Many people have been reading the posts on ProBlogger and this blog about the importance of good theme code and the role it plays in your search engine traffic.
Now, I’m a little biased 
, but I think one of the best ways to get a great theme with great code is to have it built that way; you get the best of both worlds: a custom theme that represents you perfectly, and great, search-engine-friendly code.
However, I’m also a realist, and know that many bloggers can’t/don’t want to put cash into their blogs, so I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight some beautiful WordPress themes that also feature excellent, search-engine-friendly code. Read on to see the first five selections (in no particular order). (Hold your mouse over a “reason” to see a slightly longer explanation.)
Iceburgg
We like this theme’s code because it:
- validates
- has better-than-average code structure
- emphasizes your post titles
- uses unique page titles
Gridlock 1.4
We like this theme’s code because it:
- comes very close to validating
- has better-than-average code structure
- emphasizes your post titles
- emphasizes your blog name
- uses unique page titles
Fresh (Compact) 1.2
We like this theme’s code because it:
- validates
- has better-than-average code structure
- emphasizes your post titles
- emphasizes your blog name
- uses unique page titles
Time Manager
We like this theme’s code because it:
- comes very close to validating
- has better-than-average code structure
- emphasizes your post titles
- emphasizes your blog name
- uses unique page titles
Fluid Solution
We like this theme’s code because it:
- comes very close to validating
- has better-than-average code structure
- emphasizes your post titles
- emphasizes your blog name
- emphasizes your blog’s description
- uses unique page titles
This will be an ongoing series, so if you want to know about a particular theme, leave a comment and we’ll consider the theme for future evaluation.
Hi,
Great post!
I am using Hemingway based 4u from utombox. I would really like to hear your thoughts on that theme. I just recently switched to this theme and after reading articles about SEO friendly themes, I have been considering switching themes. But, if 4u is SEO friendly then I would like to keep it as it looks so clean and cool!
Thanks for the effort
K
It looks like your comments on all of the themes are the same. Is that on purpose?
Meg
Update from Sarah @ Blogging Expertise: I’ve since updated this post, so this comment and the one that follows it are less relevant now.
Hi, Meg—it’s on purpose, but only because they’re not actually all the same.
Basically, we went through a checklist of seven items, and if the theme passed the most important ones, it was included here.
The comments list which items were passed. So, for instance, the “Fresh (Compact)” theme passed the validator with no errors at all, while Gridlock had just a few, but not enough to disqualify it. So the comments reflect that. I might structure this differently in the future, but that’s the current logic.
Good list. At one stage, I was using fresh.
My current theme rock - i have never seen such a spurge in adsense earnings, as with this theme.
It rocks!
Cheers!
Alpesh
Great post Sarah. This is exactly the help people need! Well done.
Looks like my comment got knocked out. I have used Fresh Theme and it is cool.
However, my current theme is certainly optimized for Adsense/SEO.
Cheers!
Alpesh Nakar
I am new but I’m thinking that unless the theme already shows up at wordpress.com then I can’t have it. Am I right??
I am using Blix 0.9.1 how does this one rank?
Thanks so much - Sue
Great choice of themes. Sadly, I’m not using any of them at the moment.
Looks like its time for another change of theme… sigh.
I’m new to the blogging scene and ran across this blog. How do I obtain the theme? Is there a step-by-step process or can I also get these themes through wordpress?
Hi, Tiiz–if you’re using WordPress.com, you are limited to the themes that are built in. With the full version of WordPress, you can download and install a wider selection of themes.
However, there are lots of bloggers on WordPress.com, so I may do a future post on just the themes that are included there.
I just found out that my webhost offers the FULL version of Wordpress for my business website. I’m not sure how this works. I’m assuming I’m suppose to download the theme then upload to my account. We’ll see how everything goes. Thanks for answering my question. I’m a newbie to this arena but my learning curve is exponetially growing. Hopefully, there are more hopeful people out there like you. Thanks again!!!
Your reviews of theme quality are highly valuable. Keep at it and that alone will bring you well deserved traffic.
Can you make a post that tells how to recognize a good theme per your qualifications above, and perhaps how to fix some of the elements? Overall coding will not be easy to improve, but if a theme already validates, then perhaps there’s not so much to do. I found that if I moved some code from a very good theme to a less good one, I could make the blog description show up in the browser window title bar along with the blog title, although I haven’t figured out how to make the blog description to appear on a single post page. Can you tell me how to do that?
Hi, Eric–
Each theme is a bit different, so it can be tricky to move code around (that’s the main reason I get paid for this stuff
).
For descriptions on the single post pages, you’ll probably want to take a look at the single.php files in both themes and see what differences are there. Title stuff is also often stored in the header.php file using conditional logic.