SEO Friendly WordPress Themes

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  robcox · Member · Apr 1, 2014 at 3:06 pm

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  Does anyone have any opinions on which themes are most SEO friendly?

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

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  timethief · Member · Apr 5, 2014 at 2:57 am

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  May I suggest that your read these two articles published by Staff?
  http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/seo-on-wordpress-com/ http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/seo-and-your-blog/

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  robcox · Member · Apr 5, 2014 at 1:45 pm

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  Thanks, both great articles and lots of common sense about SEO. I particularly like the bit about “In the end, remember that while it’s admittedly a lot easier and less scary to tinker around with SEO than to make yourself sit down and write, there is no shortcut to building a popular site“. Choosing themes and obsessing about SEO is definitely a time bandit.

  However, having said that I’m still wanting to get my head around SEO and WP Themes.

  I noticed that you made the comment that all WP.com themes are optimised for SEO but is this completely correct. From my reading about themes there seems to be a fairly big camp of people that think there are differences between themes and that some are better at presenting themselves to Google and Bing. Given that so many different people write these themes I would have thought that there would be differences. Or is there a special process for themes to be accepted by WP.com? Certainly a lot less themes than WP.org.

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  timethief · Member · Apr 5, 2014 at 3:50 pm

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  I can’t help you with rating the SEO of the themes we can use on WordPress.COM hosted blogs. I’m not an SEO specialist and that analysis of each theme is not available to us from any on site source that I am aware of.

  The only themes we can use on free hosted WordPress.com blogs like your blog are the themes found here http://wordpress.com/themes/

  There is no FTP access to free hosted WordPress.com blogs for security reasons and we cannot:

  • upload any third party themes,
  • create child themes,
  • create our own themes,
  • create our own layouts;
  • edit templates,

  or use stylesheets from other themes.

  There is no upgrade you can purchase that changes that.
  http://en.support.wordpress.com/ftp-access/
  http://en.support.wordpress.com/themes/adding-new-themes/

  WordPress.org offers free software that you can install on a web server. You can create themes, upload and install themes and plugins, run ads, and edit the database, etc. Learn about the differences here. http://support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/ To hire a web host see http://wordpress.org/hosting/ and then set up your own WordPress.org install.

  See here for a full comparison WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org

  WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org

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  raincoaster · Member · Apr 6, 2014 at 12:21 am

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  You are not reading material that relates to your kind of blog, period.

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  robcox · Member · Apr 6, 2014 at 7:38 pm

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  raincoaster I do understand the difference between WP.com and WP.org and I read material about both options. Thanks.

  Thanks timethief for your comments. As already mentioned I do understand the differences between the two WP options and the restrictions that apply to WP.com.

  Probably got a little off track but still interested if anyone has any information on the relative SEO merits of different WP.com themes.

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  timethief · Member · Apr 6, 2014 at 7:41 pm

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  if anyone has any information on the relative SEO merits of different WP.com themes

  Only Themes Staff have that information and in my opinion it’s unlikely they will post a list of the SEO ratings for the 148 free themes and the 108 premium themes here.

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  robcox · Member · Apr 6, 2014 at 7:44 pm

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  Thanks, fair comment.