Two month old site not ranking after theme change

Lawliet1996 said:

Hi,

I’d like your experience. When you started a new site, did it rank within a few weeks?

I have a site that is two months old. During the first month it used one theme. After I migrated to a new theme, many keywords dropped and some disappeared. Before the migration, Bing showed about 102 pages. Now Bing’s URL Inspection says the URLs are indexed, but I cannot find them in search. On Google, all pages are indexed, but I no longer see them ranking.

The sitemap is fine. There are no manual actions and no security issues.

Has anyone dealt with this after a theme change? Did your keywords disappear or rankings drop, then recover later? Could this be from a lack of backlinks, even though the site was ranking earlier? I’m a bit confused and would appreciate any insights.

Click to expand...

Lawliet1996 said:

Hi,

I’d like your experience. When you started a new site, did it rank within a few weeks?

I have a site that is two months old. During the first month it used one theme. After I migrated to a new theme, many keywords dropped and some disappeared. Before the migration, Bing showed about 102 pages. Now Bing’s URL Inspection says the URLs are indexed, but I cannot find them in search. On Google, all pages are indexed, but I no longer see them ranking.

The sitemap is fine. There are no manual actions and no security issues.

Has anyone dealt with this after a theme change? Did your keywords disappear or rankings drop, then recover later? Could this be from a lack of backlinks, even though the site was ranking earlier? I’m a bit confused and would appreciate any insights.

Click to expand...

Lawliet1996 said:

Hi,

I’d like your experience. When you started a new site, did it rank within a few weeks?

I have a site that is two months old. During the first month it used one theme. After I migrated to a new theme, many keywords dropped and some disappeared. Before the migration, Bing showed about 102 pages. Now Bing’s URL Inspection says the URLs are indexed, but I cannot find them in search. On Google, all pages are indexed, but I no longer see them ranking.

The sitemap is fine. There are no manual actions and no security issues.

Has anyone dealt with this after a theme change? Did your keywords disappear or rankings drop, then recover later? Could this be from a lack of backlinks, even though the site was ranking earlier? I’m a bit confused and would appreciate any insights.

Click to expand...

• Theme changes can mess with crawlability and indexing: Even if URLs stay the same, a new theme might alter page load times, mobile responsiveness, or even how content is structured (e.g., headings, internal links, or schema markup). Google and Bing might recrawl your site and decide it's "different" enough to deprioritize it temporarily. Bing seems pickier about this in my experience—I've had pages show as indexed in their tools but not appear in searches until things stabilized.
• Recovery timeline: For me, it took about 4-6 weeks for things to bounce back on one site. I submitted the sitemap again via Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, monitored for crawl errors, and made sure the new theme was optimized (fast loading, clean code, no broken elements). Rankings started creeping up once the engines re-evaluated. On another site, it was longer—closer to 2 months—because I had some lingering redirects from the old theme that I didn't clean up properly.
• Backlinks factor: Lack of backlinks could definitely play a role, especially if your initial rankings were from that honeymoon boost. Without links, the site might not have enough "authority" to hold positions after a shake-up. But if you were ranking before without them, it's possible to recover without a ton of new ones—just focus on content quality and user signals (like low bounce rates). That said, building a few natural backlinks from relevant sites helped speed things up for me.

• Double-check your robots.txt and .htaccess for any accidental blocks post-migration.
• Use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to track keyword positions and see if competitors swooped in.
• Run a site audit with Screaming Frog or similar to spot any technical glitches from the theme switch.
• Be patient and keep publishing fresh, valuable content—it signals to search engines that your site's active and worthwhile.

fortunec9 said:

Hey there,

First off, yeah, I've been through similar headaches with new sites and theme switches—it's frustrating when things seem to be going well and then poof, rankings tank. To answer your initial question: In my experience, new sites can sometimes start ranking within a few weeks, especially if the content is super niche, high-quality, and you're targeting low-competition keywords. But it's not the norm. Most of my sites took 3-6 months to really gain traction, even with solid on-page SEO. Early rankings often feel like a "honeymoon phase" where search engines give you a temporary boost to test the waters, then they reassess.

Now, about your theme migration—that sounds like the culprit here. I've dealt with this exact issue on a couple of WordPress sites (assuming that's what you're using?). When I switched themes, I saw rankings drop for a bunch of pages, and some keywords just vanished from SERPs for weeks. Here's what I learned:

• Theme changes can mess with crawlability and indexing: Even if URLs stay the same, a new theme might alter page load times, mobile responsiveness, or even how content is structured (e.g., headings, internal links, or schema markup). Google and Bing might recrawl your site and decide it's "different" enough to deprioritize it temporarily. Bing seems pickier about this in my experience—I've had pages show as indexed in their tools but not appear in searches until things stabilized.
• Recovery timeline: For me, it took about 4-6 weeks for things to bounce back on one site. I submitted the sitemap again via Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, monitored for crawl errors, and made sure the new theme was optimized (fast loading, clean code, no broken elements). Rankings started creeping up once the engines re-evaluated. On another site, it was longer—closer to 2 months—because I had some lingering redirects from the old theme that I didn't clean up properly.
• Backlinks factor: Lack of backlinks could definitely play a role, especially if your initial rankings were from that honeymoon boost. Without links, the site might not have enough "authority" to hold positions after a shake-up. But if you were ranking before without them, it's possible to recover without a ton of new ones—just focus on content quality and user signals (like low bounce rates). That said, building a few natural backlinks from relevant sites helped speed things up for me.

A few tips that worked for me:

• Double-check your robots.txt and .htaccess for any accidental blocks post-migration.
• Use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to track keyword positions and see if competitors swooped in.
• Run a site audit with Screaming Frog or similar to spot any technical glitches from the theme switch.
• Be patient and keep publishing fresh, valuable content—it signals to search engines that your site's active and worthwhile.

Hang in there; it's probably not permanent. If it doesn't improve in another month, maybe share more details like your niche or CMS, and folks here might have more tailored advice. What's the site about, if you don't mind sharing?

Best,

Click to expand...

Lawliet1996 said:

Hi,

I’d like your experience. When you started a new site, did it rank within a few weeks?

I have a site that is two months old. During the first month it used one theme. After I migrated to a new theme, many keywords dropped and some disappeared. Before the migration, Bing showed about 102 pages. Now Bing’s URL Inspection says the URLs are indexed, but I cannot find them in search. On Google, all pages are indexed, but I no longer see them ranking.

The sitemap is fine. There are no manual actions and no security issues.

Has anyone dealt with this after a theme change? Did your keywords disappear or rankings drop, then recover later? Could this be from a lack of backlinks, even though the site was ranking earlier? I’m a bit confused and would appreciate any insights.

Click to expand...