WordPress Themes do make a difference with SEO

More and more sites are utilizing WordPress to create their websites. Why? It’s a proven fact that search engines “love” wordpress layout. Many site owners love WordPress as well simply because of the ease of use it’s so simple anyone can do it.

Fact is, it is so easy to update the site your self and change the look and feel of the design of the site is as easy as a few clicks.

Changing the “appearance” is done by changing what is called the “theme” which you can do right from the admin panel on the site.

There are literally 10’s of thousands of themes out there varying in size and color to meet your needs. One thing in my opinion that makes the biggest difference is how SEO friendly is it. In case you are unaware SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, that is the practice of Optimizing or enhancing your website so that search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing can more easily “know” what your site is about and determine what the keywords are that people are looking for to find you site.

Choosing the right theme is important if SEO matters to you (and it should). Now I’m not just saying this I’ve tested this time and time again over the years just to prove that this face is true. In fact I’ve done it most recently with a theme I “thought” was SEO friendly and the results was discouraging.

I discovered this recent proof by performing a marketing exercise that I do about once a week on my top keywords or buzz words for my top sites. To do this I just go to the top search engines and type in the key word or phrase that I’m checking. In this case it was for my book using the term “50 Biggest Website mistakes” (note: for the search I didn’t use quotes).

The results this week upset me. You see, in past weeks for that term, my site for the book was all over the first page of Google. This week it was not, in fact I couldn’t find the site in the first seven pages of the search engine. So my first thought was to try again, and again same results even for the other search engines. So I had to think what changed? And it dawned on me that recently I had changed the theme of the site to one that was to better enhance the book (so I thought). I had originally thought that the theme I had used was designed with SEO in mind but apparently not.

Now I could’ve used a plugin like All-in-One-SEO and kept the theme but I don’t have the luxury of extra time to add one more step to my processes nor do I want too. The first action was to go back to a theme I “knew” would work and wait for the search engines to respider the site. As of this post I have just changed the theme about 48 hours ago and I’m certain it won’t be long before I’m back on top again.

I will tell you that if you’ve ran into this same issue or are curious about what themes I would suggest definitely check out: Marketers CMS, Thesis Themes and Woo Themes

I hope this helps you stay clear of this same situation.

About Frank Deardurff

My Passion is my Faith, Family, Love for Music, Art and Photography. I myself have delivered many of my own training courses as well as webinars and teleseminars for many other coaching groups. I’ve also published a book titled “50 Biggest Website Mistakes”. Having many decades of experience in various forms of graphics and IT experience and aspects of online business, my vision is to help others overcome their fears and frustration with taking their businesses online and reach the next level of success.

7 Comments

  1. Kenny on August 13, 2011 at 9:49 am

    Frank,
    Thank you for sharing this info. It’s really helpful to know this, because it’s from your ‘real life’ experience – not just theory.
    I have been considering changing the theme of my blog… this will get me to think a little more about that.
    Thanks for posting the themes that you think work well.
    Kenny

  2. George on August 13, 2011 at 10:04 am

    Hi Frank,
    Greetings from the Coast of Maine.
    Thanks for the “heads up”. If YOU are having challenges then are the rest of us doome?
    Your findings are interesting. They may explain why some of my clients’ WP sites show up on the first page within hours while others can’t be found after weeks. And we use All-In-Seo on all our WP sites.
    Please let me know your results.

  3. Don on August 13, 2011 at 10:05 am

    Thanks Frank, for this great insite, but which theme does work the best for SEO?

  4. Frank Deardurff III on August 13, 2011 at 2:47 pm

    Hey Guys I’m glad you found this useful. The theme that I’ve used the longest is Thesis this site (frankdeardurff.com) has been on a thesis for many years. I just recently applied a thesis “skin” (http://thesisthemes.com) as it’s called to apply some great looking styles but give me all of the abilities of the Thesis theme. I’m applying the same them to my book site.

    I do know that Armand’s MarketerCMS theme is VERY SEO friendly because he has looked at it from the ground up from the eyes of a marketer.

  5. Don on August 13, 2011 at 4:08 pm

    Thanks Frank, I am so glad my wife (Carla mcNeil) found you on tweeter. All your coarses are execellent and you always over deliver. Don

  6. Frank Deardurff III on August 13, 2011 at 9:11 pm

    Thanks Don for those great words I do appreciate that very much. Look for an update soon on the graphics class 😉

  7. Kim Snyder on August 27, 2011 at 11:46 am

    Now I use Woo Themes because of the ease to work with them. I don’t mind doing the extra work but I also have more than one blog too. I am using Elegant Themes for one blog I noticed that it got google ranking in less than a week after I changed the theme from a free one to one I paid for. So I don’t know if that would make a difference or not but for one blog it did. There are a few plugins you can buy that will do the work for you as well. So it comes down to how much work, and what is your theme of the blog overall is meant to be. Just my thoughts anyway
    😉 I get your newsletter…

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