Generatepress is a well-known light weight theme with minimum framework. Is GeneratePress theme seo friendly? YES! UX ( user experience ) and crawler friendly are part of the 200+ google ranking signals and GeneratePress passed them all. All tests below, we are using the same site petconsortium.com to benchmark.
| Responsiveness |  |
| Cross-browser compatible | |
| Core web vitals | |
| User friendly menu | |
| Schema markup | |
| W3C markup | |
| Proper header tags | |
How to check a wordpress theme is seo friendly or not? You have to perform the following tests.
For user experience:
- Responsiveness
- Cross-browser compatible
- Core web vitals
- User friendly menu
For google crawlers:
- Schema markup
- W3C markup
- Proper header tags
Table of Contents
Is generatepress fully responsive?
Yes, unless you use the wrong layout that break the theme completely.
Why responsive design important? Now people use social media a lot and almost 95% of the biggest social media platform such as facebook, twitter, pinterest and instagram are mobile users. Responsive design ensure the websites layout automatically adapt to user’s device size.
How to check responsiveness of a theme?
You can use the following five tools to check:
1. Mobile-friendly testing tool by google
If google show you any loading issue such as images not properly load, you have to fix it. Image issue is not from generatepress.
Google already provided the best tool for us to test responsiveness of the website. You can do this with 3 simple steps
- Click right, then click inspect
- Click the toggle device toolbar at top center
- Then choose the device to preview as per screenshot above. You can also add other devices to your favourite list
3. WordPress customizer
After you login into your wordpress dashboard, go to Appearance / Customize. You will see 3 icons at bottom left – desktop preview, tablet preview and mobile preview.
Previously wordpress customizer do not have live responsive preview mode. April 2016, wordpress team did a great job and included this awesome function into wordpress 4.5 released.
4. Online tool such as responsivedesignchecker.com
The checking process is straight forward. You just have to enter the url and choose the devices on the left to preview.
5. Google chrome extension
This google chrome extension, responsive viewer by skmail is amazing. You can preview multiple screens side by side. This project is open source – https://github.com/skmail/responsive-viewer
Is generatepress cross-browser compatible?
Yes. This awesome theme proven work well in popular browsers. Why cross-browser compatible important? As of November 2020 according to StatCounter, even over 60% people using google chrome, still many people using safari. Safari is a well known browser for iOS device because safari stores bookmark and browsing history in iCloud. iOS device users love this function a lot.
- Chrome 63.58%
- Safari 19.19%
- Firefox 3.82%
- Edge 2.97%
- Opera 2.11%
- IE 1.13%
From the above statistic, you don’t want to lose firefox, opera and edge users too, right? Therefore, cross-browser compatible is a must!
How to check browser compatibility
Browser Stack, LambdaTest and CrossBrowser Testing are the best. Unfortunately, these tools are not free. So this guide, we will recommend 2 free tools for you to have a look.
1) BrowserLing
This tool support google chrome, internet explorer, firefox, opera and safari. You can also choose the version of the browser to preview. Honest speaking, very user friendly. The only con is this tool do not support microsoft edge browser.
2) BrowserShot
BrowserShot exist since 2005, an aging cross-browser benchmark tool. If you don’t get your screenshot due to a lot of demand, please click the extend button.
Is generatepress load fast?
No doubt, generatespress is the best of the best, the fastest theme that we have tested so far. Astra, neve and oceanwp also work like a charm but if compare to generatepress, generatepress still have our vote. Generatepress, we managed to get full score 100/100 in mobile and desktop. Astra, we only manage to get over 95. Both themes tested with the same dummy content, same server, everything is identical except the theme.
Core web vitals will be official ranking factor on MAY 2021. Please take precaution, pick a well coded and light weight theme before everything is too late.
How to improve core web vitals? Please refer to this well research core web vitals guide for more. These 8 simple easy steps will help you easily get over 80 in mobile and desktop.
Is generatepress have user friendly menu?
Free generatepress allow you to have only one header menu while the paid version, you can have up two – primary navigation, secondary navigation
Primary navigation: Can be next to your logo or below your logo if you want to put more than 5 menu items
Secondary navigation: Usually people use this navigation for “navigation” type of intent such as login, help centre, download app, my account, wish list. None woocommerce sites, honest speaking, you don’t need this.
Sticky navigation: When user scroll down, this menu will show and stick at top. We strongly recommend enable this. Your visitors don’t have to scroll up again to find the menu.
Off canvas panel: This is for large site. For example, amazon, when you click the 3 bar icon, this menu will show. Generatepress allow you to choose to float left or right.
Good hierarchical structure menu can save crawl budget and contribute a lot in UX. Group your menu using types of intent ( the best practice in seo )
- Navigational search intent
- Transactional search intent
- Informational search intent
- Comparison search intent ( also known as commercial investigation search intent )
Overall, generatepress have user friendly menus if do it right.
Is generatepress support schema markup?
Yes! Generatepress support popular schemas.
Why schema important? Schema markup help crawlers understand better the search intent type of your pages.
How to check schema markup?
To check the theme have any pre-build schema markup, you have to check the header.php
This theme, we found this code
<body <?php body_class(); ?> <?php generate_do_microdata( 'body' ); ?>>If you plan to use the JSON+LD in yoast seo or rank math, you can add the following filter into functions.php of your child theme to remove schema from GeneratePress ( theme microdata ).
add_filter( 'generate_schema_type', '__return_false' );You can also use Google structured data testing tool to check schema markup.
Is generatepress pass W3C markup validation?
Yes, generatepress is well coded and passed W3C markup validation. W3C stand for World Wide Web Consortium. Formed 26 years ago. W3C markup use DTD to validate HTML and XHTML documents of a webpage organize in the proper way. Validating html is a good practice for crawler friendly design because invalid HTML will affect crawl rate.
Is HTML validation a must?
How to do w3c validation?
You can use the official w3c tool.
Is generatepress use proper header tags?
h1, h2 and h3 extremely important if you want to rank well. These header tags make crawlers to understand your content structure better and seo guys usually wrap the LSI keywords or the matching “intent” queries into h2 and h3.
Seo friendly theme usually use h1 for all blog post title and h2 for post title in category / achieve page. Is generatepress follow this golden seo guideline? Let’s find out
Is it generatepress blog post title using h1 tag?
The easy way to find out is drag every files of the theme into notepad++. Notepad++ is a perfect tool for developer. We usually use this tool to debug and to compare 2 files side by side to find funny code.
From our search, 5 results found. Generatepress developer did an amazing job. The h1 tag hook located in line 639 in inc/theme-functions.php
Is it generatepress category page title using h2 tag?
Instead of using notepad++ to search, another easy method is use google chrome inspection tool. Click right, then inspect and you will see this.
YES! The blog post title in category page is using h2 tag. Well done generatepress.
Final Thoughts:
The free version can do the job really well and the paid version can make your site even better. For example
- Disable elements: You can turn off top bar, header, primary menu, page heading, featured image and footer per page basis.
- Site library: You can choose the pre-made demos and import with just a single click. Then edit from there. That’s why you do not start from zero. Will save you a lot of your valuable time.
- Element: The element function allow you to add new element types ( block, hook, layout or header ). This function is a must if you want to display ads. You can choose the location you want to display the advertisements, set the display rules, add exclusion rule or even add user rule. The header element type allow you to customize custom header style, menu, logo per page basis. Overall, the design, the sky is the limit if you know a little bit of coding and layout technical stuffs.
- Section: This is a golden feature for blogger. You don’t need any page builder such as elementor or oxygen builder anymore. You can choose box types, inner box types, add custom css classes to your prefer container or even link to section using custom section ID.
- Menu plus: This will activate the sticky menu and off canvas menu for you. A must for well structure website.
So, the paid version worth buying? Definitely a big YES!