Search engine optimization (SEO) plays a massive role in the success of your website and business. That’s why every element of your website must contribute to your overall SEO strategy — including your WordPress theme. It’s for this reason that you must ensure you use the best WordPress themes for SEO for all your websites. Doing so will give you a better chance of ranking and driving traffic to your site.
What is a WordPress Theme?
A WordPress theme is a pre-coded file that provides the front-end styling of your website. It determines how your website will ultimately look. Your theme of choice can control significant elements like the layout to seemingly minor features like the color of your hyperlinks.
A WordPress theme allows you to customize your website to suit the vision and purpose you have for your website.
But more than aesthetics, your theme can also add functionality to your WordPress website.
Most users love WordPress because it comes ready to use straight out of the box. That includes a lot of free themes.
However, when choosing the right theme to use for your website, you need to look beyond looks. You must also consider the fact that your theme has an impact on your website’s SEO.
Your theme must both look good and play a role in boosting your SEO.
21 Best WordPress Themes for SEO
Creating SEO-optimized content is not easy. That’s why, to better increase the chances of your content being seen by your target audience, you must ensure your website is primed for success. One way of doing that is by using an SEO-friendly theme. These are themes that are:
- Lightweight
- Load fast
- Provide a positive user experience (UX)
To help you choose one that’s perfect for you, we’ve compiled this list of the 21 best WordPress themes for SEO you need to know.
1. Divi
Divi is one of the most popular SEO-friendly website themes on the market because of its versatility. You can use it to build virtually any kind of website.
Another reason for Divi’s popularity is its ease of use, thanks to the drag-and-drop builder. You can use it to build your website visually — no code required. Other features to expect from Divi include:
- 40+ website modules
- 800+ pre-built layouts
- Easy customization
- Shape dividers
- Filters and effects
Above all, thanks to its minimalistic coding, Divi is a lightweight and super-fast theme designed with SEO in mind. As a result, you can use it to build websites that search engines and users love.
2. OceanWP
Another WordPress theme built with SEO in mind is OceanWP.
One advantage of OceanWP is that it comes with beautiful, super clean demo content. This will help you have a better picture of what your website will look like. It also helps build your website faster as you can choose the content that best suits your niche and tweak it to your liking.
OceanWP also has the advantage of being a fast theme, resulting in your website satisfying Google’s Web Vitals requirements. It also ensures a positive user experience (UX) for users. Both are essential to a robust SEO strategy. Notable features of the theme include:
- Easy demo import
- Top-notch speed
- WooCommerce integration
- Full-screen scrolling
For international SEO, OceanWP comes translation-ready, enabling you to create a multilingual website easily.
3. SeedProd
SeedProd is a game-changer for anyone who wants to design a custom SEO-friendly WordPress theme.
This powerful, no-code website builder is used by over 1,000,000+ professionals to build themes right inside WordPress. It comes with 15+ pre-built themes that you can customize using the drag-and-drop visual builder. Simply point and click to create beautiful layouts that are tailor-made for your business.
SeedProd is fully responsive and mobile-friendly so you can be sure your site looks great on all devices. You can use the desktop and mobile previews to see how your design is coming along in real-time.
The builder also produces bloat-free and minimal code to ensure your pages load super fast. Other notable features of SeedProd include:
- 80+ pro page blocks
- Pre-built smart sections
- Color schemes and font combinations
- Built-in coming soon and maintenance mode
- Custom 404 pages
- WooCommerce integration
If you want complete control over how your website looks and functions without hiring a developer, SeedProd is the best option for you.
4. EcoCoded
As the name suggests, EcoCoded is a WordPress theme that prides itself on helping users build eco-friendly websites.
One factor that makes EcoCoded one of the best WordPress themes for SEO is clean, compressed code. Add to that the fact that the theme automatically optimizes your images, and you’ll have a lightweight website that loads super fast. Other notable features:
- Google Fonts
- Demo content importer
- Sidebar layout
The only caveat to EcoCoded is that it’s a no-frills theme. This means you can only use it for basic sites that don’t feature a lot of fancy animation, frameworks, and fonts.
Despite not having as many bells and whistles as other WordPress themes on this list, EcoCoded is a fantastic theme that packs a punch as far as SEO is concerned.
5. Ultra
Another theme that’s popular with SEO-savvy website builders is Ultra.
Ultra is a multi-purpose theme you can use to build stunning websites. It comes with beautiful demo sites (with over 60 professional layouts) you can import with one click. Tweaking them to your fancy is also easy, and you can customize everything from the header right to the footer. You also get 12 builder add-ons for free when you buy Ultra, giving you more flexibility to create your website to your desired specifications.
For a lightweight and ultra-fast WordPress theme, Ultra comes with a lot of bells and whistles that include, among others:
- Responsive layouts
- Slider backgrounds
- Video backgrounds
- Parallax scrolling
- Custom styling options
- Animation
Ultra definitely ranks among the top for an easy-to-use theme that fits well into your SEO strategy.
6. Indigo
If you’re looking to build a website that’s fun, fresh, and futuristic, Indigo is the theme for you.
Indigo takes a modular approach to web design as it allows you to drag and drop modules to easily and quickly create page layouts. Other notable features you’ll enjoy with Indigo include:
- Custom widgets
- Social media icons
- Contact form
- Google fonts
With easy-to-understand theme settings, a robust feature set, Indigo certainly qualifies to rank as one of the best WordPress themes for SEO.
7. Neve
One element that makes Neve stand out as an SEO-friendly WordPress theme is designed to meet Google’s AMP standards.
Because of its focus on mobile-friendliness, Neve is an excellent WordPress theme for websites that drive a lot of traffic from mobile devices. Besides mobile responsiveness, some SEO-centric features you’ll find in Neve include super-fast performance and clean, optimized code that makes the theme ultralight. Other features you can expect include:
- Works well with most of the popular page builders.
- Starter site library with over 100 demo sites to choose from.
- E-commerce ready with easy and enhanced WooCommerce integration.
- Greater flexibility with custom layouts.
For sleek designs and superior website performance, Neve is definitely one theme you should consider for your next website build.
