AdSense Theme for WordPress at pilkster.com

An SEO optimized AdSense theme for WordPress has been posted at pilkster.com. Adsense is integrated into the header, sidebar and footer. The theme also includes Adsense for search in place of the standard WordPress search function.

The theme uses the maximum number AdSense ads allowed (3 text ads per page, and one link unit). While it does looks a bit overdone with AdSense text ads, you can switch out AdSense for any other advertising program you might wish to use as the banners are standard sizes (336×280, 160×600, and 728×90). Also, you could change one or more of the banners to AdSense ‘image only’ ads.

The author points out that some basic SEO has been incorporated into the theme. For example, the “title” and “h1″ tags contain the most relevant information and on a post page, the post title is used, on a category the category title is used etc.

The theme is clean and basic (no distracting header image) allowing for further optimization. My first customization would probably be to change the color of the comment boxes.

Why do bloggers such as Pilkster release WordPress themes to the public for free? The answer is the backlink in the footer. Thousands of bloggers using a theme can substantially raise the page rank of the author’s homepage.

Note: If you think that the Pilkster theme is ‘spammy’, you might want to take a look at the Asia Times Online.

Update Feb. 23rd: See 18 AdSense Optimized WordPress Themes.