It's a Right Royal Mess

[Richard A.Cox]

So I have this self hosted WP blog sitting happily on page one of Google for the targeted keyword. It's about 7 months old and had settled at position 8 - not brilliant but holding it's own against long-established sites.

Then the client suggests changing the theme to make it look a bit 'sharper'

Nothing wrong with that, I had used a free theme and the site was looking a little uninspired in the company of the much slicker websites of the competition.

So I installed a new paid theme - same content, same plug-ins but I have to say it looked a whole lot better.

But apparently Google didn't like the changes and overnight it slipped to page 12.

Now, I've heard of 'Google Slaps' but why should the simple act of changing a theme cause such a dramatic change?

Any clues folks?

[Jack Sprat]

Could your new theme have increase the time to load the page? There has been plenty of talk that the page load time has been incorporated into Google's algorithm.

[Richard A.Cox]

Originally Posted by Jack Sprat

Could your new theme have increase the time to load the page? There has been plenty of talk that the page load time has been incorporated into Google's algorithm.

47.87 KB
2.08 seconds
0.04 second

These are size/load time/average speed

Seems reasonably fast?

[logicaljack]

You will typically slide if you make a major change such as that, as long as the URLs are still the same as is all the content, then your ranking should be restored over the next few days.

Build a few high-quality links and it should speed up the process too

[slashman]

I also think that the problem will fix itself. How long has it been since the drop. Sometimes search engine process can be slow. I'm not entirely sure what causes the drop, but the problem should be rectified shortly. It might be a safety measure that comes into play with large scale changes to protect SE users from malicious changes. Not sure, that's just a theory of mine. Since it is just a design change, ranking should be restored eventually.

Keep us updated!

[NastyBlast]

it could also be pure coincidence. you might try switching back to the old theme to test it.

I have an absolute death grip on a #1 for a highly competitive 2 word position. I can literally put the domain off-line for a week... the result gets removed from position one... and a week later I can put this site back online and instantly take the #1 position again. I discovered this by accident because the site was down by accident.

so you might be willing to try that ( reverting to the old theme ).

[slashman]

Are you saying that it's possible for Google's algorithm to move a site down 12 pages because of a "coincidence"?

Maybe it is a glitch... who knows? But if you say your site automatically returns to the #1 spot even after being down, I think it fuels my theory even more. I think a change in design can be detected and a drop in SERPs occurs as a safety measure. Is that too far fetched?

[Richard A.Cox]

Originally Posted by slashman

I also think that the problem will fix itself. How long has it been since the drop. Sometimes search engine process can be slow. I'm not entirely sure what causes the drop, but the problem should be rectified shortly. It might be a safety measure that comes into play with large scale changes to protect SE users from malicious changes. Not sure, that's just a theory of mine. Since it is just a design change, ranking should be restored eventually.

Keep us updated!

Sure will - currently page 28!

[Richard A.Cox]

Now page 24 - maybe the tide has turned!

[InternetMarketingIQ]

When you change a theme you also change the proximity of the content in relation to the bot crawl.

So where keywords may have been in the first 250 words of text crawled they may now be pushed further down the page.

There was an old trick used on html sites so that on the front end the content would appear in the common left navigation right content format with a header.

With this trick you could push the content column above the navigation. It made a big difference in getting ranked.

When you make changes you need to think not about the front end and how it looks, but the backend and what search engine crawlers see.

[WareTime]

Originally Posted by Richard A.Cox

Now page 24 - maybe the tide has turned!

29 minutes later! Could you micromanage it any more than that? It could be 32 five minutes from now.

This will take days to weeks to sort itself out, but it will come back. Any large scale changes on a site will trigger that. By going to a new theme, every page looks new to the bots.

[Mike Grant]

It's normal. Just wait it out.

[yukon]

If you changed the theme, you changed every single page of the sites on-page seo that you've already done & helped to get you to page #1 in the SERPs.

Originally Posted by Richard A.Cox

So I have this self hosted WP blog sitting happily on page one of Google for the targeted keyword. It's about 7 months old and had settled at position 8 - not brilliant but holding it's own against long-established sites.

Then the client suggests changing the theme to make it look a bit 'sharper'

Nothing wrong with that, I had used a free theme and the site was looking a little uninspired in the company of the much slicker websites of the competition.

So I installed a new paid theme - same content, same plug-ins but I have to say it looked a whole lot better.

But apparently Google didn't like the changes and overnight it slipped to page 12.

Now, I've heard of 'Google Slaps' but why should the simple act of changing a theme cause such a dramatic change?

Any clues folks?

[Richard A.Cox]

Originally Posted by WareTime

29 minutes later! Could you micromanage it any more than that? It could be 32 five minutes from now.

This will take days to weeks to sort itself out, but it will come back. Any large scale changes on a site will trigger that. By going to a new theme, every page looks new to the bots.

Lol true I was getting a little OCD for a while

[lucky777]

Changing a design is a really bad idea. I held the #1 spot in Google for 6 months before making a change and I lost my rankings and most of the income my site was making.

Never again will I make changes to a site that's ranking well.

[thebitbotdotcom]

I have a blog sitting in position 6 for a keyword with 160,000,000 competing pages. I change the theme on a regular basis just to test that theory and I have seen it jump a position or two but that is all...FWIW