Naughty Wordpress Themes to avoid
Hi folks 
I just got off the phone (SKYPE) with a client and reader.
After logging into his blog I noticed something in his footer that should not be there…
Links with names of pharmaceutical drugs that go to drug sites.
I had to look up the words in the footer to find out what they meant.
Here is a screen shot:
How did this happen??
Well, there are people giving away Wordpress themes because they can get a back link to their site if others download and use their themes. (This is fine but not the above example and themes like that should be avoided.)
More back links means better rankings in the search engines. Good for the theme creator but bad for you if your site has nothing to do with the links in the footer. The search engines will discredit your site/blog for having links in your footer that lead to drug sites.
Please make sure the links in your footer are related to your blog’s topic or blogs. For example, if you see my free Wordpress themes, there’s one link in the footer that goes to Wordpress. This has to be there in order to use Wordpress software.
The other link gets linked to this blog which is fine because this blog is about blogging and you are running a blog-that’s logical. These two links will not hurt you. Links to drug sites will if your blog is not about drugs.
Be real careful where you get your Wordpress themes.
July 13th, 2009
This is a very good point.
There is one thing you said which I don’t understand:
“The other link gets linked to this blog which is fine because this blog is about blogging and you are running a blog-that’s logical. These two links will not hurt you. Links to drug sites will if your blog is not about drugs.”
I understand that it is NOT required to keep the link to Wordpress, and that in fact it is recommended to remove it as a protection against hackers. In fact … wasn’t that written in Blog Lock-down?
I can’t find the link to this now but I remember reading somewhere that it was not required to keep the link to Wordpress.org, and as I recall this was written on the Wordpress.org website.