Best free wordpress theme for building a niche site?

The exact theme really doesn't matter, as long as it's not cluttered and it looks nice. There are free dedicated themes for Adsense out there, but they make your site look like spam. Your site's CTR will be lower with a non-Adsense theme, however the benefits are your site won't be as likely to be banned.

Also keep in mind that having a thin website will get you banned super-duper fast, so that's a no-no.

I'd suggest checking out the website Niche Pursuits | Find Business Ideas, Niche Websites, and Much More! It'll no doubt help you.

Cheers, Matt

thesis theme good for seo

For a paid theme I would recommend the clickbump theme. You can search for clickbumps posts on here and get the warrior discount.

As for free, I have, and still use the sem-reloaded theme. It is very versatile; you can make it look like anything you want.

There are some slight problems with free themes that I have noticed, and that is that they rely on plugins to do quite a bit of work for them still. Hence why I have been transferring my sites over to the clickbump theme. 90% - 99% of things that plugins can do is integrated into the clickbump theme.

Spend the couple of bucks that it will cost for it, and save yourself a lot of hassle. You can get it with the jumpstart pro which installs and sets up your site all ready to go ( this means that is sets up all the necessary pages like contact us, about, privacy, etc etc ).

If you can't afford it right off the bat then I would recommend investing in it once you start making a little money. I think the warrior discount gets you the theme+jumpstart pro for $27 and the SEO plugin for $17 - $19. The SEO clickbump plugin basically gives each of your posts a grade to tell you who well it is configured for SEO purposes. After that, that is the only plugin you need with the theme.

The reason why it is best to use the least amount of plugins as possible is because plugins take processor power on your hosting servers. This can create a clog in the system, as well as slow your site down. EVEN with the plugins that help to speed it up.

-- Jeff