How the Thesis WordPress Theme Can Benefit Your Meta Tag Optimization
Better meta tag optimization leads to better search engine optimization (SEO) results.
Meta tag optimization on your blog or website is a fundamental component of basic on page SEO, and optimizing this data will increase the likelihood of ranking higher on search engine search results for your targeted keywords.
For static HTML websites, getting the meta data right is an easy task because each web page within a website is a stand-alone HTML document or file, which means that the home page is its own independent file as well. But can the same be said for a blog? I am afraid not.
Each individual post maybe a file of its own, but because of the background coding infrastructure of most blogs, getting the meta data right for the overall blog itself can be challenging. When I say the overall blog, I mean your blog as one complete and stand-alone entity.
The home page of a website defines the entire website’s concept or theme. The webmaster customizes the meta tags on a website’s home page based on the entire website’s main concept keyword around which the website revolves.
Similarly, a blog too has an overall purpose. For example, this blog’s title is the Extra Money Blog, and its purpose is to help successful professionals get more out of life through discussions around entrepreneurship, blogging, Internet marketing, career and personal finance.
Have a look at the meta tag optimization on this blog:
Notice that the meta tags are relevant to what this blog stands for. Unfortunately, this kind of meta tag optimization is not easily achievable in a standard wordpress blog / theme, not without additional coding at least.
To further clarify this point, a website has a distinct home page (the index.html) file, whereas a blog doesn’t really have a dedicated home page per se. Most blogs are meant to be live, dynamic websites where the home page, or landing page changes depending on the most recent blog post.
This presents an interesting challenge from an SEO perspective. Because a blog does not really have a dedicated home page, how is one to optimize the meta tags on a blog’s home page? You can’t work on something that doesn’t exist. This assumes that your blog’s home page is not a static page.
I talked about the importance of getting your website’s meta data right in my post on how to optimize blog posts and webpages. Many readers have since then emailed me asking how they can optimize their blog’s meta tags. The answer is not a straightforward one, but there is a solution.
The Thesis WordPress Theme Allows for Better Meta Tag Optimization
In a “regular” WordPress blog, the meta data on the “home page” reflects the meta data of the post that is currently live. When the blogger publishes a new post the following day, the meta data changes. So even if a new visitor was to land on the “home page” (the main URL) of the blog, it is the current post’s meta data which is reflected behind the scenes as the overall blog’s meta data, therefore sending such signals to search engines.
This meta tag optimization structure would be perfectly fine for static blogs, or wordpress sites that are meant to be websites and not blogs. But for dynamic blogs, the limitation precludes you from optimizing the meta data for your overall blog (without additional coding at least).
The Thesis WordPress Theme Allows Separation of Home Page and Post Meta Tags
Thanks to the Thesis WordPress theme, one can easily create separation between the home page meta data and that of the current blog post.
In Thesis, each blog post you write gives you the opportunity to specify the post’s meta tags. Here is what the input section looks like within the Thesis dashboard:
In addition, there is a separate area within the main dashboard where you can specify the meta tags for your blog in its entirety. Here is how the input section looks like in the Thesis dashboard in the “Page Options” section:
Now see what this does. Here is what the specific post looks like when indexed in search engine listings:
Here is what the overall blog looks like when indexed in search engine listings:
You might be thinking that you can simply add an SEO plugin and accomplish this functionality in your blog? If so, you are correct in that you can optimize individual posts. However, this still doesn’t give you the opportunity to optimize your overall blog’s homepage with the main (thematic) meta data.
A big component of how a blog is able to sustain a high organic ranking in search results is the ability to perform meta tag optimization with keywords specific to the blog’s overall theme or topic. In my opinion, you are losing out on significant leverage if you don’t have your blog’s functionality set up this way.
Concluding Thoughts
You don’t have to have Thesis to effectively implement the meta tag information that will propel your blog higher on search engine listings. Coding tweaks can be made to any other theme to achieve the same results. However, that is not my personal preference.
Unless you are an expert coder, tweaking the coding just further convolutes the HTML code in the background, which hurts from an SEO perspective and makes it more difficult for search engine spiders to crawl your website smoothly. It is something that I wouldn’t dare attempt myself.
Personally, I prefer to go the cleaner, easier and more streamlined route. I am also a big fan of ease of implementation and use. I am not a programmer, I am an entrepreneur, and I want to work on what I enjoy and do best, which is my business and definitely not tweaking code.
Sure I can hire a developer to make the tweaks, but it takes time to find the right resource and then pay them. Might as well work with a theme that has everything built into it from the get go for just as much, if not more economically from a cost perspective. Not to mention the time wasted researching, implementing, testing and tweaking.
The Thesis WordPress theme is by far the best blog theme I have come across in terms of flexibility, ease of use, SEO-ability, user support and most importantly functionality. If you’d like to learn how to get your blog or website to rank higher on search engines, which involves the other components of effective SEO, read my post on how to fully optimize your web pages and blog post.
Readers: If you are a Thesis user, what do you think about the meta tag functionality? Are you using it to your advantage? If you are not a Thesis user, how are you getting around this limitation and achieving meta tag optimization on your “home page” and then for individual pages and posts?
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19 Responses to “How the Thesis WordPress Theme Can Benefit Your Meta Tag Optimization”
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Hey Sunil,
Nice post – still debating about whether to start using Thesis or not…do you think it’s worth it? Thanks!
Thomas
from my standpoint Thomas it totally is. what is keeping you back from it? it all boils down to objectives. for a non techie like myself who knows business inside out but not necessarily the tech component of it, I am always trying turnkey solutions that bring the benefits I am looking for to me without much output from me.
So glad I came across this Sunil, it was exactly what I was looking for.
glad you found it helpful. welcome to the blog and looking forward to interacting more with you
I purchased Thesis almost 2 years ago and my only regret is not buying it from day 1! I got the developers option, so I have it installed on about 25 sites. I would recommend that anyone who is serious about building blog-style websites purchase it.
I did fill in the homepage meta details about 6 months ago, but I still haven’t developed a complete vision as to how I want to market the site as a whole – I’ve focused more on SEO for posts and pages. I hope to change that over the next month or so.
definitely the way to go Khaleef. make sure you optimize the home page for the overall theme of the site as it will all “gel” together
Would you recommend this to someone who already has a wordpress theme installed on their site?
Meaning, can I install this on top of my preexisting theme and apply the SEO capabilities.
Also, is this theme enough for SEO in your opinion? Or do you use other tools and methods to improve your SEO?
Thanks for the great article!
definitely Seung, you can. that is what I had done as well. Thesis ensures you have the infrastructure for solid on page SEO, I use another tool to gauge the level of SEO on a per page / post basis. You can read about it here.
Hi Sunil,
Aren’t there other SEO plugins for wordpress that you can buy and use for free? Is Thesis still more powerful for SEO purposes?
Also, do you do all your SEO by yourself or do you contract out some of the work? Do you recommend new bloggers and business owners to learn SEO or outsource/ contract it?
Thanks for the response!
I so much support you here. Thesis is surely worth it as thousands of satisfied customers can’t be wrong. If something is wrong with thesis, then their customers will blow the alarm. I’m switching ASAP
Sheyi
that is very true Sheyi. some of the best known blogs are on this platform, and if there were shortcomings I’m sure we’d know about it, or Thesis would fix it asap
Thanks for the info on a thesis theme-shopping for a new one now.Have a great day on purpose!
you are welcome Connor – let me know what you decide, why and how it works out for you
I have a WordPress blog but I don’t really know how to use the Thesis theme. thanks for this step by step and with pictures information about this theme.
of all the themes I’ve used, Thesis is one of the most intuitive, easy to use. let me know you how you like it if you decide to get it
like the way you describe the Thesis WordPress theme, youve inspired me to think about using this as a blog theme in the future, thousands of satisfied customers speaks volumes eh!
I am looking forward to your feedback Michelle. please let me know how it turns out, and as always please feel free to ask any questions
Wow…
its very helpful for my site.
I think its very easy and simple to learn.
Thanks…
Many thanks for this article. Tyakmo looking for a suitable template for HR. This post will save me a lot of demand. Thank you for the detailed description of the functionality of the template.