In news that’s been way too long in coming, I’ve just launched a new site called WordPress Theme Review. The concept is based directly on the work I’ve done to improve search engine optimization (…

This is a guest post by Steven Snell. Mr. Snell designs websites and maintains a blog for Vandelay Website Design. You can read more of his writing and see his portfolio at www.vandelaydesign.com.
Social media websites such as Digg, Netscape, Reddit, Del.icio.us, and Stumble Upon send thousands of visitors to blogs and websites everyday. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of articles about becoming a top user of these sites to build your traffic. While they are all tremendous sources of traffic, getting a significant number of visitors from these sites can take a lot of effort—especially with Digg, Netscape, and Reddit.

If you’ve avoided social media marketing because you don’t have hours every day to spend submitting articles and voting on those submitted by other users, you are missing out on countless potential visitors.

For the average user the main problem with the most popular social media sites is that it can be difficult to generate any kind of traffic to your site. Most of us are completely overlooking the opportunity to benefit from 2nd tier social media sites that send decent levels of traffic and can make it easier for the time-starved blogger to succeed.

Literally hundreds of lesser-known social media sites exist that present far less competition for the top spots. Yes, they will send less traffic than Digg, but if you choose the right ones to use you can see substantial results.

Like most things in life, blogging is most effective when you have a target to shoot for. People write blogs for many reasons: passion about a subject; fame; direct income; getting leads for their existing businesses; even just killing time. Often it’s a mix. At first, the …

I came across this video today and thought it was a very helpful explanation of a concept that confuses many people.

Click To Play

Since the last batch of search engine friendly WordPress theme recommendations went over so well, here are five more themes for the full version of WordPress (and if you’re on WordPress.com, don’t despair; we’re in the process of reviewing the included themes right now and will publish our recommendations for you soon).
XV – Revised
We like this theme’s code because it:

validates
has better-than-average code structure
emphasizes your post titles
emphasizes your blog name
emphasizes your blog’s description
uses unique page titles