WordPress Themes
Once you have your blog installed you need to choose a theme (the design of your blog) so it’s not the classic default WordPress theme. You want to choose a Theme that is aesthetically pleasing to you and your visitors so they will want to come back. If your site is ugly some people won’t come back no matter how good your content is.
You have several options with choosing the theme. You can choose one of the many thousand free themes available for WordPress. Just go to WordPress.org to search or check out this list of 100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes or this list of 140+ Brilliant Free WordPress Themes.
You can also choose to buy a premium theme that is customized and gives more options and support than free themes. Good options for buying a theme include Thesis (affiliate link because I use this and recommend it as long as you plan on doing some customization to the basis design), Headway, Woo Themes( also offer free themes), Theme Forest and Studiopress Themes. These paid options will give you support from the developer and others as well as more options and functions for you to customize your blog’s look on your own. A paid theme can run anywhere from $50 to $150 USD. Paid themes are usually SEO friendly without any extra work or plugins, something you want to look for when choosing a paid theme for your blog.
A final and more pricey option is to have a web designer design a custom theme or look for your blog. This will cost the most and take more time but you will be sure no one else has a blog that looks like yours. If you have the money to invest in a custom theme from a web designer it can be worth it. This is a great option if you are really trying to be unique and stand out in the niche.
For most themes the point is just about creating a nice design. But many of the premium themes focus on more than design and actually give you a better structure for SEO. I recommend the Thesis Theme because of the focus it puts on improving a blog’s SEO, but other themes do this as well, especially Headway. If you use one of those themes you won’t need any of the specialized SEO plugins mentioned in the previous section.
