Marketing with WordPress and More

For best results blogs should have a search engine optimized (SEO), easy to navigate theme and quality content.

The theme for Speed Online Wealth Blog was the free default WordPress theme, Kubrick, for a while. I optimized it as much as I could, but I still wasn’t happy with it. The search for something better began.

There are many free WordPress themes on the net.  Search for  ‘free WordPress themes’  and you’ll find hundreds. Free themes can be fine for business blogs when you tweak them with several plugins. This post may help you: 11-Wordpress-Plugins-for-Internet-Marketers

Best Free Theme Resources I’ve found

Note: the best free themes aren’t just lookers – they are full featured & reliable

One Hertz.com

Best WP Themes.com

1blogtheme.com

You can change the theme for your business blog as many times as you like. I ‘tried on’ many different themes before I found any that I wanted to use.  Usually a quick preview was all I needed to figure out if I should axe a theme right away.

BUT it can be quite risky to change themes so I wanted to be careful.

Why can it be risky to change themes?

It can mess up crucial blog settings. This can create a lot of frustrating extra work for you. I learned my lesson with this, believe me. Many of the themes I tried needed too many tweaks for a non-programmer like me to handle.

What Does It Take to Create a

Truly Stellar Business Blog Theme?

Investing in good theme software is wise if you want full features and support. This is also referred to as a ‘premium theme.’  Not all premium themes are fully customizable or good, of course, but many of them are well worth the expense.

The Best Premium Themes…

• make it easy for you to have the look and features that you prefer, not what another person prefers, which is a problem when you go with a free theme template or many of the premium themes on the market

• optimize your blog for search engines (SEO) so that more people can find your site, or at least be easy to tweak with plugins for the same effect. Out-of-the-box they should at least have a structure that is reasonably good for SEO.

• allow you to change to a different ‘look’ if you want to while keeping your preferred settings. So if you want no sidebar or several, a large header or small, etc. it will be possible and won’t mess up your blog overall.

• have great technical support & ideally an active user forum
• have free lifetime upgrades

• allow you to use the theme on sites you built for other people (usually there is an additional fee for this)

Check Out:

frugal Theme

It meets ALL of the above criteria

People often mention Thesis as being a great premium theme, but I prefer frugal Theme.

Why?

• It’s easier to customize. I bought Thesis and ended up returning it in a few days to buy frugal instead!
• Eric Hamm, frugal’s creator, is EXCELLENT about getting back to customers. He offers great technical support too.
• every now and again there is a terrific sale on frugal

Remember, whether you use a free theme or a premium theme, you should provide great content on your blog so people will want to return to read more. Looks alone won’t do it.

Will you return to this blog to read more? I hope so.

~ Lillea Woodlyns

P.S. I’ve been asked why I use Mandigo theme instead of frugal Theme on this site. Great question. The answer is that I have set up things to suit the theme I’m using, so switching would mean more work for me and I have a number of projects on the go right now. I may switch in the future, but for now I’ll stick with Mandigo Theme on this site.  I’m developing other sites with frugal - I bought a developer’s license for it -  so I DO use it and I love it! That’s why I 100% recommend that you check it out and consider it before ANY other premium theme!