When choosing a WordPress theme for your website, the style is one of the first things you and your visitors will notice. You want your site to look good. But this isn’t the only factor to consider in your decision.
Going with a theme that is optimized for speed and SEO can help your site show up higher in search results. Luckily, we’ve compiled a list of the top ten WordPress blog themes when it comes to ranking, speed, and style. Keep reading to find the best theme for your site.
1. Astra
Astra is a lightweight and free WordPress theme. Its fully customizable starter sites are perfect for personal and business blogs, portfolios, and e-commerce sites. You’ll find a variety of color options, Google fonts, and theme options. It even has support for WooCommerce, making it easy to add an online store.
One thing that is unique about Astra is that it’s translation-ready. This means you can easily make your blog available in any language. The ability to work across languages is a seriously powerful blogger resource. It means that you can potentially reach hundreds or even thousands of people that you would have never been able to reach otherwise. This can let your site trend in ways you may have never even imagined.
Related: How to Choose the Best Blogging Platform (Free & Paid)
2. Neve
Neve is a free blog theme that is perfect for personal blogs, business sites, and online stores. It uses a minimalist layout, which will help keep it fast. This is important because load times have a direct impact on SEO. The faster your website loads, the higher your chance to rank well on search engine results.
However, Neve isn’t just about speed. It also has beautiful typography and colors, making it pleasant to use.
Neve is easy to customize as it’s compatible with popular page builder plugins. You can add social sharing buttons, a featured content slider, a search bar, and a navigation menu.
3. OceanWP
OceanWP is a very popular free WordPress theme. One of the reasons is that it includes many features you’ll usually only find in premium themes.
This is a flexible yet easy-to-set-up theme. You’ll get multiple layout options, full-width pages, multiple sidebars, two top navigation menus, custom logo support, and image galleries. With all of these options, OceanWP is suitable for blogs, magazines, e-commerce sites, and business websites.
4. Blocksy
Blocksy is a lightweight and fast WordPress theme. It also has a built-in lazy loading system that keeps your site running as fast as possible.
With Blocksy, you get many features and different page types, making it perfect for all kinds of websites. Plus, it works with the WordPress block editor and page builder plugins such as Elementor and has WooCommerce integration.
5. Shapely
Shapely features a fullscreen background with a few homepage widgets. It also has a 1-column layout, parallax sections, and call-to-action buttons.
This theme supports the most popular plugins that will help you optimize your site’s functionality. Plus, it’s already optimized for SEO.
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6. Responsive Mobile
If you’re looking for a great business WordPress theme, consider Responsive Mobile. This theme takes a mobile-first approach as it’s designed to work perfectly on all screen sizes, mobile devices, and computers.
You can choose from nine page templates, six template layouts, 11 widget areas, and four menu positions. It even comes with a call-to-action button in the call-out section. There is no shortage of ways to customize and optimize your blog with this theme.
7. Sparker
Sparker works well for blogs, small businesses, and online stores. It’s lightweight, keeping speeds fast. Plus, it’s optimized for SEO while being easy to use.
Sparker offers a featured post column, custom widgets, and a slider section. You even have space for advertising if you use a program such as Google AdSense. This makes it perfect if you are trying to earn additional revenue from your blog.
8. Go
Go is just about as barebones as you can go. The theme has very little in terms of stylistic flourishes or artistic touches. Instead, it is mostly just words and images. While this may sound a bit bleak, it is a wonderful design if you are looking for something straightforward and to the point. It also lets the page load faster, allowing you to score better on Google pagespeed insights.
On top of being straightforward, Go still manages to include all the relevant information that you would expect to see on a website. This means titles, headings, and more are all easily identifiable and can be absorbed at a glance. They are also spread out and have enough space to avoid being cluttered.
Go is a great choice if you are looking to present images or text against a clean background. It is great if you really want the words or the pictures to be the showcase rather than the flashy elements of the website.
Related: AMAZING Link-Building Tools You Need to Try
9. Moderne
One look at this WordPress theme, and you’ll be convinced you’re staring at a magazine rather than a webpage. This theme has a unique and stylish approach that feels warm and inviting. The homepage it presents feels like it is calling on you to click something and start reading, which is a wonderful feeling to convey.
This feeling is primarily emphasized by the featured content carousel slider on the homepage. This feature is an amazing way to display hot, trending, or new articles. With it, you can direct your audience right from the very start.
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10. Baskerville
Baskerville manages to be a really unique blend between stylistic and minimalistic. The actual website has a sense of style to it that is undeniable. The wide and open header image immediately draws in the eye, and the three-column spread display of posts below gives the reader a candy store of options to choose from.
However, despite how it may sound, none of this is overwhelming. Each section has its own space to breathe and stand out. This makes it easy to read and easy to focus while using this theme. Overall, this gives it a best-of-both-worlds approach to crafting a unique appearance.
Choose from the Best WordPress Blog Themes
When it comes to designing your website, choosing from among the WordPress blog themes is a key decision. By choosing a theme that optimizes for ranking, speed, and style, you’ll have a better chance of your site ranking higher and being viewed better by visitors.
Related: Common Blogging Mistakes to Avoid as a Beginner
Last Updated on November 1, 2023 by Hilda Wong