Selecting the right WordPress theme is crucial for your blog. New bloggers often can’t decide which theme would be best for their blogs.
After all, it’s not at all easy to find the perfect theme for your blog (or website).
There are more than thousands of free and premium (paid) WordPress themes. Each theme feels like it’s better than the other one.
Choosing the perfect WordPress theme is hard. So, in this article, I will share some tips which will help you in finding the best theme for your WordPress blog (or website).
But before that, there is one thing that you should know.
Why is choosing the right WordPress theme such an important task?
The selection of the right WordPress theme decides the look and feel of your blog. It’s like makeup that makes it look even better than it was before.
There are many themes out there for every kind of WordPress site. But each theme is built for serving a particular purpose.
You should choose your WordPress theme according to your need ( i.e, for what purpose do you need it, for starting a blog or a website ).
There are many WordPress themes which come with a ton of options to customize them. Great themes are bug-free, look great and have much faster loading time. (That’s why people prefer premium themes)
Make sure the theme you choose is coded properly or it may cause difficulties in using some plugins and changing themes. Bad themes also have a slow loading time. (It’s a problem with free themes)
WordPress themes are important for your blog & your readers. Search engines will also love your blog (or website) if you provide a good user experience to your readers.
5 Tips For Choosing The Perfect WordPress Theme
Go for a Simple Theme
There are many WordPress themes which are too flashy and look too much attractive with many colours & animations. But you don’t have any need for these things ( most of the time).
You should choose a WordPress theme which is simple. Now, what’s the meaning of a simple theme?
A simple WordPress theme which doesn’t have a complex structure and helps your blog look like it’s easy to navigate with minimal distractions. (Whew, it’s damn hard to come up with a unique definition.)
As you can see, one example is my blog. It doesn’t have many distractions, is easy to navigate around and feels good. (It’s one of the reasons why I love my blog’s theme, I will tell you about the theme I use later.)
There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth. – Leo Tolstoy
A simple WordPress theme looks really great. It is good even for the user experience. Make sure that you don’t buy any complex theme ( Go for a Simple Theme ).
It must be Responsive
Gone are the days when choosing a responsive theme was an option. Now it’s a necessity to have a responsive theme.
Responsive themes change & adjust their layouts according to the different devices and screen sizes.
In simple words – your theme needs to look as good on mobile & tablets as it looks on a desktop. After all, most of the web traffic comes from mobile devices (it isn’t hard to assume, right?).
Even Google gives a ranking boost to sites which are mobile-friendly. It doesn’t matter what your site topic is – all of your sites must be mobile friendly. If they aren’t you will not get higher rankings.
Nowadays, almost every WordPress theme is responsive by default but some are not. You should never use a theme that isn’t responsive. There are still some old themes & developers who just want to make money by selling you bad themes.
There are many ways to check if your site is mobile-friendly or not. One of the simplest ways is to – go to Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test page and check it out.
SEO-Friendly Theme
Your WordPress Theme has a direct effect on your site’s SEO. It is important that you use a theme that is SEO-Friendly (good for SEO).
You might have seen that every WordPress theme it shows that this theme is “SEO-Friendly”. But does it exactly mean to have an SEO-Friendly Theme?
To get an understanding of what’s meant by SEO-Friendly Themes, we must know how some themes can be harmful to SEO.
There are some themes which look great but their HTML code is not written properly (this has a negative effect on your search rankings). It is harmful to your site’s SEO.
On the opposite of these harmful themes ( for SEO ) are our friendly themes. Their HTML code is written properly and is good for SEO. It’s hard for common people to know if a theme is good for SEO or not (so, the developers let people know about it).
It must be easy to Customize
While selecting a theme you should check how many customization options it has. There are some themes which have endless ways in which you can change them and others with (umm..) not so many options.
Now, there might be many questions in your head, like – What do you mean by many customization options? or How to check if a theme is customizable or not? (I’ll answer both of these questions.)
These themes are built to satisfy the users. These are user-friendly themes & they allow the user to tweak any aspect of the themes. They allow you to make a unique page as you want. (i.e, they are fully customizable.)
There is one way to see how much customizable your theme is – by checking how many options they provide. The more option a theme has, the more customizable it is (makes sense, right?).
Make sure you only buy a theme with lots of options to customize it. It will help in the long run, you won’t feel the need to change your theme again & again.
Good Rating & Reviews
One of the best ways to find out if a theme is good or not is to check its rating & reviews given by its users. You can see ratings & reviews given almost everywhere.
Every theme provider allows their users to give ratings & reviews on how they felt while using their theme. You can check reviews for free themes just under the download button in the WordPress directory.
The more 5 stars a WordPress theme has, the more it is likely to be a great theme ( Beware – Some developers buy fake reviews too ). Also, check if the theme has some negative reviews or not.
It’s natural for themes to have some bad reviews. But if the number of bad reviews is high, read them carefully it may be a bad theme.
How to install a WordPress Theme?
It isn’t rocket science to install a WordPress theme. Now, one thing you should remember is that whenever you purchase a theme from any theme provider first you need to download it in a Zip file.
After downloading the Zip file, go to your WordPress dashboard and then go to Appearance > Click on Themes (here you’ll have all your WordPress themes. As you can see I only have one theme i.e, GeneratePress ).
Now, click on the Add New button.
You can also install free themes by searching for them & they will have an option for installation. But if you’ve already downloaded the theme from premium WordPress theme providers you’ll have to install them manually.
Then you will see a theme upload box. Click on choose file to select the theme Zip file which you want to upload. After selecting the file click on the “Install Now” button.
Now, wait for some minutes as your theme will be uploaded from your computer to your site by WordPress. You will see a success message like this when your theme is installed.
You can check the live preview of your theme. After you’ve done some customization (if you want to with live preview), you can Activate your WordPress theme.
Now, we have finished all the steps needed to install a WordPress theme.
Final Thoughts.
I hope that this article would have made it easier for you to select the right WP theme. If you are still not sure which theme to purchase. Here is a list of my favourite WordPress theme providers –
- StudioPress
- GeneratePress
- Blocksy Theme (Using it for this website)
- Kadence Theme
- Thrive Themes
- MyThemeShop
- ThemeForest, etc.
Finding the right WordPress theme isn’t an as easy a task as it looks like to be. Don’t choose a theme just because it looks good on the demo page.
It will take you some time to figure out the best theme for your needs. However, if you’re too excited to launch your blog, it’s essential that you select the right theme from the start.
Select a theme that you can use for many years. If you’re facing any issues in selecting a theme for yourself, feel free to ask in the comments below.
If you find this article worth reading, share it with your friends (it’ll help the growth of this blog, thanks.)