Thesis Theme
Why I Use It On 80% Of My Sites

Seen the Thesis Theme 2.0 offer yet? (read point #4 at bottom of page)

Thesis ThemeI have been using Thesis theme for 18 months now and it’s about time I gave an insider’s view of the theme. I use thesis theme on about 80% of my content sites (I’ll get to why I don’t use Thesis on all of my sites in a moment), and so the Developer’s license of thesis theme has represented really good value to me.

Thesis Theme’s SEO Strengths

Thesis serves up H1 tags for blog headlines

Other than your title tags, H1 tags are the most important on-page SEO factor. And it amazes me how many supposedly robust themes get this wrong. Some have the blog’s name – not your post headline – hardcoded as an H1 tag. WRONG! Thesis theme gets this right. It’s not rocket-science, but you’re theme has got to nail the SEO fundamentals.

You can control your title tag

Even more important than H1 tags are <title> </title> tags. Most other themes choose your syntax for you. Often it is the post’s title, a dash, then the blog’s name. This constrains your SEO capabilities. You need to have total control of your <title> tag. You want your keyword density to be stronger in your title tags than your headline tags, namely because you want your headline tag to be more ‘reader friendly’. Thesis theme hands you this flexibility.</p> <p>n.b. some wordpress plugins give you SOME flexibility over this, but you cannot guarantee that plugins will remain compatible with theme upgrades.</p> <h4>Thesis theme tells you the optimal length of your title tag</h4> <p>This is a relatively new update to Thesis theme. There is an optimal length of your title tag, because google a) only reads the first 100 or so characters and b) they only SHOW the first 73 characters. So you want to ensure that Google doesn’t cut-off your title tag in your search rankings, because it makes it much less readable (and hence clickable) to your potential reader.</p> <p>What thesis theme does is has a nice little widget next to the title tag on your Posts page – as you write your title tag, it tells you how many characters you’ve got left to work with.</p> <h4>You can ‘no follow’ links to the Home Page</h4> <p>Your ‘Home’ link in your nav menu is likely to be the most common link on your site, and you are wasting link juice by having it point to ‘home’.</p> <p><strong>4. Thesis effortlessly deals with canonicalisation issues</strong></p> <p>One of the flaws of wordpress is that it serves up different web ‘addresses’ for each page you create, e.g. mydomain.com, www.mydomain.com, mydomain.com/index.html. Duplicate content issue alert! Thesis theme has a simple checkbox to make sure they redirect to the same page to avoid this problem.</p> <p><strong>5. Thesis ‘no-indexes’ archive pages</strong></p> <p>When you create any post in wordpress, a duplicate is stored in the archives, and this can again lead to duplicate content issues. You can remove this issue by ‘no-indexing’ these archive pages.</p> <p>There are more kick-ass SEO features in Thesis theme, but I promised to give you a handful of specific features.</p> <h3>Thesis Theme vs Other WordPress Themes</h3> <p>Watch this illuminating video on why so many wordpress themes get it wrong. And why Thesis Theme gets it right. Note – the young dude is thesis theme’s creator Chris Pearson.</p> <p><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jjeLNhICAuc&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jjeLNhICAuc&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object></p> <h3>Breaking News – Why Thesis is now even more important for your site’s SEO</h3> <p>Google takes into account multiple factors when deciding where a website is going to rank in their SERPS. Things like incoming links, keyword density, relevance etc.</p> <p>Did you know Google made an announcement a few weeks back about a new ranking factor which they use heavily in their ranking factor?</p> <p>Google has started to take into account <a href="http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/11/13/google-page-speed-may-be-a-ranking-factor-in-2010">how fast a page loads</a> in the browser. From their end, a faster loading page = a better user experience.</p> <p>Suddenly this has a big impact on which wordpress theme you should use. Many themes look pretty, but their underlying code is bloated, leading to sluggish loading times.</p> <p>Here’s a case in point.</p> <p>Shawn Collins found (to his alarm) that his average page load time for his blog was <a href="http://affiliatetip.com/news/article003265.php" rel="nofollow">over 10 seconds</a>. This was the impetus he needed to install <a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk">thesis theme</a>, because Chris Pearson is ruthless in his quest for efficient code. A lot of the power of thesis theme lies ‘under the hood’. The results speak for themselves – Shawn’s pages now load in 1.4 seconds.</p> <h2>20% of the time I DON’T use Thesis Theme</h3> <p>Most of the time I do, but in some cases I don’t. Here’s the reason why – sometimes I need a site to have a certain aesthetic… to have a specific layout for what I want the site to achieve. When I need this layout FAST, I might buy a theme which already has an ‘out the box’ look.</p> <p>However, I only do this for short-term projects. The rest of the time, I customize thesis theme to achieve that exact same look (thesis theme’s design is infinitely customizable to your own look). Then I get the underlying benefits of Thesis plus the exact design I want. But when I need a look quickly for something, I choose another theme. That’s now the only time when I won’t use thesis theme.</p> <h2>Thesis Theme 2.0 is coming out soon</h2> <p>Chris Pearson has been working on the 2.0 version of thesis for a long time now. There are lots of rumors about what it’s going to be like. Chris promises it’s going to be a “game-changer”, which makes me think he is going to release something that’s not based on WordPress. The reason I bring this up is that if you get the developer’s license of thesis theme, you are going to get a free upgrade to thesis theme 2.0 once it comes out.</p> <div id="crp_related"><h3>Related Posts:</h3><ul><li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/wordpress-seo-thesis/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">5 Specific SEO Reasons Why You Should Choose Thesis Theme</a></li><li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/wordpress-theme-seo/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">1 Little Known Extra Reason Why WordPress Themes Matter For SEO</a></li><li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-theme-vs-other-wordpress-themes/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Thesis Theme vs Other WordPress Themes</a></li><li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/all-in-one-seo-vs-alternative/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">“All In One SEO” vs An Alternative</a></li><li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-news/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Thesis Rumors – What’s The Latest News?</a></li></ul></div><h4>Incoming Thesis Theme Search Terms:</h4><ul><li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-theme-2/" title="how good is the thesis theme">how good is the thesis theme</a></li></ul><!-- SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2 plugin took 0.752 ms --><p class="alert">Seen the <a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/plans2">Thesis Theme 2.0</a> offer yet? (read point #4 at bottom of page)</p> </div> </div> <div id="comments"> <div id="respond"> <div id="respond_intro"> <p>Leave a Comment</p> </div> <form action="http://thesistheme.co.uk/wp-comments-post.php" method="post" id="commentform"> <p><input class="text_input" type="text" name="author" id="author" value="" tabindex="1" aria-required="true" /><label for="author">Name <span class="required" title="Required">*</span></label></p> <p><input class="text_input" type="text" name="email" id="email" value="" tabindex="2" aria-required="true" /><label for="email">E-mail <span class="required" title="Required">*</span></label></p> <p><input class="text_input" type="text" name="url" id="url" value="" tabindex="3" /><label for="url">Website</label></p> <p class="comment_box"> <textarea name="comment" id="comment" tabindex="4" cols="40" rows="8"></textarea> </p> <p class="remove_bottom_margin"> <input name="submit" class="form_submit" type="submit" id="submit" tabindex="5" value="Submit" /> <input type='hidden' name='comment_post_ID' value='86' id='comment_post_ID' /> <input type='hidden' name='comment_parent' id='comment_parent' value='0' /> </p> <input type="hidden" id="akismet_comment_nonce" name="akismet_comment_nonce" value="cc1eb282e2" /> </form> </div> </div> <div class="prev_next post_nav"> <p>Previous post: <a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/all-in-one-seo-vs-alternative/" rel="prev">“All In One SEO” vs An Alternative</a></p> </div> </div> <div id="sidebars"> <div id="sidebar_1" class="sidebar"> <ul class="sidebar_list"> <li class="widget widget_text" id="text-3"> <div class="textwidget"><div id="multi-box-custom"> <h6>Thesis Theme 2.0</h6> <div class="multi-box-custom2"> <p>Thesis 2.0 will be released soon. When it does, its price is going to be in excess of $297.</p> <p>However, if you read point #4 on <a href="http://99wpthemes.com/thesis-2">this page</a> you will find out how to get the upgrade to v2.0 for free.</p> </div> </div></div> </li><li class="widget widget_text" id="text-4"> <div class="textwidget"><p>Join Our Facebook Group</p><iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/likebox.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpages%2F99-Wordpress-Themes%2F113661245359446&width=220&connections=10&stream=false&header=true&height=287" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:220px; height:287px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe></div> </li> <li class="widget widget_recent_entries" id="recent-posts-3"> <h3>Thesis Theme Articles</h3> <ul> <li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-theme-2/" title="Thesis Theme <br />Why I Use It On 80% Of My Sites">Thesis Theme <br />Why I Use It On 80% Of My Sites</a></li> <li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/all-in-one-seo-vs-alternative/" title="“All In One SEO” vs An Alternative">“All In One SEO” vs An Alternative</a></li> <li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/wordpress-theme-seo/" title="1 Little Known Extra Reason Why WordPress Themes Matter For SEO">1 Little Known Extra Reason Why WordPress Themes Matter For SEO</a></li> <li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-theme-vs-other-wordpress-themes/" title="Thesis Theme vs Other WordPress Themes">Thesis Theme vs Other WordPress Themes</a></li> <li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-theme-upgrade/" title="Thesis Theme Upgrade – how to">Thesis Theme Upgrade – how to</a></li> <li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-theme-alternative/" title="Thesis Theme Alternative – which is best?">Thesis Theme Alternative – which is best?</a></li> <li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-theme-review/" title="Thesis Theme Review – here’s 5 links to the best reviews">Thesis Theme Review – here’s 5 links to the best reviews</a></li> <li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-theme-discount-is-it-possible-to-get-one/" title="Thesis Theme Discount – is it possible to get one?">Thesis Theme Discount – is it possible to get one?</a></li> <li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-news/" title="Thesis Rumors – What’s The Latest News?">Thesis Rumors – What’s The Latest News?</a></li> <li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/wordpress-seo-thesis/" title="5 Specific SEO Reasons Why You Should Choose Thesis Theme">5 Specific SEO Reasons Why You Should Choose Thesis Theme</a></li> <li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/wordpress-theme-for-web-designers/" title="Is Thesis the best theme for your clients’ websites?">Is Thesis the best theme for your clients’ websites?</a></li> <li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-cms/" title="Thesis CMS: WordPress + Thesis Theme = Kickass CMS">Thesis CMS: WordPress + Thesis Theme = Kickass CMS</a></li> <li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/hello-world/" title="Hello world!">Hello world!</a></li> </ul> </li><li class="widget widget_recent_terms" id="recent-search-terms"><h3>Recent Thesis Theme Search Terms</h3><ul><li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-bonus/" title="qualify thesis">qualify thesis</a></li><li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-theme-alternative/" title="Thesis theme alternative">Thesis theme alternative</a></li><li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-bonus/" title="how to qualify a thesis">how to qualify a thesis</a></li><li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/all-in-one-seo-vs-alternative/" title="all in one seo alternative">all in one seo alternative</a></li><li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-theme-alternative/" title="alternatives to Thesis">alternatives to Thesis</a></li><li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-news/" title="latest thesis theme version">latest thesis theme version</a></li><li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-bonus/" title="thesis theme bonus">thesis theme bonus</a></li><li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-bonus/" title="thesis theme">thesis theme</a></li><li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/all-in-one-seo-vs-alternative/" title="altertive to all in one seo">altertive to all in one seo</a></li><li><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/thesis-cms/" title="thesis for cms">thesis for cms</a></li></ul><!-- SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2 plugin took 3.186 ms --></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div id="footer_area" class="full_width"> <div class="page"> <div id="footer"> <p>Get smart with the <a href="http://diythemes.com/thesis/">Thesis WordPress Theme</a> from DIYthemes.</p> <p><a href="http://thesistheme.co.uk/wp-admin/">WordPress Admin</a></p> </div> </div> </div> <!--[if lte IE 8]> <div id="ie_clear"></div> <![endif]--> </body> </html>