The Best WordPress Themes for Blogs in 2021

Introduction

Blogs are a great way to express yourself and share your thoughts with others. Therefore selecting the best WordPress themes for blogs is very important.

Blogging is one of the most popular activities on the Internet today. The number of people who blog on WordPress is highest than any other platform. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you need the right theme.

A great WordPress theme will help your audience feel comfortable and encourage them to dive into the content on your site.

A good theme not only makes a good first impression on your users but also helps your SEO.

How do I choose a theme for my blog? 

You need to look for a few important features or characteristics when you select a new theme for your blogging website. Best WordPress themes for bloggers must have these characteristics.

Responsiveness

A responsive theme is one that responds to the user’s behavior and environment based on platform, screen size, and orientation. This implies that a responsive theme can easily perform well on a mobile device without any issues.

Speed 

The theme needs to ensure quick page loading. While a theme is not entirely responsible for page loading time, it plays a significant role in how fast or slows a page load. You need to make sure that the theme you choose is clean and well optimized

SEO Friendliness

If your theme is responsive and speed performance is up to the mark, then it’s already fulfilling some important SEO requirements. 

But still, it will be helpful to look for themes with the ‘developed for SEO’ label. This makes sure that the theme developer has incorporated SEO principles into their theme design.

Browser compatibility

Another important factor to consider is the compatibility of the theme with all the popular web browsers. Not everyone who may access your blog uses the same web browser and browsers have differences in how they render different websites or blogs

Your blog should behave the same in all of the popular web browsers like Internet Explorer/Microsoft Edge, Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari and also in their mobile versions

Many Android devices have UC Browser and your blog should be displayed properly in that too.

Customizable

Customizable themes have the ability to make the required changes to create a unique look of your blog website and add elements that enhance the user experience

Regular Updates

You need to look for themes that are updated regularly. This very important characteristic to be considered when selecting a theme.

With regularly updated themes, you are assured that your site will be fully compatible with future WordPress releases. It also ensures the security of the theme from hackers.

Premium themes

It’s not that the free themes are not up to the mark but if you can afford them, go for premium themes. 

The best thing with premium themes is that they have all the above-mentioned characteristics (responsive, SEO friendly, regularly updated, customizable, compatible, and performance) along with the support you get from the developers. 

What are good blog themes?

I am listing below some of the best WordPress themes for blogs based on the criteria mentioned above. Most of these themes have free as well as premium versions. These are also some of the most popular blog themes.

Astra

Astra is a superfast, SEO-optimized, and responsive WordPress theme, from Brainstorm Force. It is one of the best WordPress themes for blogging.

It’s very much customizable. Anything can be edited including header, blog, archives, single pages, posts, and footer.

Main Features of Astra:

• SEO-optimized and mobile responsive theme.
• Integration with Schema.org code.
• Provides around 180 ready to import starter websites
• Easy integration with page builders like Elementor, Beaver, etc
• It is completely WooCommerce ready

OceanWP

OceanWP is a multipurpose and lightweight theme that helps you create any type of websites such as a blog, portfolio, business, and WooCommerce store. 

Also, OceanWP is one of the popular themes in the WordPress directory.

Main Features of OceanWP:

• Fully responsive 
• SEO-optimized 
• RTL & translation ready
• Works with most of the popular page builders like Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi, etc

Neve

Neve is a lightweight theme built for Speed and a mobile-first approach in mind. It is the best WordPress theme for blogs that is faster, AMP, and Gutenberg-ready.

Main Features of Neve:

• The theme is 100% fully responsive and adaptive to all screens
• Translation ready
• Comes with Elementor integration
• Custom layouts
• Starter sites

GeneratePress

GeneratePress is a lightweight WordPress theme built with a focus on speed and usability. It provides a powerful set of tools, plugins, templates, and full-fledged demo websites.  Using these you can create many types of blog websites. Again one of the best WordPress themes for blogs.

Main Features of GeneratePress:

• It can be installed on up to 500 websites
• Access to lots of pre-made templates in Site Library
• Provides block-based theme builder 
• Fully translated over 30+ languages

Extra

Extra is from Elegant Themes, the same team which makes Divi, one of the most popular WordPress themes in the world. Divi’s main focus is on the page, whereas Extra’s focus is on the post feed.

If you want beautiful, versatile, magazine-like layouts that help in creating a variety of blogs and online publications you need Extra. 

Main Features of Extra:

• Robust customization options that allow for unique and elegant post feeds 
• Social media integration
• Built-in ratings and review system
• Automatic WordPress updates
• Optimized for WooCommerce
• Social media integration

AffiliateBooster

A powerful and best WordPress theme for bloggers into affiliate marketing. It gives a personalized feel by picking the best fonts and color combinations.

Main Features of AffiliateBooster:

• Easily customizable
• Fast loading
• Schema Optimized
• Stunning header design and homepage layouts

Writee

If you are planning for a personal blog with a bunch of great content about food, fashion, travel, or any other lifestyle topics, Writee is the one you should be looking at. 

Main features of Writee:

• A design that looks great on smaller screens.
• A full-width slider.
• It includes custom widgets, to enhance sidebar.
• The focus of this theme is its design. 

Tracks

Tracks have a dark and minimalist design, and a unique default look in comparison to other blog themes. Its mainly designed for photography, blogging, and magazine sites. 

Main features of Tracks:

• A minimalist design.
• It is compatible with WooCommerce.
• Works well with image-heavy blogs.

Readmore

Read more is a free WordPress theme that you can use to build a top-class tech blog. It is one of the best WordPress themes for tech blogs. It has lots of highly crafted premium features, added custom widgets, options, featured slider, social links, advanced logo options, sidebar options, footer options, and a lot more. 

Main Features of Readmore:

• Compatible with all types of devices
• Translation ready
• SEO friendly
• Consists of a unique blog design
• WooCommerce ready

Supernews

SuperNews is one of the ideal WordPress themes for News, Magazines, Blogs. It is fully responsive and provides features like lightweight, retina ready, font awesome, etc. This is also one of the best WordPress themes for bloggers.

Main Features of SuperNews :

• Cross-browser compatible
• Layout controls and colored options
• Integrated social media options
• Advertisement ready

Conclusion

So you need to keep in mind certain criteria to choose your favorite blog theme. If you are planning to have a personal blog without any plans to monetize it go for any of the free themes mentioned above. But if you want to make your blog site unique with monetization in mind you need to make an initial investment in premium themes. 

The best way is to use the free theme initially to test the things with that theme and later go for its premium version if you find the free version useful.

If you are looking for AI based article generators, then you may find my post on free article generators online useful.