What makes a good WordPress theme for a niche site?
For me, it’s clean design, clean code, and very lean in features.
I’ve tried a whole bunch of different themes over the years, but it’s been a while since I went browsing around the free section.
A couple of years ago, there was a clear distinction between a free and paid WP theme. Free themes were either really bare, and/or poorly designed.
That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.
Of course, there still are some really poorly built themes out there, but I was surprised to see how much the selection of free themes improved both in design and function.
What I look for in a theme
Obviously, design is the main factor. But functionality and code are equally important.
I’ve found simple 2-column blog layout themes to perform best with Adsense.
But a good design is just part of the equation. A good theme is one that is light, fast, and has just enough options for what you need (like these ones).
For instance, a fancy new business theme might have a nice design.
But it also usually includes things like parallax sliders, built-in shop and checkout functionality, an option for a forum, and perhaps even a bunch of different shortcodes.
A niche site usually won’t need any of those. That results in hundreds of unused lines of code, and dozens of idle PHP and javascript files.
I like to go with bare-boned themes – ones that have exactly what I need and nothing more.
That usually means just a simple blog layout, with maybe a featured post section, and a sidebar.
15. Canard
Very beautifully designed with just the right amount of functionality.
19. Rowling
A very nicely designed theme with separate left and right screen background colors.
21. Lovecraft
My favorite theme in this list. Great design and layout with clean typography.
24. Clean Retina
Full-screen header image, with 3 featured post/page section on the homepage.
35. Portfolio
A professional-looking blog theme with a sleek featured post slider.
Are these themes Adsense optimized?
Yes, in that they do have the best layouts and designs that perform best with Adsense.
But apart from that, there’s really no such thing as a fully “Adsense optimized” theme. Optimization depends on your ad placement, not how a theme is designed.
Things like font-size, font-family, font and link colors can be easily edited for any theme and they shouldn’t be a major factor in your decision.
For some more tips on Adsense optimization, read this blog post.
What’s the difference between a free theme and a premium theme?
There are a few major differences.
The biggest being quality.
Since premium themes generate revenue, the authors need to make the extra time, care, and effort to make their product the highest quality possible.
That means extensive documentation, reliability of usage, and A+ support.
With a paid theme, you can have peace of mind knowing that your theme is well-built, will be updated frequently, and is backed by support if you need it.
I recommend going with a paid theme if possible
Your niche site is going to be your business. Get serious about it and at least give it a professional design with good functionality.
They won’t cost you much.
They’ll run you around $20-$50, and that’s just a one-time fee. Because you use WordPress, you have the luxury of using themes instead of having to pay thousands of dollars to a web designer.
Here are a few of the places you can find some beautiful, functional WordPress themes.
THEME MARKETPLACES
THEME COMPANIES
Elegant Themes
Thrive Themes
MyThemeShop
StudioPress
Themify
ThemeZilla
The first two, ThemeForest and Creative Market, are marketplaces. The others are individual companies.
What’s a marketplace? It’s somewhere multiple theme developers upload their themes for sale. They do go through rigorous approval processes so you can be assured they’re high quality.
Obviously, this means that there are more options to choose from.
That doesn’t mean all free themes are poorly coded and built by people who don’t care.
Any theme that’s available in the WordPress repository goes through a review process made by real reviewers that ensures a certain quality standard.
You just have to be fine with not having any real support if you run into any issues.
Be careful of WHERE you download free WP themes
You should never download a free theme from a site you don’t know or are unsure about. Some free themes out there have malicious code built into them, and installing them can cause you a lot of headaches.
I personally would only recommend you download from the WordPress repository or from a reputable paid themes company (most paid theme companies offer free themes as well).
Which WordPress theme should you use?
Any of them!
It depends on what design and layout you prefer.
They’ll all work. I would be comfortable using any one of these themes for my own niche sites.
My personal favorites from this list are #1, #10, 19, and #21.
What about you?
What theme do you use on RankXL?
I get this question almost on a daily basis, so I’ll answer it here for anybody else wondering.
RankXL uses a custom developed WordPress theme designed by yours truly. I’m not a professional developer or designer, but I love playing around with CSS and HTML.
It’s my hobby. I’m constantly browsing web design blogs, looking for inspiration, and playing around with different designs.
79 Comments
Jerry Chang
February 26, 2016 at 11:17 amHi Chris,
Thank you so much for recommending those WP themes. Just wondering, Newspaper WP Theme is still your favorite WordPress theme for all of your niche sites and those great themes mentioned in this blog post are for those who need a FREE WP theme?
Chris Lee
February 26, 2016 at 11:01 pmYup, still loving that theme 🙂
Pankaj
February 26, 2016 at 12:16 pmHi Chris, These are awesome themes. My favorite #1 and #32 😉
Chris Lee
February 26, 2016 at 11:01 pmThanks for sharing, Pankaj!
Gaurav
February 26, 2016 at 12:36 pmHey Chris,
This is such an amazing, large list…nobody will ever be without a theme again 🙂
Seriously, this is one of the most useful posts I’ve read in a while. I’ve a question… which hosting do you use for your adsense sites (I know this is more related to SEO/Pagespeed, but would be great to know)
If you have the time, please do a post on the plugins useful while setting up a site for Adsense.
Cheers,
Gaurav
Chris Lee
February 26, 2016 at 11:03 pmThanks Guarav 🙂 If you’re looking for fast hosting, I would recommend Traffic Planet. Check out this post for more info: https://www.rankxl.com/changing-hosting-to-traffic-planet/.
Bryan
February 26, 2016 at 12:58 pmThanks for the great share Chris. I really like the newspaper theme that you recommend though, it’s well worth the price 🙂
Cheers,
Bryan
Chris Lee
February 26, 2016 at 11:04 pmNice 🙂 Glad to hear that.
Seppe
February 26, 2016 at 3:50 pmHueman theme. Also a very good free wordpress theme for adsense. Since switching to this theme my income has doubled. I use the content left and sidebar right lay out. Funny to see how a simple change can make a huge impact.
Chris Lee
February 26, 2016 at 11:05 pmThanks for sharing Seppe.
JJ
February 27, 2016 at 12:13 amI second Hueman.. it’s the theme I picked for my very first website.
Chris, do you have any recommendations among the above themes if you like having lots of features (like hundreds) to customize? I’m currently using Weaver Xtreme which allows me to install the same theme on all of my sites and still have them all look very different by tweaking the various aspects of it.
Chris Lee
February 27, 2016 at 7:25 amFor something with hundreds of customization options, you’ll want to look into a premium theme.
Ricardo
February 26, 2016 at 5:42 pmHi Chris
You said “But it also usually includes things like parallax sliders, built-in shop and checkout functionality, an option for a forum, and perhaps even a bunch of different shortcodes.”
I believe that if you have a forum or some kind of community in some niches is very important. Helps get more engagement from the users, increase recurring visitors and build more authority with the visitors see a good site with a active community.
What do you think?
Chris Lee
February 26, 2016 at 11:07 pmYup, you’re right Ricardo. If you’re going to be adding a forum, then nothing wrong with using a theme that has them.
GFRT
February 27, 2016 at 12:33 amHi, Chris
Thank you for sharing this themes. I personally, love themes a lot.
I have gone through all of your lists. they are really awesome. And it is difficult to choose one, because, almost all of them are pretty. However, Simple and clean by organizedthemes dot com was the one that I have downloaded ( I really like it.)
Anyways, Thanks for Sharing with the community.
Keep sharing
Chris Lee
February 27, 2016 at 7:23 amGlad you liked it 🙂
Katie Lyons
February 27, 2016 at 7:47 amI would like recommend this SuperAds for Adsense https://wordpress.org/themes/superads-lite/ It is also best theme from my experiences.
Chris Lee
February 27, 2016 at 11:56 amThanks for sharing, Katie!
Henrik Flensborg
February 27, 2016 at 4:25 pmLoved how 31. Mesocolumn looked on my desktop – especially the Slider and the featured categories. But it looked horrible from a my mobile 🙁
Chris Lee
February 28, 2016 at 5:48 amThanks for sharing, Henrik. Sounds like it will need some css edits.
Lino Senese
March 12, 2016 at 1:14 pmDo you have any suggestion on WP theme which is good and ready for affiliate product marketing theme?
Chris Lee
March 12, 2016 at 8:08 pmAny of these themes would work.
Harry
March 15, 2016 at 8:02 pmnice compilation of themes Chris! One question though, I heard that changing to a new theme can affect your current rankings using your old theme. What is your opinion about this? Any experiences with this Chris?
Chris Lee
March 16, 2016 at 6:07 amYeah, but as long as the new theme is optimized, it should be fine. You can check for it though, and fix them through its php files.
The most important thing is to make sure that the theme’s header tags and title tags are properly set up.
Some themes have strange things like using h4 tags for the post title and things like that.
Brent
April 17, 2016 at 7:48 pmHi Chris,
Thanks for the in-depth list of themes, it’s a great resource.
I was wondering what theme you used for this site? I really like how the home page goes for an optin, but also directs people to the blog.
Thanks again,
Brent
Chris Lee
April 22, 2016 at 1:41 amThanks Brent! This theme isn’t available for sale. Everything is custom built, and the homepage is just a standard WordPress page that’s been custom designed as well.
Ty
April 22, 2016 at 12:38 amI like #1 the most, but I am curious what font is used on rankxl? I reads better than #1.
If you wanted to have a very long pillar post on the homepage, what theme would you recommend?
Chris Lee
April 22, 2016 at 1:48 amRankXL is currently using just a standard ‘helvetica neue’ font.
Any theme will work. It’s just a matter of your preference and what you feel is best for your niche/site.
Ty
April 22, 2016 at 3:26 pmChris,
it is a little off topic, but I came across your site when they mentioned your name in a niche pursuits podcast. They were discussing keyword research for a guy just starting out his site. They said you had some method that worked well and cost very little like something around $5, but it required a bit of manual work.
There is a lot of content on your site, so I did not know how to find this method. Is there an article on doing keyword research on the cheap on you site somewhere?
Thanks
-Ty
Chris Lee
April 25, 2016 at 3:36 amHey Ty, that was from a private conversation that I had with Perrin. I haven’t written about it on this blog, but Perrin created a great tutorial about it here: http://www.authorityhacker.com/short-content/.
Ty
April 26, 2016 at 7:07 amChris, thanks for sharing the link with me. I am finding keyword research to be one of the most challenging aspects of things. Writing is probably number two in terms of challenges.
Best regards,
Ty
jual genset baru
April 25, 2016 at 2:52 amthere is a lot of nice themes. should try some of these
Chris Lee
April 25, 2016 at 3:38 amThanks for reading, Jual.
Hidup mulia
May 4, 2016 at 3:20 amThese are awesome themes Chris.
Chris Lee
May 4, 2016 at 4:15 amThanks Hidup.
Macapati
May 25, 2016 at 10:34 amGreat Post
thanks for sharing this useful info 🙂
Chris Lee
May 25, 2016 at 6:15 pmNo problem, Macapati! Glad it was helpful.
Bhuboy Villanueva
June 20, 2016 at 7:37 amGreat collection of themes here Chris, sadly I already bought I theme before I read this post.
Chris Lee
June 21, 2016 at 6:39 amPaid themes are usually good and high quality. No need to regret 🙂
Imer Imran
September 18, 2016 at 12:00 amHi Chris
These suggestions of free theme are just so awesome. I’ve used #8 (basic) and # 30 (sparkling) before for my blog. It’s a great theme. Currently, my blog is using premium theme i.e. thrive theme (luxe) and as you said, “With a paid theme, you can have peace of mind knowing that your theme is well-built, will be updated frequently, and is backed by support if you need it.”
Just to share, I find other recommendation for free WP theme on Neil Patel’s blog which is
32 Free WordPress Themes For Effective Content Marketing
And #30 (Sparkling) is also on the list. Either way, Keep up the great work!
Imer
Chris Lee
September 21, 2016 at 2:02 pmCool, thanks for sharing Imer!
I’ll add a link to Neil’s post here: http://neilpatel.com/2015/09/03/32-free-wordpress-themes-for-effective-content-marketing/.
Mediamaya
November 18, 2016 at 2:12 amall theme very good, thanks for share friend, 😀
Chris Lee
November 18, 2016 at 9:50 pmThanks!
Sakthi Kumaran
December 9, 2016 at 2:44 amHello Chris,
You have done a wonderful job in consolidating the good themes for the WordPress niche sites.
I’m a WordPress theme designer and have launched my 4th theme on the grand marketplace, ThemeForest.
It is specifically designed for Adsense users and have SEO & Speed customization as well. Frond end ad editor is the main highlight of our theme.
Do you wanna have a look at the this WordPress theme for Adsense?
https://themeforest.net/item/admania-best-ad-optimized-wordpress-theme-for-adsense-affiliate-enthusiasts/18194026
Chris Lee
December 11, 2016 at 3:22 pmNice looking theme Sakthi! You provided a lot of good options for ad positions. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Sakthi
December 11, 2016 at 9:12 pmThanks Chris for having a look at the theme, glad you liked it 🙂
Chris Lee
December 12, 2016 at 4:37 pmNo problem, Sakthi! Keep up the great work 🙂
Jual sarang walet
February 6, 2017 at 3:02 amGreat Post Cris, This awesome theme
thanks for your information
Chris Lee
February 6, 2017 at 12:45 pmThanks 🙂
Christy
March 9, 2017 at 7:25 amI have exactly what info I want. Check, please. Wait, it’s free? Awseome!
Chris Lee
March 16, 2017 at 12:03 pm😀 Haha
Mukul
May 23, 2017 at 3:35 pmThanks for the mesocolumn theme … I loved it and am using it now 🙂
Chris Lee
May 23, 2017 at 8:13 pmAwesome 😀
nycrunch
June 8, 2017 at 7:50 pmhello chris
thanks for this list. i was just wondering? can the theme you are using on your website be the cause for it begin rejected multiple times by google adsense.
thanks
Chris Lee
June 22, 2017 at 10:59 amOh yes!
If your theme makes your site look spammy, or if it’s poorly coded, or if it contains malicious code.
health dose
July 13, 2017 at 5:33 amThemes are awesome, but in Shamrock there is no place to put my site logo.
Chris Lee
July 16, 2017 at 11:29 amYou might find a Customize option in the Appearance section.
Tony
July 13, 2017 at 9:34 pmit’s so great, thank you for sharing, Chris.
I am using Newspaper WP Theme for my blog, it’s so beautiful and convenient
Chris Lee
July 16, 2017 at 11:30 amAwesome! I love that theme.
Bob
July 23, 2017 at 5:07 amThanks for this Chris! Loved Masonic theme, it’s cool
Chris Lee
July 24, 2017 at 12:38 pmThanks. Glad you liked it.
Mukesh
August 18, 2017 at 10:59 pmHi Chris,
Thanking for sharing a amazon list of themes.
I am confused with selecting the theme for a Finance blog, can you recommend from the above list of theme which will be good for my finance blog.
Regards
Mukesh
Chris Lee
August 20, 2017 at 10:38 amIt really just depends on what you want your site to look like 🙂
afridi
August 20, 2017 at 1:00 amGreat Collection, I just downloaded 2 themes these are just great!
Chris Lee
August 20, 2017 at 10:37 amSweet!
cercie
September 7, 2017 at 3:05 pmGreat Work Thanks alot 🙂
Chris Lee
September 11, 2017 at 5:08 pm🙂
Jon pul
February 20, 2018 at 5:44 amGreat Post Cris, This awesome theme
thanks for your information.Your really great post
Chris Lee
February 22, 2018 at 11:29 amThanks!
dharmesh
March 10, 2018 at 7:59 amGreat List …I all like themes..Thanks
Chris Lee
March 14, 2018 at 12:05 pmThanks!
Sufiyan Momin
March 25, 2018 at 2:41 amHi Chris, These are awesome themes. My favorite #1 and #32
Chris Lee
March 27, 2018 at 3:46 pmCool, thanks for checking them out.
Benjamin
May 6, 2018 at 4:09 amWow. I like this great collection 🙂 Thanks for sharing this useful themes.
I am using Phlox on my blog which is not available on your list. I myself like it because it is a responsive and customizable WordPress theme that can satisfy everyone with its demos.
Chris Lee
May 12, 2018 at 3:41 pmCool, thanks a lot of sharing Benjamin.
remco
November 15, 2018 at 9:52 amHey..
Thanks a lot for the article. Will try out some. Are the templates shown here also tested on vulnerabilties? I have a website security audit service and what i see a lot of time with free themes that they use old slideshows and plugins which could make them vulnerable..
Chris Lee
November 16, 2018 at 2:19 pmThese are all in the WordPress official repository of themes, so they should be fine.
AJ Fahim
June 3, 2019 at 6:23 amIs Shamrock good for niche site? Is it optimized for speed?
Anthony Joel
June 23, 2019 at 9:39 amHi Chris… Awesome themes you draft out here.
But the problem is I am still searching for a theme to use. Thank you anyway.