A recent project for a client made me think that an actual design of a Wordpress theme can hold SEO benefits, which a lot of the time are overlooked.

1. Make sure your theme is widget compatible - The free downloadable widgets provide great value to a blog and can help increase links and RSS subscriptions. Of course if you are a coder and want to add this separately the same results can be achieved but this will add time to the final cost.
2. Make sure the blog title is search engine readable – I know again you would think this is standard but I’ve seen many that only offer background or images for the header section.
3. Include RSS feeds in your design – Sounds like common sense but make sure then entries and comments are coded in the theme design, preferably near the top fold of the page. The basic blog feed, not feed burner or other feed websites, the bare basics.
4. Give people space to breathe – Ok, so not directly SEO related but the design should encourage the client or end user of the theme to include a sufficient level of customisation, be this adsense, MyBlogLog or other synthetic extras.
5. Site architecture – When deciding where to put your pages, categories or recent posts consider could enhance your design. Ideally put your pages at the start of the readable code i.e. in the header file, I personally like to see categories next in readable code from a search engine perspective, this will increase the speed of crawling throughout your site, thus keeping everyone happy!