The importance of a SEO friendly design is apparent to a lot of people trying to market on the internet while others are completely oblivious. I have more than a dozen domains where I use a custom Thesis theme to create my online presence. Thesis 1.7 has far too many features and benefits to cover in a single article, for a comprehensive look at Thesis 1.7 view my post on How a Custom Thesis Theme Provides a SEO Friendly Design
If you are using the search engines to generate traffic for your web sites, Thesis 1.7 is the obvious first step in a SEO friendly design. Right out of the box Thesis is a highly optimized Wordpress theme. However, it is child's play to take it from there to a fully custom Thesis theme for maximum seo advantage. The administrative options, integrated into the Wordpress dashboard, give you point-and-click management of a multitude of configuration tweaks.
The Thesis section of the Wordpress dashboard contains the following categories; Site Options, Design Options, Page Options, Custom File Editor, and Manage Options.
• Site Options - This section allows you to make site wide configuration and design changes. The overall SEO friendly design of your site uses these settings to make sure your site has all the components necessary to please the search engine gods on a site-wide scale. Title Tag Settings, Robots Meta Tags, Canonical URLs, Syndication/Feed URLs.
• Design Options - Here you can change things like fonts, colors, site layout, comment options, and the multimedia box. This section is one of the first places I come just after a new installation to change the number of columns my site will have, the width of those columns, and the order I want them to display.
• Page Options - Set your home, category , and tag pages in this section. The degree of control you have over your pages is nothing short of amazing. You can actually set the parameters for individual posts here, such as keywords, meta descriptions, and title tags.
• Custom File Editor - For someone who loves to get "Under the Hood", this section will be your favorite. The Thesis Custom File Editor is integrated into the theme. Php and style sheets can be customized with ease and power. A few lines of code here can change your site's overall appearance in a few seconds, not hours or days as in some other structures that I have designed.
• Manage Options - Brand new in version 1.7, this section overcomes a frustration of previous versions. You can dowload, upload, and restore all the configuration to your site with a click of a button. This is great for copying the style and flavor of one site to another with a bare minimum of work. If your site gets corrupted, simply restore a backup copy of the configuration and be back online within minutes.
The WordPress platform is very SEO friendly, but a custom Thesis theme takes optimization to a new level. I have been designing web sites for over 17 years, and never have I experienced the power and ease of use that a custom Thesis theme provides to the design, creation, maintenance, and administration. Thesis 1.7 is one bad boy! I wouldn't use anything else on my SEO friendly design.
Be sure to check out my hub on SEO friendly design and custom Thesis theme
