yet would be interested in your rating on the Arras theme, as I use it on many sites like wellness-angebot.at. Maybe you can use that for your first article or get back to me via E-Mail.

  • Good article. I might not be the author of a theme, yet would be interested in your rating on the Arras theme, as I use it on many sites like wellness-angebot.at. Maybe you can use that for your first article or get back to me via E-Mail.