How To Choose A WordPress Theme For SEO

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, August 8, 2007

When working with WordPress you need to understand that not all themes are created equal. If you want a world-class blog that you can be proud of you have to consider the crawlability and the design of the WordPress theme that you are using. Some of them aren’t worth a dime for SEO.

For instance, on some themes the title may not be completely visible. That’s a problem. Another common problem you can run into is bad CSS. If the code doesn’t allow you to change your color themes then don’t bother with it. It probably has other issues as well.

You can check the code in your WordPress theme but even if it checks out OK you’ll still need to give it a test run to make sure it is usable. Not all problems can be detected before you upload your theme. For instance, some WordPress themes will not allow you to add categories for your links. If you can’t add link categories then it will be difficult to organize your sidebar properly. This is especially true if you plan to have a large sidebar.

Some WordPress themes include malicious code or affiliate code for the designer. You don’t want someone else making a dollar off of your blog every time someone leaves it or visits the designer’s web page. Do you? Some hackers will offer free themes then put in a back door so that they can add link code later for an affiliate that pays them. This is pure evil - black hat all the way - and you don’t want to get involved in something like that.

When you set up your WordPress blog it is best if you choose 5 or 6 themes that you like and rank them according to your favorite. Then you can check them out one by one to see which one is best for SEO purposes. A pretty design is nice, but if it doesn’t allow you to take advantage of the SEO benefits of blogging then being pretty won’t matter.

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4 Comments

Comment by SEO-WATCH

Made Thursday, 9 of August , 2007 at 11:11 am

Hello Nick.

I just went through your article and its very interesting. Nice tips for SEO and I totally agree with this one:

A pretty design is nice, but if it doesn’t allow you to take advantage of the SEO benefits of blogging then being pretty won’t matter.

Kool!

Pingback by 10 Great WordPress SEO Articles — www.aruntheace.com

Made Sunday, 12 of August , 2007 at 10:28 am

[...] How To Choose A WordPress Theme For SEO While starting a blog using WordPress, selecting a theme is the hard part. The theme should be nice to look and must be flexible to SEO. This article explains how to choose a WordPress theme for SEO. [...]

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Sunday, 12 of August , 2007 at 7:12 pm

Thanks!

Comment by namecritic

Made Tuesday, 14 of August , 2007 at 1:17 am

There are a lot of things to look for in a theme. I find that simple is best. Themes that have more than 100 files to upload are usually problematic, while themes that have only 20 to 40 files to upload seem to do much better.

Themes that incorporate drop down menus, AJAX, and those that do not allow you to manually alter the metas are also good to avoid.

I’ve tested the performance of literally hundreds of themes and tracked their progress with the same techniques being employed from an SEO perspective. Those themes that are more complex never out-perform the simple themes.

Applying the KISS principle applies to picking blog themes.