Pardon me for the theme change again. I just upgraded to Wordpress 2.3 and the theme that I was using was not compatible and gave me some problems whenever I hit the publish button. The upgrade went like a breeze though. Had to download some newer versions of plugins, but that wasn’t too tedious.
This new theme have been certified compatible and it seems to be working okay after I put it through the works offline. My only grouse is the sidebar. Maybe I have been listening to too many SEO advises. Most of them tells me that sidebars floating on the left side is bad SEO practise, because when Googlebots crawls our blog, they will start from the top, goes down to the fight side, before moving to the left. So it is best that our contents stays on the right to attract as much Google Juice as possible. The sidebar items does nothing to help, so it is best to be kept on the left side, to be crawled last.
That was what I learned anyway, but many SEO gurus have also countered this argument saying that if the theme designer knows their SEO stuffs, they can manipulate the Googlebots to crawl the most important part first by adding some codes. This theme is supposed to be SEO-ed, so I guess anyside the sidebar sits doesn’t matter.
Another fact that has been proven by research is the placement of Ads. It is always advised that Ads that needs to be clicked be placed on the right side. Their theory is most surfers are right handed, holding the mouse in their right hand and by nature, humans are lazy. To the extent that they are lazy even to push their cursor to the left side. If you place your Ads on the right side it makes it convenient for them, so you get more clickthroughs. Don’t believe me? Try some sites with sidebars on the left, like this one and see if it really feels inconvenient for you. Since I don’t have Ads here, I guess this theory won’t effect me too much.
So much for themes and theories. If yo have upgraded and find that your theme, is giving you trouble, check out for compatible themes at Wordpress Themes Compatibility Site.
I like this theme of yours than the previous one, simpler. When you say about the left-right thingy, I just realised that it took effort to turn my head to the left to see what you have there as well, sorry, but it’s the truth (I am a right hander).