I'm currently using a nice, clean Wordpress theme out at Mad Techie Woman until I can find the time to create my own, and I appreciate the folks that make this available.
However, I found a gotcha with one WP theme today. One of the more popular WP themes is Water 1.1. Like all themes, the creator is listed in small print at the bottom, usually with a link to the creator's web site. This linkage is more than a fair price for the use of the theme. However, at least with this theme and who knows how many others (quite a few from this Google search), there's a link to a theme sponsor, in this case a site selling poker tables.
I checked with Matt at Wordpress, and I gather there was a discussion about this a few months back. All of these links are to be removed from all of the themes once the current ad contract ends for the theme producer. Whether it's there still or not, you should remove it from your site, because the theme creator does not get any money for this showing up on your site.
If you put the theme out as is, primarily customizing the content, header, and sidebar, you might miss this link. If you're not very experienced with HTML and/or CSS, you'll probably miss this link. However, if your site doesn't allow advertising, such as Wordpress.com, you're in violation of their EULA. More than that, do you want to have a link to a poker-related site as payment for a theme?
If you're using a theme, check it for links such as this and remove them. If you're not familiar with HTML, following are the steps you can take to remove the sponsor link:
- In the theme directory, locate the footer.php file using your favorite FTP application.
- Download this file.
- Open the file in your text editor tool, such as TextEdit for Mac, or Notepad for Windows.
- Find the line that reads something like "| Theme sponsor: <a href="http://www.webertables.com">Weber Poker Tables</a>. The company or web site could, and does change.
- Delete this text, save the file, and reload it to your server, overwriting the existing footer.php file.
Why is this important? After all, it's just a link. Robert Scoble wrote recently that these 'static' links don't count as much as links within a post. Is he correct?
Actually, these static links count for a lot. For instance, I've been linked in several posts at the new URL, but few static links because I redirected all incoming links from my old URL to this new one. According to Robert, I should be getting lots of page cred from the dynamic links. Yet this site still shows up as page rank of zero. I'm not worried about it, because I know this will change over time. Well, as long as I don't get too boring or some such thing.
Page rank isn't just a matter of links. No one really knows Google's algorithms, but from personal observation over the years, the page ranking seems to be a combination of time in the Google index, number of incoming links, page rank of incoming links, and link behavior: links that float off the front page, as compared to links that statically remain within a page.
Our post links count, true, but a static link from a medium or higher ranked site is worth its weight in pure SEO gold. Webloggers, if they hang around long enough, typically become 4-7 page ranked sites. That's more than most sites, which makes us very attractive from an SEO perspective. PayPerPost may offer some SEO optimization, with the in-post linking from several webloggers, but sidebar or footer or other static linking is still an important component of permanently pushing a site's rank up a notch. Combine several weblogger's relatively modest page ranks with a static footer link, let it cook for a few months, and you have bubbled a site up a notch.
Case in point: which weblogger's site is worth more from an SEO perspective than most others? Would you think it Techcrunch? Scoble's? Huffington Post? Michelle Malkin?
No, it's Matt Mullenweg's site. Techcrunch, Scoble's old and new URL, and Huffington Post all have a page rank of 7, while Matt's is the relatively high atmosphere 8.
The reason Matt's is ranked higher is based on a number of factors. First, his site has been around a long time, and has been linked in blogrolls and weblog posts; these meet the history and links requirements. However, in my opinion, what pushed Matt up, and has kept his rank high, is when we downloaded Wordpress, Matt's site came pre-loaded as a sidebar link and most people just kept it in. Yes, he has in-post links, and has been linked by high ranked sites, but it's the longevity and the so-called 'static' links from the pre-loaded sidebar list items that give him that edge, pushing him from 7 to 8.
Other of the top sites that also have an 8 page rank are BoingBoing and Daily Kos, which are again two sites that have post links but also have accrued a great number of 'static' links in sidebars and such over the years. Michelle Malkin, Huffington Post, and Techcrunch, like the other Technorati Top 100 sites with a Google rank of 7 may have Technorati rank but not Google rank because they don't have the long-term history and the static linking that transcends appearance in 'just' pages. In fact, they don't have any more pagerank than most longer-term reasonably popular webloggers who were around in the blogroll boom times.
In many ways, Technorati's algorithm goes contrary to Google's own algorithms. It disregards the history that Google values.
These static links do count, especially over time. Bottom line, as much as you want to 'pay back' the theme creator, you're giving a gift that keeps on giving–way beyond the value the theme creator received from the deal.
