I often see many blogs sharing the list of top 10 best free WordPress themes for blogs, businesses every month but none of them share the actual logic of how the template was selected to be included in the list. Having been a part of the blogging world for more than a year, i know how important it is to choose the right blogger or a WordPress temple for a site. I’ve tried several of them but only few of them proved useful for me. Initially, i had no idea on how to choose a wordpress theme? i did a small research to found out the answer to this question and today, i’ll be sharing this secret with you. Whether its a tech blog, coupon, eCommerce, news, education or a business site, following the below tips will ensure that you get the best free WordPress template for your site.
Tips to get the best free wordpress theme for SEO and Blogs for 2014:
Selection: Open the theme explorer and have a look at the right column. Here you’ll find most popular, newest and recently updated business, coupon site, personal blog templates. I would recommend you to go for the most popular section. Here you’ll find evergreen and the top rated WordPress themes for any niche. Now, check out the average ratings and number of downloads of every template you find suitable for your blogging niche. Once you find the best template for your blog, click on its screenshot. This will open a new page where you’ll find the green colored preview button to the right. Right click with your mouse on this button and select copy address/ link location. Open notepad and paste the copied address. Now, click on the title of any blog post to open it. Copy the entire address that you see in your web browsers address bar and paste it below the link i have mentioned above.
Checking html code: Now its time to make sure that the template you’ve chosen is SEO friendly and responsive. To do this, open the online W3C Validator tool, paste the 1st link you had copied in the notepad file and click on the check button. If the validator shows too many HTML errors after processing, simply dump the template as it’s of poor quality and it doesn’t follow the Google webmaster guidelines. Now check out for the h1 class=”entry-title” error. If you see too many of them, the theme is not SEO friendly as the number of h1 header tags on the website’s homepage should be 1 and it should be the title of your website title. If you don’t see such warning or error, check that the theme has too few validation errors else choose some other template by following the tips i’ve shared in the selection section. If you are done with this step, you can proceed ahead to check the HTML code for WordPress posts. Now, goto the the validators homepage, paste the 2nd link you had copied in the notepad and click on the check button. Make sure that the HTML code of WordPress post template has no or very few errors (below 10 or 20). Now, as your new theme for WordPress site has been validated online, we’ve to to check for the number of h1 elements on the WordPress post template as well as the homepage. To do this, open both the links (from the notepad file) in separate tabs of your internet browser. Go to the first tab, right click on the loaded page/ post and click on view source, press ctrl + f key on your keyboard top open the browsers find utility. In this tool, type h1 and hit enter. Check for the number of h1 tags on this page. It should be exactly one. If there are many of them, choose some other theme and re-follow the above steps to find the best free WordPress theme for SEO. Follow the same steps for the wp post template and make sure that H1 element is the title of your blog article.
Done!
I went Premium Pamod but toying around in your backoffice works well for freebies. Thanks!