There are many WordPress Themes that are advertised as SEO friendly or SEO optimized, but very few actually are search engine optimized themes. I’ve spent almost a decade working with WordPress and almost as long developing WordPress SEO themes. To date (June 2014) I haven’t reviewed a WordPress theme (not developed by yours truly :-)) that was search engine optimized anywhere near the standard of my SEO themes. I’ve been that confident in my WP themes I’ve offered up to $5,000 for the first person who finds a WordPress theme that offers all the SEO features of the themes I develop plus one more SEO feature. No one has come close to claiming a cash prize. So you think a […]
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WordPress Theme Review
David,
new theme is great looking. After i downloaded Talian 05 and set it up, my site looks a hundred percent better. This theme Talian 05 is the only thing i have ever bought on the internet that was worth the money. Cant hardly wait for the new theme.
Billy
Talian AdSense Theme Review
David
OMG, the Talian 5 theme is amazing!!! I am only getting started with it but own MANY expensive themes (without naming them) this theme ROCKS.
Can’t wait for Stallone 6.0 but I am no where near ready for it.
The learning curve for this theme is not hard at all but still needs to be done. Normally I don’t read instructions(guy thing you know) but I am making an exception this time…I don’t want to miss one tiny little part of this functionality.
THANK YOU for a great job on this theme.
Larry
Talian AdSense Theme Review
Stallion WordPress SEO Theme Tutorials
Thanks very much :-))
Funnily enough despite writing mammoth readme files for Talian 5, like most men I rarely read instructions myself :-)
For Stallion 6 there’s not going to be readme files per se, putting it all on the new Stallion site as Posts with comments open for me and others to expand on what’s possible as a Stallion theme tutorial.
Stallion 6 is in many respects easier to use for those not interested in detailed settings, add your AdSense, Chitika and Clickbank IDs on one page, setup your widgets like you would with any theme and you can stop there if you are happy with the default colours and banners. I’ve setup the ads so even if you have all three ad systems running on one site (I think that will be a rare setup) it doesn’t overload the site with ads as many are turned off by default.
You can then take your time deciding exactly which ad system should take most prominence, where ads are located etc… Which colour scheme you want etc…
Talian 5 is brilliant, Stallion 6 is fecking awesome :-)
For those that understand SEO and have experience with advertising on sites I think they’ll be very impressed with what I’ve achieved with Stallion 6.
David
Stallion WordPress SEO Theme Tutorials
WordPress Star Rating Reviews
Dear David,
I did lot of search for SEO optimized themes fro wordpress and found yours
It looks great
I have a question
As I am mainly concentrated on product reviews, some times I review one product in one page (or a post in a category), and sometimes many related products in one place. It needs some kind of rating (like star rating).
Do you suggest to use some rating plugins available or do you have a built in plugin for that? If no, do you consider this and will it help?
Thanks
WordPress Star Rating Reviews
Product Reviews WordPress Theme
Stallion currently has no product review specific feature, like a Star Rating system.
It is a WP theme feature area I’m interested in since it’s a site niche Internet marketers tend to get into and Stallion is aimed at people like me who want to make money online from a variety of site niches.
While I was working on the Stallion 6.1 update had a look at a couple of star rating plugins, one called “GD Star Rating” looked interesting from a feature perspective, BUT there were SEO issues with the code.
The plugin author had used link code (like a text link minus anchor text and a URL, like a broken link) with rel=”nofollow” attributes.
I’m not sure how Google would treat link code like that, worse case scenario is it’s treated as a standard text link which has the potential to seriously damage SERPs: anchor text of links is very important, these have none, nofollow deletes link benefit and the plugin generates a lot of links like the above since each post can have over 10 for the post and 10 for each comment.
Was quite heavy on database queries on posts with a lot of comments, a post with 30 odd comments had an extra 150+ database queries for example. If it wasn’t for the database queries I might see if I could fix the code issue, should be able to replace the code with span tags which have no SEO impact.
Relatively easy to find interesting features, but not so easy if you don’t want to damage a sites SEO or waste server resources.
David
Product Reviews WordPress Theme
GD Star Rating Review
Thanks a lot David for your quick reply
I was thinking to ask you about GD star rating plugin :), best part is you discussed it. Yes it is rich in feature, however I understand your concern.
Thanks a lot
Pradeep
Theme Review
Hi Dave,
just installed Stallion 6.2 and am really happy with results.
There is a lot of setup but noticed a very well setup area on your site for answers to problems we may have.
I think you have really have an outstanding product now.
I am really happy with my site now.
The add background was the one thing I wanted you to add.
My site looks very professional now and many thanks to you.
Bill
Theme Review
WordPress Elegant Theme Review
You all are talking about SEO, but take my blog, here I am using WordPress Elegant Theme which is beautiful but not too much SEO friendly, but 78.82% of my blog’s traffic comes from Search engine.
So Spending time on seo is good but “CONTENT IS THE KING”
*****************************************
Last thing please Let us know about the review entries. As some of them may have copied from my review!!
WordPress Elegant Theme Review
HeatMap WordPress SEO Theme H1 Header on Home Page
Just wanted to clear something up regarding the ‘H1’ tag concern on the home page for the HeatMap Theme. The instructional page on Heatmap’s website explains to use what they call the ‘Featured Page’ as your home page or ‘Front Page’. When you choose this option in WP settings, your home page (an actual ‘page’ in WP that you choose) gives the page title an H1 tag and then all of your article titles listed on the page H2 tags.
This H1 tag is not the ‘meta’ title tag in the heading but rather below the header at the top of the page.
Is it better to have the ‘page title’ as an H1 tag?
Thanks
One more thing. One of my sites that uses the HeatMap theme is phenomenal regarding Adsense ads (image only ads 300×250) for a ‘free software’ downloads. The positioning and flexibility options you have in HeatMap have helped my CTR like you would not believe. I don’t want to shamelessly plug my site here in your forum and honestly try not to share my big money making techniques that I’ve worked hard to learn how to do but I’m always more than willing to help anyone or answer questions with their sites. I love to give input and make suggestions to help others. What you put out into this world comes back to you — IMO!
P.S. — I’m curious about this other theme you are plugging and look forward to checking it out. Love your site by the way! Nicely organized.
Scott
HeatMap WordPress SEO Theme H1 Header on Home Page
Heatmap WordPress Theme vs Talian 5 Theme vs Stallion SEO Theme Headers
Not sure what the H1 header usage in Heatmap theme has to do with the Talian theme, but happy to compare header usage, not just H1 let’s look at all H* usage.
Talian 5 isn’t my best WordPress SEO or AdSense theme, Stallion 7 is better, but will compare both.
I’ll use your site as a Heatmap example.
Headers H1 to H6 Best SEO Practices
For all H* headers there should not be any sitewide headers, H1 through to H6 should never be used sitewide (basically you should never use the same content like the blog name in a header sitewide), on this point may WordPress themes fail.
H1 Comparison : Best SEO Practices
The H1 header for SEO reasons is generally used once per page and contains the most important keyword phrase (main SERP or very close derivative).
Heatmap Home Page : Site Title
Talian 5 Home Page : Site Title
Stallion 7 Home Page : Site Title
All use best SEO practices
Heatmap Categories : No H1 Present
Talian 5 Categories : Category Title
Stallion 7 Categories : Category Title
Stallion and Talian use best SEO practices, Heatmap fails.
Heatmap Tags : No H1 Present
Talian 5 Tags : Tags Title
Stallion 7 Tags : Tags Title
Stallion and Talian use best SEO practices, Heatmap fails.
Heatmap Single Posts and Static Pages : Post/Page Title
Talian Single Posts and Static Pages : Post/Page Title
Stallion 7 Single Posts and Static Pages : Post/Page Title
All use best SEO practices
Didn’t check 404’s, search pages can say Stallion and Talian use best SEO practices on all page types.
H2 Comparison : Best SEO Practices
The H2 header for SEO reasons is generally used at least once per page and contains important keyword phrase, important derivative keyphrases to the main SERP(s) for that page only.
Heatmap Home Page : Archived Post Titles X 8 (one for each archived post)
Talian 5 Home Page : Archived Post Titles X 8 (one for each archived post)
Stallion 7 Home Page : Archived Post Titles X 3 (one for each of the first 3 archived post)
Using same format as your home page which has 8 archived posts, for categories and tags will use 8 as the base number.
This is where Stallion starts to take the lead. Although having 8 H2 headers on the home page isn’t the end of the world it’s not ideal, with the H2 header it’s generally best practice to have a small number unless it’s a really large page, so 1, 2 or 3 H2’s is best. Pretty sure Stallion is the only WordPress theme that includes this feature. With Talian and Heatmap if your archives show 20 posts you get 20 H2 headers!
Heatmap Categories : Category Title and Archived Post Titles X 8 (one for each archived post)
Talian 5 Categories : Archived Post Titles X 8 (one for each archived post)
Stallion 7 Categories : Archived Post Titles X 3 (one for each of the first 3 archived post)
Using same format as your home page which has 8 archived posts.
Heatmap fails, puts the Category title in the first H2, this should be a H1. Talian is best SEO practices for a good WordPress SEO Theme, Stallion is THE best WordPress SEO theme and starts to take the lead SEO wise on headers.
Like with the home page having 8 H2 headers on the category page isn’t the end of the world it’s not ideal, with the H2 header it’s generally best practice to have a small number unless it’s a really large page, so 1, 2 or 3 H2’s is best. The other post titles in Stallion on archives are within H3 (up to 4 H3s), H4 (the rest).
Tags same as categories.
Heatmap Single Posts and Static Pages : Not Used (I think your H2s are added manually?)
Talian Single Posts and Static Pages : Not Used
Stallion 7 Single Posts and Static Pages : Not Used
All use best SEO practices in my expert SEO opinion. As a theme developer for posts and pages it’s best to not use the H2 header, this allows the webmaster to add a relevant H2 header manually. This does leave some SEO to the user, but SEO theme developers shouldn’t force a H2.
Getting bored now so will speed things up :-)
H3, H4, H5, H6 Comparison : Best SEO Practices
This is where it gets a little subjective, I don’t see much value in adding H5 and H6 to a theme, these headers are so deep should be left for the user to add on larger posts (many posts H5+ won’t be appropriate). H3 and H4 I use within the theme to support the main pages SERPs.
Heatmap uses sitewide H4s for widget headings, major SEO mistake
Talian 5 doesn’t have any sitewide H*s. On posts and pages H3 and H4 are used to repeat the title of the post/page
Stallion 7 doesn’t have any sitewide H*s. On posts and pages H3 and H4 are used to repeat the title of the post/page with the option to use what are part of the Stallion All In One SEO features, a set of 5 additional keyphrases that can be added to every post/page (on the edit screen). This site uses Stallion 7, look at the header usage of the main Talian 5 post. For example above the comment form there’s a H4 header “Leave a reply to WordPress SEO Ad Theme”, WordPress SEO Ad Theme is one of the Stallion All In One Keyphrases. Above the comments is a H3 “### responses to Talian WordPress SEO Theme”, Talian WordPress SEO Theme is another Stallion All In One SEO Keyphrase. This adds SEO relevance to derivative SERPs.
As mentioned earlier in Stallion on archive pages H3s and H4s are used, the archived posts titles.
As you can see Talian 5 is a good WordPress SEO theme, Stallion is the best WordPress SEO theme. Heatmap is OK, but fails in a few key areas.
Take into account this is only looking at headers, Heatmap has loads of basic SEO mistakes like using anchor text Read More, it’s not an SEO theme, not even close.
Heatmap is a good ad theme, on AdSense ad placement I don’t see any ad placement that can’t be made with Talian and Stallion. I note the main content AdSense ad on your posts isn’t wrapped by your content, that might be because you added a couple of headers to the content manually that would result in the content not wrapping (have the same issue with Talian/Stallion if you add a header high in the content : headers are block elements so break floats). On your site your home page and archives lacks a floating main content AdSense ad which will be leaving ad money on the table.
Stallion also includes Chitika, Infolinks and Kontera ad networks built in.
David
Heatmap WordPress Theme vs Talian 5 Theme vs Stallion SEO Theme Headers