If I change my wp theme will it effect my rankings?

[mofoparrot]

Hey guys, I currently have one of my main sites floating between number 1 and 2 (depends on the day and which one of us two updates i guess), getting about 10k to 12k vistors a day.

I was wondering if i change the wordpress theme if that might effect me negatively? I'm just wondering if this would be better, or if i should just go ahead and modify the current theme i have little by little instead of just changing themes cause it took me a hell of a time to get to this spot on google.

Thanks

 

[neo3187]

it can affect rankings... so if its not urgent and it can be done by making changes in your current theme go ahead... just make sure DO NOT REMOVE the links that are already there... for instance if you have tag links on your site DONT REMOVE them... keep the linking structure as is , just change the ad placements,logo,color combinations etc...

believe me, i know wat m saying... ive learned a valuable lesson from my mistake

 

[Nigux]

Depends.

Generally, it does'nt. But it can

 

[dichotom]

I would try to modify the existing theme in your position, that is a lot of traffic at stake!

Maybe you could hire a theme coder and have them change the CSS in your current theme to better match what you want by showing them the new theme?

If the layout in the new theme is completely different and renders the content boxes in a different order it could cause an issue since search engines read your pages as linear html output. Also, like neo said the linking structure can be drastically changed with a new theme and cause problems all over your site. Then there is just the random different crap in a new theme.

I would definitely modify the current theme or hire it out with that kind of traffic, rather than roll the dice on a new theme and hope for the best

 

[markm32172]

In simple words.. Google only support easily and instant downloadable themes...it doesn't count themes which takes very much time to be open...you can change yo0ur theme any time.

Thanks
Mark

 

[dichotom]

In simple words.. Google only support easily and instant downloadable themes...it doesn't count themes which takes very much time to be open...you can change yo0ur theme any time.

Thanks
Mark

I don't see how this is relevant to the conversation. He never told us how long the original theme takes to load vs. the new one so there is no comparison to be had here. Even if there was a comparison "change yo0ur theme any time" would not apply. In any case, any theme can be optimized to load faster, especially in wordpress. There are many ways to improve wordpress's load time no matter what theme is installed.

 

[lucius]

well no, don't change it, i did it once and lost my rankings, put back the old one and went up again. dont risk it though

 

[Dadelius]

A major site (competitor) just went through this, changed the front page entirely and went with a video and much less text. They were 2nd for "Internet Marketing" after only wikipedia

After they switched it out, they dropped out of the first 3 or 4 pages at least. (I didn't see where they went but knew what happened)

Took about a month, but now they are back.

 

[hpv222]

If it ain't borken, don't try to fix it If you are not seeing conversions, etc. then you could safely change a few elements in your current theme...

 

[eyevisions]

Depends on how you're previous theme is coded, always use the same url structure that's for sure! if the new theme is much more cleaner and loading faster i think it will have a positive effect but don't forget to use the h1, h2, h3 tags and etc on the right place, with anchor and more things for seo purpose.

 

[mofoparrot]

Thanks guys for the information, so I basically should just start changing things a bit. I was trying to basically add a few more categories and such I guess I could easily do that on the current theme, just had this theme for a while and I figured there was a far better theme for what I was doing. I guess slow and steady wins the race, thanks a ton for all the answers!

 

[benny1010]

I changed the theme on a site I was ranking on the first page and dropped to nowhere and I cannot get it back to the first page so no don't change it

 

[richlondon18]

If you are just talking about changing the theme and none of the content then the only real way I can see it affecting anything is the load time of the new theme.

MAny of the so called premium themes look very pretty but they have so many hooks and mysql calls that it can drastically increase your load time, which in turn will increase your bounce rate and according to google this is now an important factor

 

[ckramer18]

Changing your theme won't change your google ranks, just make sure you don't mess with anything in <p> tags, <h1> etc. If you just change the css you 'should' be fine. If you change images make sure you still include alt="" tags. But yeah, especially if your traffic isn't making you money you should be optimizing it so it does. If your stats are already high I wouldn't bother messing with it.

 

[moon_t]

I'm assuming the post originator would like to change the theme to help with conversions as the traffic figures are very good.

I'm in a similar position with about 4k unique visitors per month and slowly building, but seeing very low conversions on a clickbank product with a gravity of over 120 usually. Having purchased a bunch of professional themes for my new sites I was going to swap the theme, but the front page formatting would be drastically different and judging by the replies here I would be a fool to risk a site rank page 1 for 5 keywords in all three major search engines.

What's the best way in this case to change a crappy looking original theme? I have CSS, HTML and plenty of other coding experience, but I'm rubbish at art and making stuff look good.

Any suggestions?

 

[wickedguy]

If you change your theme, it WILL change your rankings!!!! Just don't do it.

If you want to sacrifice organic traffic, then by all means, go ahead!

 

[NapsteR]

yes it will... Whenever i change my theme there will some up and downs in the ranking.. But it wont drop dramatically... you can build some links after changing the theme to make it more stabilized..

 

[Chrisss]

Depends how the theme is constructed. Most themes are not build for SEO, so you probably would have to modify the code.

 

[BFHoodn!nja]

Another Scenario.

Lets say i'm running a news blog specifically about the sale of a item. Having the domain name buy-PRODUCTX.cxm. The specific keyword i'm ranking for has 20k searches locally and i'm already getting 1k monthly from my keywords

How would it affect my rankings if I would drown down my blog down the page and ontop of the page add a price comparison script that links to my affiliate partners? The original content would still be on my site and no links would be changed.

 

[idlabs]

Dude, it depends of the new theme !! Some are optimized and seo friendly, some others not al all. In my opinion, that's a sure fact your theme change wil affect your rankings in SE but it could be positively or negatively !