How to make WordPress Themes SEO Friendly

Posted by headsetoptions on November 20th, 2007

Many sites built on WordPress as a CMS use free themes that are more or less visually appealing but seldom optimized to help your site grow. With thousands of free themes out there, you would think it will be easy to find a theme that will do it all without any manual intervention, but that is not the case most of the times, hereâ€™s why.

Depending on what you are trying to accomplish with your site, you may fall in one of the following two categories:

You blog, but care less if anyone finds or reads it.
You are ambitious about your site and do care about your readers, and would like to take it to the next level.

If you are like #1, you can stop reading, because you Sir can use any theme as is and will get by. On second thoughts, you donâ€™t even need a hosted site to do that, register for a free blog on Blogger or WordPress.com and you are good to go.

But if you are leaning towards #2, then proceed with the rest.

To make matters simple, we can divide the aspects of your site design into two parts. First of course is the basic visual elements to make your users want to come back for more. Second and probably the more important part is to optimize your site to be as machine-readable as possible to generate that organic traffic by ranking high on SERPs.

Visual Elements

This part should be designed to help your readers:

Find
Interact (read/comment/subscribe/buy)
Leave only with the intent of returning

There are many free themes you can pick from some of the best WordPress themes that could accomplish this rather easily, and you will see what I mean. Although there are a few base criteria I would look for if I were to pick a theme that will help the SEO process in the long run. Hereâ€™s a quick run down:

What is the sequence of file load or refresh? (Header, Index, Sidebar and Footer is preferred)
How easy is it to make changes with the theme as a base? (I tweak everything I use, from themes to plugins, so I need to know if there is something that will pose a roadblock)

Also, to help in customizing the theme, find if your theme is:

Graphic intense, if so, how does it affect site load speed? (Check using iwebtools, Firebug or similar free tools)
Use any plugins, if so, are they useful? If a theme must need a plugin to work, then Iâ€™ll stay out of it.
Have ample space for large images in a post, it matters to me, but is not always necessary.
Have sidebars that will take the crap I usually fill it with? Two sidebars are usually better since we can group the sidebar elements if needed into say, “useless” and “worthless”.

Machine Readable Content

This part is very similar to the visual part, except the reader here is called a (ro)bot or an accessibility aid for say, the blind. This aspect of design is usually ignored both by designers as well as users. The most common reason to ignore this part is because “it is not obvious” when you see a theme or a site if it is machine-readable or not. Nonetheless, it is correctable, hereâ€™s how.

The process of making a site machine-readable is closely related to Search Engine Optimization or SEO in short, this could be a one-time fix or an ongoing process depending on your requirements. SEO fixes are not complex as made out to be, anyone with time and patience can rework their sites to make more machine friendly.

I created a list not long ago about how SEO could help increase organic traffic to your site. In this post, I want to focus specifically on some best practices that can be implemented to any site and maintained on a regular basis.

The very first thing to do is to check use your alts and titles, when adding images or creating link, make sure to include alts (since machines can not see images, and only rely on text) and titles while entering URIs (so the bots know what this URI contains).
Add a relevant introduction to your site, this will help both the readers and the bots get a feel for what to expect on your site. (An example would be my site!)
Pay attention to font hierarchy, make sure you save your H1â€™s only for your most important titles, some SEO gurus will argue that your post titles be H2â€™s, but that totally depends on the context of your headings, if you choose your post titles to be representative of your post (i.e. in context), then what is wrong with it getting some attention?
Sidebar headings are useless, so donâ€™t waste your H2â€™s or H3â€™s there, go with H4 or H5. Save the H2â€™s and H3â€™s for sub-titles within a post (I use h3, I think). Those using Sidebar Widgets Plugin know that H2 is used by default, the simplest way to overcome this issue is to open widgets.php file (will reside in the plugin folder under widgets of course) and replace all H2â€™s with H5â€™s (or whatever), use the ctrl+h function on a PC to find the H2â€™s.
Watch the flow of content, this is key but not usually that critical. Ideally, the content in the main column should load immediately after the header followed by sidebar(s), then the footer (if any).
Leverage the power of long keywords, use tools such as Google Analytics to track key words or sentences used to find your site in SERPs, turn those into keywords for future posts to help build on existing strengths.
Watch your anchor text for outgoing links, make sure you not using keywords you want your own site to rank higher.
Finally, when you write a post, ensure the keyword you are targeting is being used appropriately and is included in the title

Of course there is more, but I will save the rest for a later post. In the mean time, enjoy the tweaking and happy holidays!

This blog post was guest authored by Sunny from headsetoptions.org. When asked to write on wpSnap.com, his first response was “Are you nuts, I donâ€™t even write on my own blog anymore”. Well, with a little persuasion, he agreed.

Tagged: WordPress Tutorials, wpsnap

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Posted by jeremy on November 19th, 2007

Beer WordPress Theme

WordPress Theme Beer by Designoahu.com features a nice heady pour of beer in the background. The content is displayed on a slightly transparent background to show the beer in the background. This theme is great for beer related or party related blogs. The theme is widget ready and features 2 columns with the sidebar to the right of the content.

Demo | Download | Theme URI

Tagged: WordPress Themes Gallery, submit your themes

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RM Rocking Flower

Posted by wpdesign on November 19th, 2007

Rocking Flower WordPress Theme

Free wordpress theme: Rocking Flower stands out from the other. Notice that it has a large and eye-catching flower header. An elegant wordpress theme for you by Rahmatblog.com.

girly wordpress theme
elegant wordpress theme
valid XHTML and CSS
widget ready
premium quality design
Works on the latest Wordpress 2.3.1
Free with license: Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Demo | Download | Mirror #1

Tagged: New WP Themes, WordPress Templates, WordPress Themes Gallery, submit your themes

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Posted by templatepanic on November 19th, 2007

Winter Ice WordPress Theme

Winter Ice is a Wordpress Theme with polar bear and winter background. A two column layout, fixed width 930px, Tested in browser IE, Opera, Safari and Firefox by Templatepanic.com.

Demo | Download

Tagged: WordPress Skins, WordPress Templates, WordPress Themes Gallery, submit your themes

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New WordPress Themes for Aug 5, 2007

Dignity

Posted by Eric on November 19th, 2007

Dignity WordPress Theme

WordPress Theme Dignity by Themebox.org is a 2-column theme with widget supported sidebar, and the header image and profile information can be customized by WP admin panel.

Demo | Theme URI

Tagged: WordPress Themes Gallery, submit your themes

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Abstract Shylock

Posted by Eric on November 19th, 2007

Abstract Shylock WordPress Theme

WordPress Theme Abstract Shylock is a 2 column WordPress theme, with a fixed width of 760px, which means it works even for those with 800Ã—600 resolutions by Shylockblogging.com.

Demo | Theme URI

Tagged: WordPress Themes Gallery, submit your themes

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Sans-serif Racer

Posted by Eric on November 19th, 2007

Sans-serif Racer WordPress Theme

WordPress Theme Sans-serif Racer is minimal, 2-column with custom classes for styling by Konstruktors.com.

Demo | Theme URI

Tagged: WordPress Themes Gallery, submit your themes

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Primitive

Posted by Eric on November 19th, 2007

Primitive WordPress Theme

WordPress Theme Primitive is for blogs with a simple design and no images involved, good for faster loading of websites. This is a fluid width, 2 column theme by SamirKamble.com

Demo | Theme URI

Tagged: WordPress Themes Gallery, submit your themes

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Greenicon

Posted by Eric on November 19th, 2007

Greenicon WordPress Theme

Greenicon by Askgraphics.com is a 3 Column theme in green header and black, with silver post areas. Page menu has nifty icons and theme works with all versions upto WP 2.3.1.

Demo | Theme URI

Tagged: WordPress Themes Gallery, submit your themes

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FantastycVector

Posted by Eric on November 19th, 2007

FantastycVector WordPress Theme

FantastycVector is a free WordPress theme with customizable graphics.

Demo | Theme URI

Tagged: WordPress Themes Gallery, submit your themes

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Wicked Lemon

Posted by Eric on November 14th, 2007

Wicked Lemon WordPress Theme

Wicked Lemon comes with not one but two cool effects! First is the Docking sidebar. You can click and drag the different sidebar items and dock them anywhere on the sidebar. The second effect is the coolest one to checkout. How many times do you find yourself switching and modifying the color patterns to suit your mood? Yes, we present you with the CSS Style Switcher inbuilt in the theme. There are four color themes for you to choose from and if you donâ€™t like any of them, just create your own!

Live Demo | Download | Theme URI