Will a change of WordPress theme affect search engine Rankinks?

[Bulldozer]

Let's say that my WordPress-based site is ranked #5 on Google.
Will it move in rankings (up or down) if I apply a different WordPress theme to my website?
Will there be a "sandbox" period before Google recalculates my site's rank again with the new theme?

Or does Google only rank the content and not the theme code (meaning that I will remain #5, no matter what themes I use and how often I change them)?

Will it be safe rankings-wise to change my site's WordPress themes every day if for some super crazy reason I have to?

[John Williamson]

It may cause the site to jump around in the SERPs temporarily, but if the on-page SEO is roughly the same or better than it was previously, it should come back or get higher than it was before.

[JamesGw]

Originally Posted by John Williamson

It may cause the site to jump around in the SERPs temporarily, but if the on-page SEO is roughly the same or better than it was previously, it should come back or get higher than it was before.

This, more or less.

As long as your URL structure doesn't change, you shouldn't see a big shift in rankings. Different internal link structure and different heading settings might mess with your rankings, though.

[Bulldozer]

Originally Posted by John Williamson

It may cause the site to jump around in the SERPs temporarily, but if the on-page SEO is roughly the same or better than it was previously, it should come back or get higher than it was before.

I'm thinking of changing my WP theme.
If a temporary Google dance is the worse thing that I can expect, then I will go for it.
However, I was thinking: some WP themes are very different from one another in terms of navigation.
Two themes may offer completely different navigation options: for example, I may start using a new theme that has "Recent posts" and "Archived posts" menus in the sidebar.
These menus will add more internal linking to my site but duplicate content as well.
The search engine crawlers will see the site's structure differently, etc.

So, I believe that even if the on-page SEO of the posts/pages is the same (and it will be the same on-page SEO in my case), a new WordPress theme may actually add some additional SEO benefits but also problems to your site.

Is my assumption right, or is this not the case?

[dp40oz]

I was actually just going to start a thread about this. I switched my theme and my rankings completely tanked. Ive switched back, its been a few days and the rankings still haven't come back. I haven't done anything to the site other then change the theme in weeks so I can't really think it would be anything else.

[Bulldozer]

Originally Posted by dp40oz

I was actually just going to start a thread about this. I switched my theme and my rankings completely tanked. Ive switched back, its been a few days and the rankings still haven't come back. I haven't done anything to the site other then change the theme in weeks so I can't really think it would be anything else.

Hmmm, sounds like the rank dump that you've suffered was the result of the theme changes indeed...
Were the two themes very different from one another in terms of structure and navigation?

[dp40oz]

No I don't think so. I changed from Slick theme to CTR Theme. I did it about 10am and at about 11pm that night every page in my site was knocked down from 1st page rankings to the 900's. Funny enough my strongest page on the site is still sitting on the 3rd page for the biggest keyword. Though it was #6 before the plummet.

I am thinking somehow the theme change made Google think the site was gone or something, I really have no idea though. The only reason I think that is that every page was hit soooo hard except the 1 page with tons of links, which they let stick around on page 3, maybe because it just has so many links Google didn't want to wipe it out just yet. Its really frustrating. It could be something else but I can't imagine what. I really haven't done anything to it except the theme change in a while.

[Bulldozer]

Originally Posted by dp40oz

No I don't think so. I changed from Slick theme to CTR Theme. I did it about 10am and at about 11pm that night every page in my site was knocked down from 1st page rankings to the 900's. Funny enough my strongest page on the site is still sitting on the 3rd page for the biggest keyword. Though it was #6 before the plummet.

I am thinking somehow the theme change made Google think the site was gone or something, I really have no idea though. The only reason I think that is that every page was hit soooo hard except the 1 page with tons of links, which they let stick around on page 3, maybe because it just has so many links Google didn't want to wipe it out just yet. Its really frustrating. It could be something else but I can't imagine what. I really haven't done anything to it except the theme change in a while.

Damn... this sucks. How much were you making per month from this web site?
I hope it's not permanent. Gotta be temporary - hopefully, you did not break any Google rules when you changed the theme, so it must be a re-indexing thing.

I think the bottom line of this thread gotta be: don't change your WP theme!

[Fernando Veloso]

Themes are coded differently. Thus each theme has a "score" in the eyes of Google. Then you can add the "weight" each theme gives to:

Posts
Pages
Categories
Tags
etc

Some themes are coded tyo give power to posts, others to pages.

All this ^^ as major influence in your site, cause you may created your site trying to make pages stronger then posts, etc. So you need a theme that is targeted to your site - so you can get all the juice from it.

Now comes the hard part: what themes are good for my site structure?

For that you need:

A) a custom theme (coded to fit your needs, say stronger Posts...)
B) a WP expert to avail what you have, what weight your structure has, etc and advice you a proper theme.

Confusing?



Thats the way it goes if you REALLY look into themes code... and to what gets "weight".

Fernando

[dp40oz]

Originally Posted by Bulldozer

Damn... this sucks. How much were you making per month from this web site?
I hope it's not permanent. Gotta be temporary - hopefully, you did not break any Google rules when you changed the theme, so it must be a re-indexing thing.

I think the bottom line of this thread gotta be: don't change your WP theme!

The site made $250 in August but its an education site so it should have started making double that this month, thats why I was getting it all set with a nice new theme. The rankings will come back. Ive had enough weird Google happenings in my life to know that sites virtually always come back, but WHEN is the big thing. Sometimes it can take months. Ugghhhh.

I would like to add though... I have changed wordpress themes numerous times on many different sites and have never seen something this major before. Actually in the past I have seen opposite effects. For example I have changed themes on penalized sites and have seen the theme change pull them back to the top.

[wanjugu]

Thanks,such a good revelation,mine is not living up to expectation after 2.5 months.

[JimmyRose]

There have been a LOT of people reporting massive drops in rankings from the CTR theme! Can't be too good for their business...

[JustaWizard]

Googlebot does not care one bit what theme you use or how it's coded - from a technical perspective, a new Wordpress theme put into place will have zero to do with how Googlebot and their ranking algorithm decides to rank your site.

Despite any horror stories you may hear, I've switched themes on dozens of sites, dozens of times, and did not lose rankings.

If you're still not sure, talk to some real, full-time developers like the ones I work with all day long at my job, they'll mostly laugh and then pose extremely unlikely instances of a theme that is going to cause a technical problem with respect to Googlebots ability to crawl.

Switch your theme to one by a reputable coder (or use your own using Artisteer), watch your Analytics, and don't listen to the tin-foil-hat crowd.

Hope that helps!
David

[lovboa]

I also changed themes 2 days ago and I haven't noticed any movement in the serps

[jameschoi]

So glad to have found this thread. This has been very helpful since I am also planning planning to do the same with my new wordpress site. Thank you so much.

[Bulldozer]

Originally Posted by JustaWizard

Googlebot does not care one bit what theme you use or how it's coded - from a technical perspective, a new Wordpress theme put into place will have zero to do with how Googlebot and their ranking algorithm decides to rank your site.

Despite any horror stories you may hear, I've switched themes on dozens of sites, dozens of times, and did not lose rankings.

If you're still not sure, talk to some real, full-time developers like the ones I work with all day long at my job, they'll mostly laugh and then pose extremely unlikely instances of a theme that is going to cause a technical problem with respect to Googlebots ability to crawl.

Switch your theme to one by a reputable coder (or use your own using Artisteer), watch your Analytics, and don't listen to the tin-foil-hat crowd.

Hope that helps!
David

Thank you for your post.
I learned to take everything I read on this forum with a grain of salt.
And that includes posts from allegedly reputable members.
Moving from a good WordPress theme to another good WordPress theme sure won't shuffle much your rankings.

Now, the problem that I am having with my current Artisteer-generated WordPress theme is that it's not a good one. Or at least I think it's not.
My personal experience shows that its pages get indexed way slower than the posts.

I have two 15-days-old pages that are still not indexed in Yahoo and Bing and a 3-days-old post that got indexed on every search engine, except for Yahoo, almost immediately after I published it.

I created a thread about this problem and one of the more logical-sounding conclusions was that my Artisteer WP theme just has problems getting indexed.

So I was thinking: if it is true that a theme can cause indexing problems, then themes must be an important factor for your site's indexing/ranking on search engines.

[Srinagarhouseboats]

It may , because the density of you keyword may up or down because of this .

[Fernando Veloso]

Originally Posted by JustaWizard

Googlebot does not care one bit what theme you use or how it's coded - from a technical perspective, a new Wordpress theme put into place will have zero to do with how Googlebot and their ranking algorithm decides to rank your site.

Thats just plain wrong.

Each theme is coded differently to give "weight" to some part of the site, and that particular balance is what works OR not with your particular SITE structure.

Question here is NOT how GBot sees the site: is how the site channels inside power (internal linking) and redistribute that power - which changes from theme to theme.

Thats why people with brains and money pay for custom themes, developed to work with THAT site structure.

But what do I know... lol

[enni]

I don't think so that change of wordPress theme affect search engine ranking.

[JustaWizard]

Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso

Thats just plain wrong.

Each theme is coded differently to give "weight" to some part of the site, and that particular balance is what works OR not with your particular SITE structure.

Question here is NOT how GBot sees the site: is how the site channels inside power (internal linking) and redistribute that power - which changes from theme to theme.

Sorry, bro, but that's NOT "just plain wrong", Googlebot does not care how your site is coded, but If a theme's nav is images then Googlebot is not going to crawl those links, so passing linkjuice via your nav and categories is an obvious necessity I didn't address. Artisteer themes do not create image-nav labels. The bottom line is that any site, Wordpress theme or otherwise, is crawled to the extent Googlebot can crawl, or is prevented from crawling, the site - if technical roadblocks are in place that prevent Googlebot from crawling at all, or the crawl budget is spent crawling pages needlessly (privacy policy pages, for example) then that's going to impact indexation, potentially, but a good xml sitemap will take care of that.

Wordpress themes don't have squat to do with rankings, despite what theme creators will tell you, unless that theme is posing technical roadblocks, and the OP stated Artisteer is their theme creator, so the OP can for sure change themes without ranking being affected, despite others who want to scare him/her into thinking it will.

[JustaWizard]

Originally Posted by Bulldozer

Thank you for your post.
My personal experience shows that its pages get indexed way slower than the posts.

I have two 15-days-old pages that are still not indexed in Yahoo and Bing and a 3-days-old post that got indexed on every search engine, except for Yahoo, almost immediately after I published it.

So I was thinking: if it is true that a theme can cause indexing problems, then themes must be an important factor for your site's indexing/ranking on search engines.

Correct, but only if the theme IS for sure causing a problem for Googlebot. And by the way, posts ping but pages don't which is the most likely reason for pages not getting indexed as fast. But I never, ever would worry about how fast pages are being indexed - just make sure have an XML sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools, and if you must worry about indexation quickly, then get links to your page(s) and you'll be fine.

David

[seobirk]

I would strongly disagree here. You can mess up your rankings when your theme changes your website's user-experience.

Reference - Google Panda

[JustaWizard]

Originally Posted by seobirk

I would strongly disagree here. You can mess up your rankings when your theme changes your website's user-experience.

Reference - Google Panda

Google's documentation about Panda updates shows that UI is something they're looking at but they don't reveal how or what they're looking at or how their algorithm is making such determinations. Panda, as they've noted a number of times, is intended to weed out low quality sites like scraper sites and content farms that don't contribute to the web. The bottom line is don't code a site in a way (or use a theme) that will be detrimental to crawling.

[Tmill]

I have been told that changing your theme is a good think. I do it every month or 2 and my rank has only been increasing

[seobirk]

Originally Posted by JustaWizard

Google's documentation about Panda updates shows that UI is something they're looking at but they don't reveal how or what they're looking at or how their algorithm is making such determinations. Panda, as they've noted a number of times, is intended to weed out low quality sites like scraper sites and content farms that don't contribute to the web. The bottom line is don't code a site in a way (or use a theme) that will be detrimental to crawling.

What I wanted to say was -

If the theme has an affect on factors like -
Increased Loading time and Bounce rate
Site interlinking and over link juice flow. The content visibility and readability.


If the theme effects website in a positive way, then you can actually expect a SERP jump.

Originally Posted by Tmill

I have been told that changing your theme is a good think. I do it every month or 2 and my rank has only been increasing

Just from curiosity. Every time you make the change the theme you make the change for the better?

But doesn't it affect your visitors. The effect of graphical memory etc. etc.
I would be personally pretty angry if e.g WF would change its design every two months.

[mpchekuri]

Originally Posted by John Williamson

It may cause the site to jump around in the SERPs temporarily, but if the on-page SEO is roughly the same or better than it was previously, it should come back or get higher than it was before.

Will this effect for only that post or for entire site? One of my site which was ranking better with some keywords and suddenly disappeared from those positions for entire site.