As noted in the previous article: Professional WordPress Themes, some of the free wordpress themes being released lately are to an extremely high standard both in terms of design and end user functionality.

We have decided to write this article in order to present 10 wordpress themes which in our opinion our highly professional and offer much both in terms of being intuitive and end SEO results. In most cases these themes offer some of the functionality as given in the previous article, namely: content sliders, tabbed side bars, featured content on the home-page, and so on.

Please note that the themes are presented in no particular order.

Arras WordPress Theme

The Arras WordPress Theme is a clean and professional design for Magazine, News, and other websites or blogs that want to get as much of their content indexed into the search engines from their home-page and content pages.

As you can see, the homepage design comes with 3 different featured post areas with 4 customizable layouts. These allow you to present content on your homepage for effective SEO.

This wordpress theme also comes with 1, 2, and 3 column layouts including 7 different alternate styles.

This wordpress theme is compatible and ready for Word-press 3.0, with 2 menu locations ready and setup for use, custom post types, as well as custom taxonomies support. This word press theme is also setup with child theme support setup with numerous action and filter hooks. The Arras wordpress them also has community support available at the wordpress themes forums.

Swift WordPress Theme

The Swift WordPress Theme is a colourful and professional for Media focused blogs and websites.

SWIFT, as the name says, is the fastest loading, SEO optimized, AdSense ready, server friendly WordPress theme. It features Magazine layout,two different header styles, tabbed interface, two different featured post sliders, 6 custom widgets. Bundled with lot of options to build your own unique, professional and browser-safe WordPress Theme.

WordPress 3.0 ready with three menu locations and custom post types.SWIFT is the perfect choice for those who need a powerful and customizable theme. You can easily move your options from development server to live server with the built in import/export options function, a feature unique to SWIFT.Valid CSS3 & HTML.SWIFT has a active user community to help you with support queries.

MyMag WordPress Theme

The MyMag WordPress Theme is both colourful and professional and offers you key functionality (in terms of content) such as a content slider and featured posts on the homepage, as well as post lists with images.

myMag is a WordPress Magazine Theme with 2-3 Columns, lovely Javascript effects such as Slide show, Article Sliders, News-ticker, Image Mouse-over Effects, Drop-down Menu and many more.

MyMag is offers 3 widget-ready sidebars, a big option set with custom logo uploader, 3 colour schemes, display options, advertising options and much more!

Uses post-thumbnails to let you upload pictures very easy. Check http://www.wp-themix.org for support and knowledge.

Deep Blue WordPress Theme

The Deep blue WordPress Theme is colourful and professional and has a really nice rounded edge design including a content slider on the home-page.

The deep blue theme has a full admin options interface, with 6 advanced custom widgets, 4 widget areas, and nearly 40 options for changing your theme into your new blog or website.

The Deep Blue wordpress theme also has JQuery scripts (such as the content slider) to make your website even more appealing and professional.

Part one Installation:

1. Download the main zip (compressed) file from: http://wordpress.org/download/

2. When you have  downloaded the zipped file, save it to the correct location (in relation to where it will be going on your hosting server).

For this example installation, we will upload it to our main root folder (e.g. public_html).

3. As soon as you have confirmed that the zip file has been uploaded, to the correct location – Log into your CPanel account, and then click: the File Manager option.

4. In CPanel / File Manager – select the zip file (which in this example is in the foot folder, or public_html). Then click the un-pack option from the top horizontal menu.

5. The CPanel File Manager wizard will now unzip the Word Press zip files into the same directory.

Part two installation:

6. Close the File Manager page, and instead open the MySQL Databases page.

7. In the CPanel MySQL Databases page, you will need to create a new database, user and password. WordPress will install and create the necessary DB tables within your new DB using your new user and password.

8. Once you have done this you will need to give permission to that User to use your new DB; So choose that User and Database you want to authorise access to, and then click Add.

9. Download and Change the name of the file: wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php, updating your correct User, Database, and Password details within the file; Once done then re-upload this file to the sever (with the new name).

10. If you need to move files around, this is the time to do this, including removing any container folders in order to thave your new Word Press website run from the root or main folder (public_html).

In the past all Word-press themes seem to look the same; you know the kind, a real basic design with the obligatory list of most recent posts on the homepage and your tags and calendar in your side-bars.

Nowadays however some of the wordpress themes being released for free (or open source) have been built very well in terms of design, but also in terms of their content mark, which often helps our SEO results.

The current trend for professional word-press themes include the following:

• JQuery or similar Content Sliders
• Featured posts on Homepage
• Tabbed side-bars
• Post lists with showcase images
• Prominent RSS feeds
• Social Media buttons
• Sophisticated designs

Content Sliders (JQuery etc)

By embedding JQuery or another java script library into the wordpress theme, allows designers to setup content sliders which show multiple pieces of content either by clicking the corresponding number or automatically. In most cases the slider uses a custom image for the post with some including a small amount of text from the posting onto of the image.

Featured Posts on Homepage

By featuring specific posts on your homepage, it allows your website or blog to stay fresh with updated content. In some ways this functionality allows you to syndicate all the content throughout your site onto your homepage therefore increase your exposure into the major search engines. It also allows you to present an exciting mix of content for your visitors in an appealing manner.

Tabbed Side-bars

One of the key benefits of using Javascript to hide and show elements, such as tabbed side-bars is the fact that all content is visible to search engines. If you add to this the AJAX type feel that most of this tabbed side-bars offer, clearly you can see the benefit of this both in terms of usability but also SEO.

Post Lists with showcase images

As we know an image is worth a thousand words, and hence any list which also has a featured image will be more appealing and potentially more informative than a bare bones list.

Prominent RSS Feeds

Most modern wordpress theme designers understand the benefits of your RSS feed and therefore offer a RSS button normally in a propiment position usually found on your home-page.

Social Media Buttons

Anyone that truly understands SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) or SEM (Search Engine Marketing) understands the benefits that can be achieved using Social media such as Facebook or Twitter. By posting your content into these social media spaces it will not only increase the number of places (on the internet) that you’re content can be found, but will also increase the number of visitors coming to your website as Google will increase your page rank due to the number of incoming links.

Sophisticated Designs

As mentioned earlier, the early free word-press themes were pretty basic to put it bluntly! In the last few years however the designs being done for free themes have come on leaps and bounds. If you compare some professional news sites (such as BBC or CNN) and then take a look at some of latest free wordpress sites for news and magazines, you will no doubt see how professional these designs really are.

Incidently, the design for nCoded was initially designed to replicate the old BBC news websites; which incidently is part of the reason why the SEO on ncoded.com is so good.

You can also take a look at 10 of the best wordpress themes for 2011