New WP Theme and loss rank ?

Valkurm

Valkurm

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Hi everyone,

2 days ago, I changed the theme of one of my WP website. I was using a default Wordpress Theme (Twenty-something), and I was ranking 1-2 for my of the keywords I'm targeting.
As I was getting more and more visitors, I decided to changed my Wordpress Theme to Jarida, getting there a result far better for my visitors and my ads placements (3 columns).
Unfortunately, this morning I woke up and saw that most of my keywords have suffered a huge drop. Only 2 of theme, the ones that I first targeted with this website, are still there.

You can have a look at the screenshot :
rankdrop.png

I didn't change the content of the website, I just played a bit with the menu and sidebar/widgets. All content is on Wordpress "Pages", not "Posts".

Is this normal after a change theme to see these drops, and should all the keywords come back soon ? I'm a little lost here.

Any help welcome. :)
 
Last edited:
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I had a free WP theme destroy a site I ended up working for.

It's amazing how people will download a PHP program from the internet(the theme) and upload it to their server and think all free themes are safe. WP themes are active PHP programs that can do anything the server process owner can.
 
I don't think there is any malicious code in the theme here.
 
If you changed the structure somehow, then this is the reason.
 
Valkurm said:
I don't think there is any malicious code in the theme here.
Click to expand...

I just gave a broad example of why free themes are a bad idea. There's probably a sitewide footer link with it too, go look for "theme by XXXX" link and also other in-page SEO problems, like excessive headers(wordpress seems to think it's ok to insert 1800 header meta-whatever) and so on.
 
Well I didn't change anything except Theme / Menu Order / Sidebars.
Permalinks are all the same.
 
bartosimpsonio said:
I just gave a broad example of why free themes are a bad idea. There's probably a sitewide footer link with it too, go look for "theme by XXXX" link and also other in-page SEO problems, like excessive headers(wordpress seems to think it's ok to insert 1800 header meta-whatever) and so on.
Click to expand...

It's a Themeforest Theme I've got here : http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...onsive-wordpress-news-magazine-blog-45-a.html

But I'm not sure if it's the theme itself, or just because I switched from one to another.
Anyone have experienced moves after a theme change ?
 
Well switch the theme back and watch the rankings. Do they change?
 
Maybe the theme is not SEO friendly, the structure of SEO inside the theme. Of course this will affect your ranking.

By the way, do have all in one SEO or any good SEO plugin installed as well?
 
monkid said:
Maybe the theme is not SEO friendly, the structure of SEO inside the theme. Of course this will affect your ranking.

By the way, do have all in one SEO or any good SEO plugin installed as well?
Click to expand...

I use Yoast WordPress SEO.
 
Check your site with a text only browser. Or use one of those online search engine spider simulator tools.
See if the content is present same way with new theme.
Some times with new themes your actual content will be pushed way down on the page.

Make sure that you haven't changed the Title and Description tags. This can have big effect.

Also check your site speed. The TwentyTweleve theme is clean and fast loading. Jarida is bit heavy.


If you don't see any major changes, wait for few days and your ranking should improve.
 
check for broken links ... maybe some of your pages are inaccessible with the new theme...if there are broken links fix them and resubmit the sitemap
 
Only broken link I can find is domain.com/feed/. But I never actually set-up a RSS Feed so I think it was like this before I change theme too.
No problem when I check the website as a Spider too.

Anyway, thanks for all the answers so far guys !
 
Did your Titles, Descriptions, and Headings happen to change during the new theme?

I had some rankings drop when a client upgraded his theme. Still haven't fully recovered after 3 weeks so I am not sure why theme changes makes a difference

Keep building quality links to your site and the rankings should come back
 
0 change on my Titles/Desc and Headings.
 
It happened to me once. I just put in a reconsideration request and the rankings were restored.
 
But I didn't get any message on GWT.
 
did your page load times or any performance stats get affected in the change? I doubt that a theme change would do that much but maybe it is poorly written, resulting in a delay in load time or other issues?
 
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