Thesis theme is my favorite premium theme. I can talk all day about Thesis theme and its features. I run a handful of websites and initially I started all of them with a free theme.
It was because of two reasons -
- I thought “Free themes” were OK for my other sites.
- I thought it will be easier with the theme options to check/uncheck boxes and get beautiful changes in funtionalities, rather than customizing the code myself with Thesis.
And I was so wrong with both of these thoughts.
And then I tried other paid themes hoping that item (2) above will work. I was wrong again.
Then I set aside a weekend and changed all my websites to Thesis theme.
I’m sure I’m not alone to have experienced the power of Thesis.
Why I love Thesis?
First of all, Thesis is not a theme, but a framework. This means that you can plug in different styles and functionalities to your website. For instance, you can use Thesis theme in 10 websites (read “unlimited”), and yet make all those 10 websites look unique.
Thesis Theme WordPress SEO Guide
Is SEO boring and hard for you? It doesn’t have to be THAT hard!
Now that Thesis theme is mostly known for its SEO features, it is highly important that you know how to use those SEO features to the optimal level. After all, SEO blog traffic is a long term and a reliable traffic. So you should absolutely tap it.
Let’s dive in.
Here’s a short video if you prefer to see things in action, rather than reading (I was having a bad flu when I recorded this video, so please bear with the ahh..s and umm….s).
WordPress SEO as easy as breeze with Thesis Theme
Homepage SEO
This is the first and the most important thing you should take care of immediately after you install Thesis. Go to Thesis > Site Options > Homepage SEO.
The values you fill in here with affect the appearance of your blog in search engines. The image below shows how the homepage SEO details show up in the search results page (SERPs).
It is very important that you use your blog’s name in the home page title (great if you have your primary keyword in your blog’s name). Your meta description should be enticing and self explanatory. It should tell people what your blog is about. It should be enticing to click through and, as a rule of thumb (or common sense?!) it should have your primary keyword.
The meta keywords part was popular earlier, but no more after it got misused by many webmasters. So don’t spend too much time on that. Just fill out 2 or 3 keywords.
Posts/Pages SEO
When you write a post or a page, Thesis theme helps you optimize it for search engines in a professional, yet simple way.
All you have to do is you have to enter well a optimized title and description for your post/page. The Custom title you enter here will be the one that shows up as the title in SERPs.
If nothing is entered here, search engines automatically pull up the default post title for SERPs. The thing is, you can make your original post title entertaining for your readers, and the Thesis theme Custom title to be a keyword optimized one (yet enticing enough to click through). This way you can please both people and the bots.
Take a look at one of my posts below.
Original post headline… as seen on the blog
The same post as seen in SERP -
And just like homepage SEO meta data, you need to follow the general rules of thumb to input the SEO values. Thesis theme tells you the number of characters that are good (if you go overboard they will be chopped off in SERPs), and the number of characters you’ve used.
Canonical URLs
Thesis theme just makes it ONE CLICK to enable canonical URL settings. If you keep it ticked, then you can stay away from the duplicate pages issue. It is one of those issues caused by WordPress where the following urls are considered as different pages (or in other words pages with duplicate content)
http://www.probloggingsuccess.com/develop-good-professional-blog/
http://www.probloggingsuccess.com/develop-good-professional-blog/#comment-15541
You can set it here Thesis > Site Options > Canonical URLs
Robots Meta
I’m not a geek to write in attributes into the Robots meta file. And I hate those details as such. With Thesis theme, all I have to do is, click on the tick box and choose what I want the search engines to index. That simple. Let’s take a look -
Just with the click you can choose which pages should not be indexed by search engines (Noindex) and which pages should be nofollowed (Nofollow).
If you don’t want certain subpages (or category or tag pages) of your blog to be indexed by search engines, that is if you don’t want them to appear in search results, then you should click the box next to the corresponding item.
Similarly, the nofollow attribute, when clicked, sees that you don’t leak out SEO juice in all pages of your blog unnecessarily. Your tag page, category pages, day and month archives need not be do followed.
You will see how much link juice you can stop from leaking out if you use a category Navigation bar and/or if you choose to display the primary category (linked to the corresponding category page) of a blog post under its title.
Even if it is a link to your own blog’s category page, it is still unwanted link leak. You can plug in those!
You may find these Thesis theme tutorials useful
How To Add A Custom Favicon
Customizing Archives Page
Adding Widgetized Footer
5 Must Have Customizations
Add Floating Social Icons
If you want your Thesis blog customized/custom designed, I can help you with that. FYI, Problogging Success is designed by me 
Or you may try ready-made skins from Thesisawesome.
Thesis theme may not be for you
Indeed. Not everyone likes Thesis theme. Mainly because, it is not a theme but a framework. It is both a blessing and a curse! Let me explain in more detail.
If you are a newbie with absolutely zero coding skills, Thesis theme might scare you. Why? Because once you install the theme, all you get is a white blog with blog posts.
A fresh installation of thesis theme will just give you a plain and simple blog. The thing is, you can make a unique looking blog out of Thesis theme. So its a clean slate. Whatever you want to write becomes your blog’s design.
If you’re a newbie with zero coding knowledge,
- you will have to hire someone to do the coding for you, or
- go for a ready-made skin or
- do the customizations yourself (there are lot of tutorials on the web; also on this blog, see above).
Thesis theme uses the hooks which makes it easy for you to customize your blog in a very elegant way. But this aspect will scare most people. In fact when I started with Thesis theme, I was so annoyed because I didn’t know how to make things to work.
But I learned a lot of coding (I didn’t want to give up). But this is my perspective. You may not want to learn coding. If so, then you need to be prepared to customize your blog through any of the above mentioned 3 ways!
Just wanted to give you a word of warning!
Thesis Theme SEO takeaway
If you want to take to a business to a greater level, I’m sure Thesis theme will just give you the right push in the right direction. Remember, SEO traffic is long term and reliable traffic (I think I said that already when I started).
If you are with free themes, its time to quit and get your business real. Get Thesis theme now by clicking here.
If you have any questions about the Thesis theme, I can help you out.
Disclaimer: The links to Thesis theme on this post are my affiliate links which means I will get a small cut when you make a purchase by clicking through my link. However you won’t be paying anything extra from your pocket. Also please note that my review above is not influenced (to the best of my knowledge) by the fact that I’m an affiliate of Thesis theme!
Awesome information Jane!
In-fact I was on the look out for a good write up about Thesis as I recently shifted my writing blog onto it, but just as you mentioned it’s surely not all that easy!!
But I am loving your video and the wonderful links and am going to go through all of them, so that I can do a little with my blog and get started on it as well.
Thanks so much for sharing this wonderful piece of information with everyone
BTW- Your blog looks great with the new changes made to it
Glad you liked the review Harleena. Yes I also wanted to make sure that no one gets disappointed by buying a Thesis theme and expecting something different. I might ruin my sales, but I want to be honest
Wow its awesome info jane. I am using Swift free one but thinking to convert it to Genesis or Thesis and am bit confused which will be the best? Bcz i saw lots of site using Genesis. I am not too good in coding thats way.
Amit, if you’re not good at coding and if you don’t want to take any of the three routes I mentioned (getting a designer, buying a skin or customizing Thesis yourself with the free tutorials available) you should go for Genesis instead. But Genesis can be pricey as well, coz you need to buy the child themes in addition to buying the Genesis framework separately. Do the math!
Hi Jane -
I use the Thesis theme with most of my websites and am grateful that you did such a thorough write-up on its advantages. I love the ease of use and versatility, but you taught me a few things about it that I didn’t know! Thanks for this - a great post and super-thorough!
Jim
I’m glad you learned something new Jim
That’s what I always want 
Thanks for stopping by!
I wonder how much time it takes to write such a big article. Awesome work, as usual. Canonical links are a must, besides all the other settings.
It takes 3-5 hours Marian, but I don’t do it in one sitting
OMG! You sure are a patient woman. Good for you! It’s official: I wanna be like you-youuu
Thanks for your step by step SEO tutorial jane sheeba
very nice work and nice explanation .. your work is appreciated , you are always working to help others like me 
Glad to be of help Sai
Since Thesis have not been updated their version for long - i guess around a year have gone and they have not been updated, i think i would prefer Genesis more then thesis.
Let me know what you think Jane? Should i go with Genesis or Thesis you would still prefer? What will i get in Thesis that i’ll never get in Genesis?
Regards
Irfan
Irfan, yes without being updated for a year, Thesis is getting bad reviews from people. But Chris has promised Thesis 2.0 in Feb 2012 I think. Let’s see.
Comparing Thesis and Genesis is quite hard. I know many of my clients who switched from Genesis to Thesis because they found Genesis buggy. And if you think Thesis to be expensive (theme+custom design or a skin) then with Genesis too you have to purchase the framework and each child theme separately.
IMO it is a matter of personal preference. Some like Thesis some like Genesis
I am using Thesis for my blog since last 2 months and after this PR update i got PR3 just because thesis is best SEO theme. I am in love with it.
That’s great news Ammar. Actually I’ve had the same happen to me on 3 of my niche sites built with Thesis.
Thanks fot the information jane i too had this confusion and now i have got some solution to it ..lets see the effect of thesis
Glad to help Linda
Hi Jane as your reply to Amit Shaw, I feel I need to go for Genesis as I am also not good at coding.
Mahendra, yes sometimes Genesis could be the one for you. Of course, you will never know until you try it for yourself!
I am a Thesis user for two years now and with support from such a large community of helpful users (when you discover where to go) it has become the easiest of solutions for me. With the aid of plugins developed and tested by a trusted DIY Themes contributor it has become so much easier for people with little experience at coding. This is the full list of plugins available to subscribers:
Thesis Exclude Category From Posts Plugin
Thesis Footer Widgets Plugin
Thesis Full Width Backgrounds Plugin
Thesis Horizontal Header Layout Plugin
Thesis Landing Pages Plugin
Thesis Mobile Content Switcher
Thesis Navigation Menu Plugin
Thesis Shortcode Content Widgets Plugin
Thesis Simple Feature Box Plugin
Thesis Simple Header Widgets Plugin
Thesis Simple Nav Menu Plugin
Thesis Sub Sidebars Plugin
Thesis Widget Styles Plugin
Thesis WP Menus Plugin
WP eMember Shortcodes
I am in the middle of switching over to all these plugins in place of the coding. Although with the right instruction coding can be a simple cut and paste operation. Just dont be scared. The beauty of Thesis is you have only 2 files to keep as a back up. Backup and restore those two files in seconds and your blog is back to normal.
Same for upgrades of Thesis. Those two files are the only thing yo have to do. Install the upgrade, upload two files and your blog looks as it did. And for those talking of lack of upgrades, what is it you are looking for in an upgrade. Thesis works beautifully out of the box. With the above list of plugins your work is done for you.
Thank you for such a great review on the Thesis theme.
I’m sorry I should have added the link for those who wish to follow up on the plugins. http://onlinevideomarketing.ws/build-your-own-website/
Thanks for the addition/suggestions, Dennis
Much appreciated.
Nice post. No doubt, thesis theme is by far the best theme for any wordpress site or blog. It has always been my favourite. Thanx for giving out such a nice review of the theme.
You’re welcome admin (?!, may I know your real name please?)
once again you are right jane really thesis is 100 times better then free themes . Thesis SEO also very powerful and advanced like yoast SEO . thanks for the review
Glad that we agree on that Sai
Rajesh says
Thanks for the review, but we prefer Genesis over Thesis theme.
Good video tutorial. I am using free themes on my blog but soon I will buy Thesis theme as I have also read about thesis on Extreme John blog
Hi Jane,
I wanted to quickly let you know we’re offering a $25 bonus to new partners if you’d like to pass it on to your readers. Referrers also get $75 cash in addition to 20% of their revenue for the first 6 months. Check out the details at http://www.revresponse.com/revresponse-refer-a-friend-promotion-2012.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out if I can help answer any questions.
Have a great day!
-Yasmine
Awesome post Radu!
Thank you for sharing your skills, knowledge and innovations always. You’re an inspiration. Keep on creating and doing your best! Great connecting with you, I appreciate your friendship. Best wishes, Success, peace and joy, Ceryl
Radu?! I wrote this post, and my name is Jane
Anyways thanks for stopping by Ceryl!
Very comprehensive review Jane. How much does the theme cost and do you have any idea if the theme is compatible with membership sites and more specifically the plugin S2Member?
Wow, only an idiot would use the Thesis theme. It’s absolutely intended for the anti-SEO crowd. A crowd who knows NOTHING about SEO. It adds a layer of bloat that is ridiculous to recommend.
I’d bet money that two identical sites, one running Thesis and one without, the one not running Thesis (providing both sites have the same content) would perform better in search engines.
There a number of vanilla themes out there for WordPress that limit the rendered code and options and focusing on caching. Really though, if you want a well optimized SEO site, just concentrate on content, valid markup and fast fast FAST server.
Jane,
Great Post! I am a big fan of Thesis Theme and love it’s SEO features.
I wish you could explain the Canonical URL thing a little better, I never understood that exactly.
Like you said, using the Thesis Framework can be a blessing and a curse. But thankfully, ThesisAwesome has come up with some great “skins” or child themes that can be used to instantly turn a bland, white Thesis Theme site into a top-notch, professional site and even then you can still tweak and customize aspects of the “skin” like colors, etc.
Nice video! I also have over 75 FREE Video Tutorials on WordPress and Thesis Theme that you are welcome to use in a post anytime.
Thanks!
~ Jupiter Jim
Looks like customizing Thesis is very easy. I use Genesis framework but thesis have very much more SEO and customization options.
Hi Jane – thanks for the review and video tutorial , for better video quality I recommend screenr.com
I use the Thesis theme plus thesispremium.com with most of my client websites
It is great to know what is your favorite WordPress theme is Jane.
I have heard many good things about DIY themes from many bloggers and articles.
Hi Jane,
I would love to buy Thesis theme, but wanted to know whether it is available on discount or not. Also can we apply this theme to a movies site? I have several sites and would like to apply it to all of them (obviously)!
Hey Misha, sure you can install Thesis on any kind of sites! The number of site you’d be able to install Thesis really depends on the type of license you purchase, single or developer.
Unfortunately, Thesis doesn’t come with a discount!
Hello jane,
thesis is one of the best things i ever had in my blogging career,i just love thesis wordpress theme and using the same for my blogs, still there were some things i did not know about thesis like that canonical urls etc.
However a great post to read,
thanks Siddhant