Evaluating themes not just on aesthetics / Fear of changing themes

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  5700words · Member · Aug 11, 2009 at 3:43 am

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  I am considering changing the theme of my Andreas ’09 blog and found two that appeal to me for different reasons: Vigilance and Grid Focus. I am afraid to just Activate a new theme because my present theme template has two sidebars and both of the new ones have only one sidebar…….. which means that maybe if I were to switch back to Andreas 09 I woud have to reconstruct all my widgets.

  My second issue is: How are certain themes better optimized/written for SEO? My blog hits are growing more with time, and I think I ought to learn more about SEO and about blog templates which somehow are better from the SEO perspective. These words that I am using are not from my head, since I know nothing. They are from a website about Vigilance that I read. The owner was ticking off each theme and why he liked it and didn’t like it. It was a good little lesson on how themes really are more than just an issue of aesthetics!!!!

  Is there a site where I can read about how the themes compare with regard to, well, SEO (search engine optimization — whatever that really is)?

  Thank you.
  Lornakismet

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  raincoaster · Member · Aug 11, 2009 at 4:21 am

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  As far as I can tell at WordPress.COM all widget-enabled themes have the same SEO advantages, so don’t worry about it. Comparison sites are talking about the independently-hosted versions of themes.

  Now, why do you care about SEO if your blog is already growing? Why, specifically, do you want to maximize the draw of readers from search engines? There may be a workaround if we know what the ultimate goal is, other than just bigger numbers.

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  husdal · Member · Aug 11, 2009 at 6:48 am

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  The most important SEO is not your theme, but your content, and while applying certain techniques for SEOptimizing your blog may be great for attracting traffic in the first place, it is not so likely that it will attract regular readers. Those readers will come based on content. Content generates backlinks generates targeted readers.

  The best SEO is common sense, and it all comes down to being concious about what (key)words you use in
  – Post title
  – Opening paragraph of post
  – Headings and subheadings
  – Link texts (including neighboring words that are not linked)
  – Post body
  – Tags and categories
  – Filenames of images
  and it applies not just post-by-post, but must be a consistent and coherent effort for your blog as a whole. All keywords should be unique to your blog and content. If you care about your blog, you don’t just write (senselessly) whatever comes to your mind, but you think first, and then you write. That is all the SEO you need. Really.