You are about to create a website with WordPress and you are looking for a theme to associate with it? This can be a difficult choice given the multitude of themes available on the famous CMS.
You may not know where to look, especially where to find free themes. To help you in this quest, we offer you in this article a summary of the best 10 SEO optimized WordPress themes for 2023.
This way, you will discover the best free designs compatible with WordPress, as well as their characteristics to be sure that they fit your project the best.
What are the best free SEO optimized themes for WordPress?
If you are just starting in website creation, or if your budget is a bit tight, it is completely unnecessary to use a paid theme for your WordPress site. Indeed, a multitude of free and qualitative templates are available to you. You just need to find them.
To save you valuable hours of research, we have compiled a top 10 list of the best free themes for WordPress in 2023. We will present each of these themes to you below so that you can get a clear idea of them.
Astra
Whether you want to create a blog, a showcase site, or an online store, the first theme in our comparison will delight you. Astra is probably the most successful among the free SEO optimized WordPress themes, and not just because of its adaptability to all types of websites.
Indeed, this theme also offers you a very advanced level of customization. You can choose the colors, fonts, or even the display of the menus on your site. Similarly, you can integrate a host of tools on the Astra theme such as:
- WooCommerce: the famous e-commerce plugin, to create an online store.
- Elementor: this allows you to create your site with the drag-and-drop technique, for more ease.
- BeaverBuilder: this is also a page builder that works on the drag-and-drop principle.
- Astra offers good performance. It is light and fast while allowing you to integrate the tools of your choice. However, it is worth noting that a paid version of this theme exists.
- The free version is therefore not the most qualitative of the two. However, it still deserves your attention, due to the characteristics that we have just listed.
Neve
Neve is a free WordPress theme that offers a variety of options and is particularly geared toward beginners looking to create a personal, professional, or e-commerce site. The theme is easy to use and customize and is mobile-friendly thanks to its AMP format. It also includes dedicated SEO settings to help improve search engine rankings. The design is simple and modern and offers many demos to help users learn how to use it effectively. Neve is also compatible with popular page builders like Gutenberg.
All settings can be accessed from a single panel, making it easy for even novice users to navigate. However, its ease of use does not compromise its performance, making it suitable for experts as well. In short, Neve is an excellent solution that can be adapted to all types of projects and all WordPress users.
OceanWP
OceanWP is a free SEO optimized WordPress theme that has been downloaded over 3 million times for all kinds of websites. The main advantage of this theme is the multitude of features it offers in its free version, many of which are usually reserved for premium versions. With OceanWP, users can also use various tools such as Elementor, BeaverBuilder, Divi, and Visual Composer to customize their theme. It is highly customizable to offer unique and perfectly tailored results to user needs. OceanWP is also adaptable for use with the WooCommerce plugin for online commerce.
While the free version of OceanWP is of good quality, there is also a paid version that offers even more possibilities.
Hestia
The free WordPress theme Hestia is also very interesting if SEO optimization is important to you. That’s why we’re talking about it in this article presenting the best options for 2023. Even though this theme is not particularly new, it still enjoys great success: its overall rating of 4.5/5 is a testament to that.
Hestia was initially designed to make it easy for beginners to create, but more experienced users will also find it useful due to the many advantages it offers.
Firstly, Hestia displays a simplistic dashboard, but it is by no means incomplete. Site management is made easy, and you won’t get lost in multiple options.
Furthermore, Hestia doesn’t require a page builder. This is an advantage, but note that you can still pair it with Elementor if you wish. We can also point out that the Hestia theme offers an elegant and harmonious design.
Its configuration is simple, and the templates it offers can adapt to both a blog, a showcase site or an online store. Additionally, Hestia offers you two extensions:
- Orbit Fox, to access multiple functions of your site’s homepage.
- Pirate Forms, to create an attractive contact form.
Airi
For the continuation of our selection of the best free themes suitable for WordPress, we will focus on Airi. This theme is quite new, its design is clear and refined, and the typography is very clean. Thus, your readers can focus on the content, which is the basis of SEO optimization.
You can add a banner image as a header, or even add a history of your company, such as a section dedicated to testimonials from former clients or recommendations you have received over time.
While Airi seems to target businesses in particular, this theme also adapts very well to personal use, especially with the Elementor interface (based on the drag-and-drop principle). Indeed, Airi comes with the Elemento tool to make the creation and customization easier.
You can also add other plugins such as WooCommerce if you want to sell products through your site. Similarly, you will have the Live Customizer to be able to act on the fonts, backgrounds, or colors of your design.
This excellent theme is responsive and offers good performance (especially in terms of SEO). Airi is ready to be translated into several languages. You will understand that these options are not negligible, especially for a free theme.
Sydney
Whatever type of website you want to create, the free WordPress theme Sydney can meet your needs. Like the other options we have already presented in our ranking of the best SEO optimized themes for 2023, Sydney can integrate the necessary plugins for all types of sites, from blogs to online stores.
The Sydney theme has many features, such as:
- It is responsive, which means it adapts to all types of screens for optimal display. This is important SEO optimization.
- Dedicated Elementor blocks, to make it easier to create with the famous page builder.
- Theme customization through the WordPress Customizer tool.
- Font management with Google Fonts. The whole is integrated into Sydney (so you have access to more than 600 fonts).
- A Slider for the header of your website.
- This theme is ready to be translated, which is a big advantage for a 100% free theme.
You should also note that Sydney has a paid version that allows you to go further. However, its free version seems largely sufficient for the majority of websites.
GeneratePress
To continue our overview of the best SEO optimized free themes for WordPress, we will now focus on the GeneratePress theme. This is one of the highest-rated themes among free WordPress themes and allows you to create any type of website.
GeneratePress has several advantages. It is very lightweight, which allows it to load quickly. This is a good point for search engine optimization but also for the user experience of your visitors.
In addition, this theme is highly customizable, allowing you to adapt it to your needs. You will have access to nine widget areas, for example, to add the tools/menus of your choice to your site.
Note that GeneratePress is compatible with the majority of WordPress extensions. However, we have noticed that the free version of GeneratePress may be slightly less complete than that of other themes already presented, such as Neve or Astra.
Indeed, to access the pre-made templates or personalized assistance, you will need to opt for the paid version of GeneratePress. However, if the options of the free version are sufficient for you, do not hesitate.
StoreFront
StoreFront WordPress theme is more geared towards an online shop. This theme may already be familiar to you, as it is the official theme used by the popular WooCommerce plugin.
So you can imagine that StoreFront is not only aesthetically pleasing, but it also has the necessary features for managing an online shop. Indeed, StoreFront has all the basic functions, and this is in a modular and accessible environment.
You won’t need shortcodes, page builders, or sliders. As a result, your use will be as simple as possible, and, above all, you can focus on the essentials: your business.
Several Storefront templates will be available to customize your online shop. Of course, the design is responsive, which is a good point. However, we have a comment to make about the free StoreFront theme: many of the tools you can add to it are paid.
Even if the free solution of StoreFront is largely satisfactory, you may be frustrated when trying to add some widgets that turn out to be paid.
Shapely
We come to the free SEO optimized WordPress theme Shapely. You will see that it deserves its place in our top 10. Indeed, it is probably one of the most advanced free WordPress themes. It is responsive and you can use it with WooCommerce.
Like all the themes in our comparison, Shapely is quite customizable since you can manage colors, fonts, and other aspects of your website’s display. The vast majority of WordPress extensions are compatible with this theme.
With Shapely, you can also take advantage of many options for your website’s homepage. We think, for example, of adding different sections for testimonials, a portfolio, or dedicated frames for products or services.
As you can see, the free Shapely theme is one of the best for your WordPress site.
ColorMag
The latest free SEO optimized WordPress theme we want to introduce to you in this article is called ColorMag. It offers very good performance, including a website loading time of less than one second, which makes it particularly interesting.
Another advantage of ColorMag is its compatibility with a large number of page builders. This includes:
- BeaverBuilder
- Gutenberg
- Elementor
- SiteOrigin
- Brizy
The design of the ColorMag theme is quite original and can be adapted to your preferences thanks to around fifteen areas dedicated to widgets, as well as a choice of no less than 15 different templates.
Social icons are available to you and you can add them to your site as you wish so that your visitors can share your content on social networks.
Thanks to the integration of the WPML plugin, it will be possible and very simple for you to translate your theme for multilingual versions.
Like many of the other themes in this comparison, ColorMag also exists in a premium (and therefore paid) version to offer you more features, such as a greater number of templates or widgets, but also advanced customer support.
Conclusion
Our ranking of the best free SEO optimized themes for WordPress is coming to an end, and we hope that it has helped or confirmed your choice. Faced with the number of themes available, this selection will have at least enlightened you on the possibilities available to you.
Please note that to explore WordPress themes in more detail, you can find demos of them directly on their respective sites. You will thus have the opportunity to see the results you can obtain, or even test them.
All that remains is for you to choose the theme that will be your ally in creating your SEO optimized WordPress website and to embark on the adventure.
