Not all themes are created equal and I would like to share my little “secret” of what is really the best theme for search engine optimization.
With the many theme providers to choose from with all of them claiming to be the go to in the SEO department who can you really trust?
Anyone can tell you which one they prefer and even at that, they will all have a different opinion.
Well unlike anyone with less than two years of online experience, I have actually been doing the whole make money online thing for the past four years.
Not to brag about anything but rather to show you that I have had my time of testing and running different themes in the various niche websites that I have created.
After all the changing and almost ruining some of my websites, I finally figured out what was really the best theme for SEO and it is definitely going to be Studiopress and their line of themes that are ran off of the Genesis Framework.
Why Genesis?
Because it is flat out awesome and will get you first page rankings with a very basic knowledge about SEO.
The beauty about this whole deal is that Genesis is actually a framework for an actual website theme.
Genesis is the main component of your theme but it uses an extra layer that you will do customizations from.
So first you will need to get the Genesis Framework and then you would need to get a child theme that best fits the look you are shooting for.
My very first premium theme that I ever purchased was Genesis and I got it without knowing the real power it had with SEO until I decided to try other themes.
Although you might think that other themes are doing a great job for you (and I don’t doubt that) let me show you why you wish you started with Genesis in the first place.
Genesis is Simple
I’m a really simple dude and that is also how I like my websites to be.
Forget about all the fancy cosmetic website stuff that isn’t needed to make you money as it is really just a waste of time.
You can be focusing more on creating quality content rather than trying to make your site look like some kind of commercial site when it’s really just a blog.
With complicated cosmetic nonsense comes the crazy coding in the background that is required to make the crazy effects happen and that is what you DO NOT need for SEO.
Having to go through extra steps just to load your site is a great way for Google to put you at the end of the line.
When blogging for SEO, you ALWAYS want to keep things simple and that’s what Genesis gives you.
No Extra Fancy Plugins
If your theme provider has you downloading all kinds of plugins to do normal stuff then that is not a good thing for SEO.
This again is another part of the cosmetic side of a website and is very much not going to benefit you in any way, shape, or form when it comes to gaining rankings within the search engines.
Most bloggers try to tell me that Thrive is best for SEO but they just have never tried a site that runs off of Genesis.
Thrive comes with a bunch of unnecessary coding and it will have you losing rank just because you are too complicated.
It might be great for conversions but that is not SEO in case you don’t know what their strong points are.
We all know how important site speed is in the world of search engine optimization.
Without crazy coding, your site will beat out any other site in regards to load time.
Simplicity wins in this department again and that is pretty much the reason why I recommend StudioPress over any other website theme provider.
Changes Don’t Leave You With a Negative Impact
When Google decided to throw out their update and give mobile responsive sites top rankings, it caused a big commotion in the online space.
Everyone and their mothers started switching themes and you had nothing but a bunch of pissed off website owners who wish they had never touched their sites.
Having a theme that is not as flexible as Genesis is what you don’t want when it comes time to doing any kind of changes.
Remember how I mentioned that you would need a child theme on top of the Genesis Framework to get things the way you want them to be?
Well, by having this in place you are also not going to get penalized if you did decide to change your theme’s website as the framework is the backbone of your site.
So you can change to any other StudioPress themes without worrying that you will lose all your rankings tomorrow.
Conclusion
I have tried Thrive, ThemForest, Elegant Themes, and your basic free themes that come with WordPress and they all have a different impact on your overall site that did it in a way that hurt me with SEO.
If the theme was good for converting it was bad for SEO.
If a theme was too basic, it had me downloading different plugins to accomplish what I was trying to do.
As an online marketer, blogger, or someone that deals with websites, you do not want to worry about anything besides adding content to that site.
Do too much and you will very much hurt your SEO efforts.
So if you want to know what the best theme for SEO really is, just know that it is going to be StudioPress.
If you are already an established website, please do not change your theme.
At the end of the day, a simple theme is all you need and you don’t want to go changing things this late in the game unless you want to lose some rankings.
Now if you have a completely new website that you want to build out to please Google, you know what theme I recommend.
Click Here to Get the Genesis Framework!