I love WordPress, but it’s pretty dang ugly out of the box.
Yes, there are many free themes you can download, some of them are nicer looking, most suck for SEO, some are average and a couple are pretty good.
Most avid bloggers don’t want a blog that looks like another, so a custom job is built. (if you go that route, try to get an actual SEO to do it).
Here’s the issue though. Your blog Title and Tag-line are most likely printed at the top in big basic font. It’s not pretty, it’s clunky, and you wish you could just make it the way YOU want, not a text rendering from your theme.
For example (not an seo example), I’ll point to a friend of mine that’s a professional public speaker in Denver and is fresh to blogging. His theme header WOULD look like this with a basic header image with the WordPress rendering of text over it.
But, just a little CSS code and custom background image you get this:
Use your Title and your Tag-line and make nice looking top image.
Add the great snippet:
display:none;
to your CSS sheet where those elements are controlled and it will hide the rendering from a view but not the spider, and your nice graphic is displayed to the viewer.
Here’s a code example below.
Yes, there are more WordPress tips coming, some for the eye and some for the spider.
I like that little change, though it would not work so well for me. Keep up the good work.
Jim
Jim, your blog has separate areas for the title and an image, not the common with WordPress. I have a feeling
your theme may change a bit though.
Hey, I think I know this guy your talking about. Is it Brian O’Malley. I heard him speak once on his climbs in Nepal. His program Mt. Everest program was very inspiration.
That’s him, he’s a good guy.
Got an email asking “is that cloaking?”
No – cloaking is when you present the spider something different that what you present the viewer.
So – make your graphic honest.