SEO Risks (Changing Theme)

1. Deploy theme to a duplicate testing site and run a sitemap tool against it.
2. Run sitemap tool against current site
3. Compare sitemaps

Other than that, generally speaking it won't affect SEO

Great, thank you.

Hi,

Changing the Wordpress theme won't affect your SEO ranking however a few things that needs to keep in mind while changing your website theme.

1- Sitemap URL of your new theme.
2- Homepage Content visibility for your post. (ex- full content view or a part of it)
3- Make sure you'r title and tag are the same.
4- Make sure to check robots.txt
5- What are you tag & categories page URL. (did you make any changes in previous theme)

How to do?
Make a list of these things.
After uploading new theme make sure to check all these.

You're done.

What changes you'll see after uploading new theme.
Ranking affects if the website speeds goes up or down. Make sure it should be fast.
User Interface of the website should be good than previous one.

So you'll get ranking boost.

Best of Luck

Thank You
K

i wont effect your overall seo what if the overall link structure of your new plugin is different than the current one than you are going to loose all the links juice pointing out to ur web urls,
to solve just take a test drive of your current plugin on test server make all urls as exactly like the working urls remember even a slash at the end going to spoil each and everything

Otherwise you are good to go

Thank you. I won't be changing the server or any plugins... I'll only be changing the theme.

Changing the theme (design-only) can absolutely change the SEO rankings of your site.

I'm assuming from a technical standpoint that nothing about your theme change is executed poorly. Links are remaining the same, title/meta/etc is unchanged, etc. Then from a technical  standpoint, the SEO effects will be unchanged.

However, what you are changing is the look and feel of the site. This effects the user experience. Google measures different engagement metrics to identify if a user's experience is positive or negative. Since Google wants their searchers to receive positive experiences through search results.

For example, take this scenario into consideration:

• User searches google for widget

• User clicks first result in google (site A)

• User immediately clicks back to google and clicks on the second result (site B)

• User spends 5 minutes on site B and when they go back to google, they don't search for widget or click on any other results again

Site A Dwell Time for search result widget = 5 seconds + pogo-stick
Site B Dwell Time for search result widget = 5 minutes + no pogo-stick

Google has just identified the result they positioned at #2 is a better result than #1. If this happens over and over, SiteB will eventually overtake SiteA. This scenario is what's referred to as "pogo-sticking" in the SEO world.

Now take your 'template update' into this equation. If users previously showed 5 minutes of dwell time on average when they visited your site before going back to Google. Then you update your theme and suddenly it is hard for them to navigate, or the new look is off-putting, and suddenly they only dwell 10 seconds, that would be an indication of a negative change to the user experience. That is bad for SEO. That can effect your rankings.

You want to measure your engagement metrics (session duration, time on site, pages per visit, bounce rate, etc) before and after the change to make sure you don't hurt the user experience with a new design. Dwell time (how long someone stays on your site before returning to Google) is very important.

Remember, flashy design doesn't guarantee usability... (ie. Craigslist, Amazon, Google, etc.). Some of the simplest designs are actually the best in the end, for the user.

Yes, it will definitely affect your SEO and the ranking as well. Depending on the theme.
If the upcoming theme is anyhow slower than the previous one then google will measure it and then it comes to compare with other competitive sites those are ranking for the same keyword if they got better speed and the relevant content then this is gonna hurt your site soo bad. because if your site is faster than other sites then the user will wait and spend time on your content but if not then you will go backward on ranking.
choose a faster and smoother theme, not a cheap theme. Best of luck!

Business Rule #1 - Don't mess with your money.

If you're ranking #1 for a term, don't change anything.

Based on your questions, you require a WordPress theme designer who also understands SEO effects of theme changes.

The way you find a person is look for a person who tells you, don't change your theme if you're ranking #1.

If they tell you this, you know you have a money first person.

The primary consideration for theme changing is neither you or anyone else knows Google's algo, so why you have slot #1 is anyone's guess.

That said, you can guess at why you're in slot #1.

Site structure (HTML semantics) + Site speed/stability play a huge part in SEO ranking. Stability, means your site works fast + correct under high traffic loads.

The steps I go through with clients when changing theme or plugins (which effect content produced) is as follows...

1) Backup site + make zero content changes till this entire process is complete.

2) Fix any HTML errors reported by visiting W3C HTML Validator + validate.

3) Wait till all pages show they've been reindexed + ensure you SEO rank hasn't changed. My gauge of this is wait till GoogleBot visits + wait one day + do your Google search again.

4) If your SEO rank drops, restore your site + build theories of why this occurred, then try fixing one HTML error, instead of all errors.

5) Continue steps #1-#4 till all HTML errors on page are fixed. Usually, SEO rank only gets better when HTML errors are fixed, so likely you'll never go through #1-#4 once.

6) At this point run W3C HTML Validator again + select the outline option.

Here's the gold. This tells you the semantic structure of your page, which gives clues about how Google is ingesting your content + ascribing different values to different parts of content, like H1 tags have more weight than H2 tags... as an example.

7) When doing theme work, start with theme code which duplicates exactly the outline generated by the Validator.

If you keep your site's semantic structure intact, likely you'll retain your SEO traction across theme changes.

If you just slap another theme on your site which completely changes your site's semantic structure, you may find yourself completely off page #1.

No it will not change any ranking position. My website is craigslist posting service . i change the website template at many times but position of the site remain the same.

As long as the site architecture, the content and meta titles/descriptions, and other On Page SEO practices are in tact, there should be no problem - also consider the page speed. However, please do consider a bit of traction but it should be back on track if nothing major is changed.

Google likes updates and if you want to update your old design with new wordpress theme then this will not affect your rankings negatively. It's make a positive effect for your website but keep few things in your mind before to change your these:

1. Don't use a have theme, otherwise it increase your page loading speed and that is not good for SEO. The page loading speed should be less then 5 seconds
2. The structure of your theme is user and search engine friendly
3. Compress CSS and Java files of your new theme.