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How much of a pain is changing WP theme for SEO?

by charlyms21
15 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello I was searching around for some answers on how to setup a perfect wordpress theme for my blog which provides my users with updated content.First of all its a huge market and I cant afford to wait for a few days before I launch my site.My question is if I launch my website with a simple word press theme and start my off page SEO stuff going for the website like bookmarking,link building etc and start promoting if at any point of time if I want to change my wordpress theme or use some other custom theme of my choice will it undermine all my effort in the SEO effort which I put in launching my website or not.Also I want to know how much of a pain is it to move from one WP theme to another WP theme or to another web template keeping the SEO in hand.The main question I need to ask is will all my effort in popularizing my website till the day I change my word press theme be worthless as I need to start the process all over again or not?
#changing #pain #seo #theme
  • Profile picture of the author ryanedmunds
    Grab any theme you like... Make sure it follows the rules outlined here.. The Definitive Guide to Semantic Web Markup for Blogs

    If it doesn't it itsn't that hard to use the WP theme editor and make the needed changes.
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    • Profile picture of the author brucemcc
      You should have no problem changing themes. I do it all the time.

      FYI.. A great source of REALLY great premium themes is iThemes : Business WordPress Themes, WordPress CMS Themes . (this is not an affiliate link or paid statement. I just love their product!) Their themes are designed to be used as a real CMS (Content Management System), but you get the SEO benefits of using Wordpress.
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      • Profile picture of the author adamjthompson
        Your Theme plays very little role in the SEO of your site. You should be looking at your setup and SEO plugins, not your theme.

        To make your url structure static and more SEO friendly, just modify the permalink structure in your WP settings. Go to Settings > Permalinks.

        To work with titles and meta tags, install WordPress › All in One SEO Pack WordPress Plugins
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        • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
          Originally Posted by adamjthompson View Post

          Your Theme plays very little role in the SEO of your site. You should be looking at your setup and SEO plugins, not your theme.
          OHHH...no.

          The theme can play a SIGNIFCANT role since many important SEO factors are indeed part of the theme. For example headline H tags, some themes do it right and keep post titles in H1 tag, some themes dont and put post titles in H2 and *blog* title in H1. (Which is wrong).

          Furthermore it also depends on the theme whether archive pages (like category, tags, date archives) show excerpts (which is good!) to avoid duplicate content. Setting of nofollow tags on pages where its needed depends on theme.

          There ARE huge differences, really., regardless whether you use a SEO plugin or not.

          Some themes also have cleaner code and validate W3 which gives another, minor boost for SEO although not that significant.
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          • Profile picture of the author adamjthompson
            Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

            The theme can play a SIGNIFCANT role since many important SEO factors are indeed part of the theme. For example headline H tags, some themes do it right and keep post titles in H1 tag, some themes dont and put post titles in H2 and *blog* title in H1. (Which is wrong).

            There ARE huge differences, really., regardless whether you use a SEO plugin or not.

            Some themes also have cleaner code and validate W3 which gives another, minor boost for SEO although not that significant.
            I disagree. I've done testing on some of these issues and found that they are not important. Matt Cutts states that you don't need to worry about getting your H1/H2 tags and syntax perfect:
            Don't get me wrong, I'm all for valid, clean code - I love it! But it's not a major ranking issue.

            EDIT: Just to clarify, I agree that it would be better to make the post title H1. That is very easily tweaked in a theme, though, and I would not consider H1 vs H2 to be a major issue.

            As for the duplicate content, having multiple versions of the same content on your site is OK - the post itself is going to be selected by Google as the best version of that copy and ranked fine. See this video for related info:

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  • Profile picture of the author sultz22
    No it will not for OFF page SEO, your backlinks will stil point to your rls unless you change rewrite or something and your urls no longer be the same for particular page

    But for ON page SEO you will have to sort it up if theme change some aspects of page structure in HTML itself.
    But the simple solution for that is to add some good seo plugin and you are all set-up again

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  • Profile picture of the author jazbo
    most of the onpage stuff comes from the copy, the page titles, the tags, and things you added such as all in one seo. These should remain constant no matter what theme you use.
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
    Changing a theme is as simple as pressing a button and activate a new theme.
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
    I disagree. I've done testing on some of these issues and found that they are not important. Matt Cutts states that you don't need to worry about getting your H1/H2 tags and syntax perfect:
    you misunderstood. And Matt is also referring that the ORDER of the H tags doesnt play a role which is certainly correct.

    But regardless of the order H1 has preference and post title SHOULD be in H1, and MANY (really, many!) themes have this wrong.

    As for dupe content: Yes, i know that it doesnt matter (on your own site) *per se* and i know that G will pick "the best match" if it sees dupe content on a site. It wont simply ignore all of them simply because there is a dupe on a site. But for internal PR shaping and a logical site structure i *think* it plays a role (probably not major) so it might have some impact on SEO.

    If you have a site you certainly want control over what page you want to rank for, and you dont want to let Google select "randomly" what it thinks is best match. Eg. i could have a sales page with a certain banner which i want to rank....and NOT the copy/mirror of it in the archives etc..thats how i see it.
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    • Profile picture of the author adamjthompson
      Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

      you misunderstood. And Matt is also referring that the ORDER of the H tags doesnt play a role which is certainly correct.

      But regardless of the order H1 has preference and post title SHOULD be in H1, and MANY (really, many!) themes have this wrong.
      From my perspective, Matt was saying more than that, but it's not a big deal.

      I agree that the title should ideally be in H1/H2 (I have not seen a difference in rankings between them), but that's easily changed if you want, so I don't see that it's a "huge" issue that should dictate which theme you use.

      EDIT: If anyone has data or references regarding how Google treats H1's vs H2's, H3's etc, I'd love to see it. I haven't seen any difference, but I could be wrong.

      Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

      As for dupe content: Yes, i know that it doesnt matter (on your own site) *per se* and i know that G will pick "the best match" if it sees dupe content on a site. It wont simply ignore all of them simply because there is a dupe on a site. But for internal PR shaping and a logical site structure i *think* it plays a role (probably not major) so it might have some impact on SEO.
      I'd be very interested to hear your theory/thoughts on that.

      Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

      If you have a site you certainly want control over what page you want to rank for, and you dont want to let Google select "randomly" what it thinks is best match. Eg. i could have a sales page with a certain banner which i want to rank....and NOT the copy/mirror of it in the archives etc..thats how i see it.
      Since the post permalink page has the correct title and undiluted content, there is little danger of Google ranking a archive or category page over the post page for searches relevant to the post page, unless other content on the archive/category page makes it more relevant. :p
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
    EDIT: If anyone has data or references regarding how Google treats H1's vs H2's, H3's etc, I'd love to see it. I haven't seen any difference, but I could be wrong.
    so you are saying according to your experience h1, h2, h3 prioritizing doesnt matter?

    Dont get me wrong..i also think its utter NONSENSE that Google takes those factors into account, it shouldnt matter whether a ehadline is in Bold, H1 or H3....importance/weight should come from the logical context and NOT from idiotic things like HTML tags.

    Its like...judging a book by looking at what font it uses...seriously...on-site SEO is a stupid, counter productive thing..and i am serious.

    But as i understand i still THINK that Google weighs and values those tags and they play a factor in on-site SEO?

    I would be the first to welcome if G would get rid of all such superficial factors...it simply shouldnt matter. But then it would also be kind of like the end of SEO as we know it
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    • Profile picture of the author adamjthompson
      Originally Posted by GeorgR. View Post

      But as i understand i still THINK that Google weighs and values those tags and they play a factor in on-site SEO?
      Oh yes, I certainly think so. I think Google gives a small boost for having keywords in your header tags.

      I just haven't seen that Google gives you a bigger boost for having keywords in your H1 tag vs in your H2 or H3. I'd be interested to hear other insight...
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  • Profile picture of the author charlyms21
    Now my question is say if I have a theme which I am using it for showing my site to my users and if I decide to change the theme at any point of time,will it affect all of my SEO effort which I put because of that?
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    • Profile picture of the author dseisner
      Originally Posted by charlyms21 View Post

      Now my question is say if I have a theme which I am using it for showing my site to my users and if I decide to change the theme at any point of time,will it affect all of my SEO effort which I put because of that?
      The only thing it will effect is returning users not recognizing your site and GoogleBot needing to read different code. Your off-page efforts will not be effected at all.
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  • Profile picture of the author dseisner
    Originally Posted by charlyms21 View Post

    Hello I was searching around for some answers on how to setup a perfect wordpress theme for my blog which provides my users with updated content.First of all its a huge market and I cant afford to wait for a few days before I launch my site.My question is if I launch my website with a simple word press theme and start my off page SEO stuff going for the website like bookmarking,link building etc and start promoting if at any point of time if I want to change my wordpress theme or use some other custom theme of my choice will it undermine all my effort in the SEO effort which I put in launching my website or not.Also I want to know how much of a pain is it to move from one WP theme to another WP theme or to another web template keeping the SEO in hand.The main question I need to ask is will all my effort in popularizing my website till the day I change my word press theme be worthless as I need to start the process all over again or not?
    Your theme can be changed in a flash, so I wouldn't worry about that.

    I think the theme counts in 2 major areas: "crawlability" and "usability." If the spiders like the clean code, then GoogleBot will crawl your site for longer and index deeper. If humans like the look and feel of your website, they will stay longer and your rankings will go up. Time on site is a HUGE factor which is often overlooked in SEO. I discuss themes at length in my book, which you can find in my sig. Hope this helps.

    p.s. it will not effect your backlinks if you change your theme, why would it?
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