My website's speed and performance increased from 72 to 95 by simply using a better SEO-optimized theme. A visually appealing and user-friendly theme not only enhances the overall experience for your audience but also lays the foundation for good SEO practices, ultimately contributing to the success of your website.
The theme of a website is the design of all website components and how it displays all the website components, like headings on your website, images, the type of font used, the color of the font, the size of the font, the header, footer, background, page layout, etc. A theme is the first impression of your website. An important question that most people ask is:
Does the theme affect the SEO of a website?
A theme affects your website’s SEO, page speed, accessibility, and performance, and these factors are very important in ranking your website. The speed of a website will directly impact its ranking. Although the most important thing is the content of your website, if the content takes a huge amount of time to load, that will cause a huge problem. As every second matters in website loading. That is why a theme plays a significant role in ranking your website.
8 reasons a website theme is important for ranking
It is recommended
to select a theme that contains the following factors, especially for beginner
bloggers and blogger users. A good theme will save a lot of your time by
running your website effectively. Several factors will increase
the success of your website if you use a good theme. These factors include:
Search engine Optimization SEO
Nowadays, almost
every theme is designed with SEO best practices such as proper meta tags and
clean codes. a good theme contains almost all the factors that will help your
website in ranking. Especially for Bloggers who use Blogger as their blogging
platform, the use of an SEO-optimized theme is highly recommended because
unlike WordPress, which offers many tools and integrations, the Blogger
platform does not. It is very difficult to rank your website despite containing
good content with a poorly optimized SEO theme.
User experience (UX)
A good
well-structured and attractive visual theme provides a good user experience
by providing a clear layout with good accessibility and giving the user
information they are looking for easily and effectively. A good user experience
influences the readability, accessibility, and navigation of your theme. It
will also decrease the bounce rate of your website which in turn improves your
website ranking.
Credibility
An outdated theme gives
a poor impression to readers. A professional theme increases the credibility of
a website and helps to build trust.
Mobile responsiveness
Mobile
responsiveness is one of the huge factors in determining the success of your
website. The reason is an increase in the number of mobile users that access a website.
Every person is using a mobile phone to access all the information. Most people
use mobile to read articles because it’s easy. The responsive theme makes sure
that your website adapts to different sizes of devices and looks and functions
well on every device.
Speed and performance
A well-coded theme can contribute to better website performance by ensuring efficient loading times. Websites that load slowly can result in increased bounce rates and create a poor user experience. As the content on your website increases the load on your website also increases and decreases your website speed and performance. That is why select a theme that has a mobile and desktop speed greater than 90.
Avoid using extra Java
and HTML files.
So, I do a case
study to check whether the theme affects the speed and performance of a
website. Because as a non-coder, it is very difficult to change the HTML
setting without proper guidance and to change the theme. I used two different
themes and the results show that the theme hugely affects the speed and
performance of a website.
My website's
speed and performance differed when I used a theme without checking the
important factors versus when I used a theme while checking those factors.
Functionality
Themes often come
with built-in functionalities and features, such as sliders, contact forms,
social media integration, and more. This can save you time and effort in
setting up these elements from scratch. A good functional theme will also help
in getting Google AdSense approval.
Updates and Support
Customer support and regular updates are frequently included
with premium themes. This is crucial for keeping security, remaining compatible
with new technology, and fixing any potential problems.
Browser compatibility
A good theme is browser-compatible. A good theme can run on
all browsers your audience uses like Chrome, Safari, Opera, and Firefox. It widens
your audience range because your audience uses all types of browsers.
Conclusion
In summary, a website theme is important because it
influences how visitors perceive your website, impacts user experience, helps
establish your brand identity, and can affect factors such as SEO, credibility,
and functionality. Choosing the right theme and customizing it to suit your
needs can significantly contribute to the success of your website.