The Top 5 Free SEO Friendly WordPress Themes
One of the best things about WordPress is the number of themes that are available. Even if you don’t know a thing about CSS, you can still have a great looking blog in just a matter of minutes. While there are some premium themes that cost money to use, the majority of the themes that are available won’t cost you a dime.
Like most things that are free, it can be hard to judge the quality of a WordPress theme. Even though there are a lot of great free themes out there, I have also come across some very poor ones. Therefore, to ensure that you get one of the best themes available for your blog, I’ve compiled a list of the Top 5 Free SEO friendly WordPress Themes. Just add the All in One SEO plugin to any of these five themes, and once you start writing great content, the search engines will love your blog!
ProSense: If you want to create a niche blog that generates revenue through Google AdSense, you can’t beat the ProSense theme. Developed in part by Maki of Dosh Dosh, the ProSense theme has everything you need to create a great niche blog.
In addition to making it simple to add Google AdSense and widgets to your blog, the ProSense theme uses CSS that “is written so that your blog content is prioritized in the source code“. Available in brown/orange, clean blue or gray color schemes, the ProSense theme is the perfect choice for your a niche blog, regardless of whether its your first or twentieth!
Elements of SEO: This free WordPress theme looks so clean and professional that it could easily be used for a business blog. The theme allows you to upload different banners to the home, post and archives pages, so if you do use it for a business blog, this is a great opportunity to reinforce your company’s branding message throughout your blog.
Alibi Productions has done a great job of keeping this theme updated, so if you choose to use it, you can count on it functioning well with future releases of WordPress.
Copyblogger Theme: I could tell you why this a great SEO friendly theme, but I think the designer of the theme (Chris Pearson) says it best:
“Oh, and rest assured that the SEO aspects of the theme are absolutely top-notch. I view my themes as Web site frameworks – not just “designs” – and I wouldn’t bother to build a framework unless it was up to spec in all areas.”
With the ability to customize this theme to your own tastes, not only is this a great SEO friendly theme, but it’s also one of the best looking free WordPress themes available!
Guzel Pro Magazine: If you want to join the trend of using a theme that looks more like a magazine than a traditional blog, you can’t go wrong with the Guzel Pro Magazine. Developed by Gabfire Web Design and released at the end of last month, this is latest generation of the Guzel Magazine theme, so it is packed with a lot of great features.
Some of the features in the Guzel Pro Magazine theme include a professional control panel, multiple stylesheets and clean CSS. Because the homepage can hold so much content, this theme creates a lot of internal links, which can be very useful in boosting your rankings.
Neoclassical Theme: Yes, this is another theme from Chris Pearson, and that’s exactly why I included it in this list. Once again, I think he does the best job of explaining why this theme deserves to be in this list:
“I am not a designer, but rather a Web architect, and this product is reflective of that fact in many ways.”
In addition to its search engine friendly code, this theme features great typography and the ability to rotate your header images. If a blog with two columns doesn’t provide you with enough space, you won’t be disappointed with this three column beauty!
Do you know of another great WordPress theme that’s free and SEO friendly? Tell us about it in the comments!
October 10th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Thanks for a great list of SEO themes!
October 10th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Tyler– As always, some great resources. I’ve been thinking about adding a blog to my site lately (if I can find the time to keep up with it), and since I know nothing about design, these will really come in handy.
October 10th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
@Chris: You’re welcome, I also enjoyed the post you wrote yesterday.
@Eric: Also, if you’re adding a blog to an existing web site, you can get a WP theme that matches your web site theme for only $10: http://www.themespress.com/
October 10th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Personally, I would choose your Elements of SEO theme as it looks so professional and grand…
October 10th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Neoclassical is quite pretty.
October 10th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
@Auto Man: Yes, I really like the large header image in that theme. Just a note, I tried visiting your website, but I couldn’t get it to load
@Susan: Chris Pearson is quite the designer, I haven’t seen anyone else who can consistently produce as many extremely high quality themes as him. I also noticed that you have quite a few nice themes on your website
October 12th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Very cool designs and very seo friednly. Thanks for good good info
October 12th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Thanks for the post! it’s very informative.
October 20th, 2008 at 10:59 am
I just uploaded my first SEO optimized WordPress theme, take a look Smashy Magazine Theme and let me know what you think!
October 20th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
@Christopher: Very nice! I really like the dark version of Smashy Magazine, and the icons you used in the sidebars give the theme a very modern look (which I always prefer).
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Thank you for your site
I made on photoshop backgrounds for myspace and youtube and whatever
Hope you had a good day and thank you again!
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:48 am
very nice tips
February 20th, 2009 at 9:20 am
Super themes thanks for sharing
April 11th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Very interesting themes, thanks!
April 17th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Thanks for the lists, I prefer the Copyblogger.
This shoud do the job with all in one seo plugin pack
May 12th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
good theme, similar to Gear
June 15th, 2009 at 12:39 am
Good Design concept. SEO in wordpress theme is rare to see some theme as it is.
June 20th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
[...] The Top 5 Free SEO Friendly WordPress Themes [...]
June 29th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Nice post and great SEO theme…thanks
July 7th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
I am very much pleased to comments here I am also looking for SEO of my site that is why I need some more info as well as some better result in this area
July 15th, 2009 at 5:56 am
nice post…. thank you very much..
July 18th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Thanks!
I just grabbed three of the five theme’s
July 27th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Thanks l have just taken one of them
July 27th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
I will get them all, thanks
July 31st, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Wow.. Thanks for the list.. very nice
August 3rd, 2009 at 2:43 pm
I love the Guzel Pro Magazine:!
Thanks for sharing this … this really helps .. got the one i ‘v been looking 4..
thanks again
August 25th, 2009 at 6:45 am
thank you so much for sharing these~ I’ll try the 1st theme on your list!
September 4th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
great list
September 9th, 2009 at 2:18 am
This theme is absolutely worth the money I spent on it. Since using it a couple of months ago my traffic has nearly tripled. My site moved up a lot on a lot of keywords im targeting for seo. Anyway thanx now I at least know what’s behind the rankings increase.
September 12th, 2009 at 2:27 am
i would chose Prosense, it’s really adsense friendly and can earn good amount of money if write good quality of content.
September 21st, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Thanks..I enjoyed using your TOP 5 SEO Wp Themes..really satisfied..Thank you..
September 24th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
i wish blogger dot com have SEO themes too…
September 27th, 2009 at 12:33 am
how to know any themes its Seo Friendly??
October 1st, 2009 at 3:23 am
thanks for seo theams
October 4th, 2009 at 12:02 am
Hi Tyler:
Sounds interesting,but can you specify why these themes are top SEO themes,What should that makes this themes became top SEO themes so that can be used when we customizing this themes according to our specification with out hurting or hacking the main core
October 9th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
These are excellent SEO optimized themes, but the best are the Chris Pearson themes.
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:18 am
I already use the copy blogger and seo element themes to my Wordpress site,,i told u it is really works,,truly SEO Friendly themes..
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:40 am
I already use the copy blogger and seo element themes to my Wordpress site,,i told u it is really works,,truly SEO Friendly themes.
October 26th, 2009 at 11:42 am
CopyBlogger is a great theme. Chris Pearson is an awesome theme designer.
October 30th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Yes that's true Garry, but CopyBlogger themes didn't show site description, it's only show the titles, do you have any idea about this??
I am not so smart in CSS..I appreciate it if you give the solution, or maybe a few words from Tyler for this problem. Thanks.
October 30th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Great list, thanks alot. I am looking to move my site to wordpress so I will try these out.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:19 am
Thank you for this article. I was looking for a SEO friendly theme for my blog and this is exactly what I needed.
Excellent information and clearly written!
Cheers,
Jeff
November 18th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
Awesome list! I was searching for SEO Friendly Wordpress Themes and Google Landed me here
December 3rd, 2009 at 2:42 am
great nice themes
December 3rd, 2009 at 3:24 am
Thanks for the themes, always important to know which theme is seo friendly.
What I learned though is that it is better to have a theme with the sidebars only on the right part, so when google comes to your site, first things it sees is your content, than the menu, rss feed and other stuff you may have on your sidebar.
Isn't that right?
December 17th, 2009 at 1:54 am
SO tired of seeing those boring Wordpress designs. Really nice to see some fresh blogs! Thanks for taking the time to incorporate that in your blog. A sight for sore eyes to see.
December 26th, 2009 at 12:06 am
How about this theme http://seoagent.org/free-seo-wordpress-theme/
December 27th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
I choose elements of seo for my next blog
January 3rd, 2010 at 7:28 pm
This is exactly what i need. I've been posting articles which never showed up on Google search.. I think there is something wrong with the wordpress theme. Need to change it now. Thanks a lot Tyler.
January 7th, 2010 at 7:04 am
this really a good examples of seo friendly templets. especially the second one…
January 10th, 2010 at 10:54 pm
No offense but all of these themes are ugly. Great for SEO but bad on the eyes. These must be the only themes good for SEO because everybody has this same post going on.
January 17th, 2010 at 12:02 am
SEO wordpress themes combine with SEO Hosting, its a perfect combination.
January 17th, 2010 at 10:17 am
i am using Neoclassical Theme.. themes looks so friendly
February 15th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
Super themes thanks for sharing
February 21st, 2010 at 1:39 pm
Thesis is the best !