Is it possible for a theme change to make a big dent in your traffic?
OK, long story short, I was having a pretty good year for the first of 2023 all the way into August. I was even getting email notices that I was hitting new traffic/ CTR milestones. I was pretty jazzed about it Hey, all right, I was finally getting out of that "plateau" phase of growing my blog traffic.
Well, one day in September, I got the itch to change themes, and there was one I always liked and used to use but since it was older (and no longer in the WP repository) I thought I'd skip it, but out of curiosity I looked up the developer's site/notes which stated that he'd made an update to it in March and so I thought I'd upload it again.. Boy was I sorry after that, though, as my traffic report for September was literally half of what I'd had in August and July. I thought, could something as simple as changing your website theme really do that? Or was there an algo update at that time...
First few days into October, and I made the switch back to the previous "good" theme. But it looks like my traffic has been stagnant ever since.
A look at the Wayback Machine confirmed my suspicions. I saw that my blog had been re-captured on 9/22/23. I was able to take a look at it and sure enough it looked like crap. It wasn't even responsive! No way in heck would I have installed a theme I knew was not a responsive one (in mobile view, everything looked just fine....)
So yeah, I know, nobody's fault but mine. I guess the big question is, how long does it take to recover from something like this? (And am I allowed to disclose the names of the themes on here?)
Well, one day in September, I got the itch to change themes, and there was one I always liked and used to use but since it was older (and no longer in the WP repository) I thought I'd skip it, but out of curiosity I looked up the developer's site/notes which stated that he'd made an update to it in March and so I thought I'd upload it again.. Boy was I sorry after that, though, as my traffic report for September was literally half of what I'd had in August and July. I thought, could something as simple as changing your website theme really do that? Or was there an algo update at that time...
First few days into October, and I made the switch back to the previous "good" theme. But it looks like my traffic has been stagnant ever since.
A look at the Wayback Machine confirmed my suspicions. I saw that my blog had been re-captured on 9/22/23. I was able to take a look at it and sure enough it looked like crap. It wasn't even responsive! No way in heck would I have installed a theme I knew was not a responsive one (in mobile view, everything looked just fine....)
So yeah, I know, nobody's fault but mine. I guess the big question is, how long does it take to recover from something like this? (And am I allowed to disclose the names of the themes on here?)
