Does Changing Your Theme Affect Your Search Rankings?

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Does Changing Your Theme Affect Your Search Rankings?

Just wondering if changing your theme has any affect on search rankings other than the new thing not being formated correctly for seo.

rcmastermind asked this questions on January 8th, 2009.

Posted in: General Questions.

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8 Answers To This Question

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Question answered by: Adam Bshero

Date/Time: 1-8-2009 11:26:53 Reference: #1981

I do not believe so… just make sure if you have google analytics installed that it did not get deleted.

What is your response?

Question answered by: Chetan

Date/Time: 1-8-2009 12:18:30 Reference: #1984

It doesn’t really effect if you are just going to have the design changed with all the same SEO done, no meta data changes etc.
But sometimes its said by some blog designers that the H2 H3 tags in the theme pages also affect in Google rankings and when you are doing good with a theme, the structural changes making H2 H3 tags changes might be affecting your rankings too. I have never seen that kind of thing happening to my blog, but still it can be a matter of concern.

Here is something am talking about - http://www.johnchow.com/how-to-seo-your-wordpress-theme/

What is your response?

Question answered by: Amaete Umanah

Date/Time: 1-8-2009 13:29:32 Reference: #1988

I think it does depend on your theme. I changed the theme on one of my sites and noticed a rise in the search results. My opinion is that the new template loading times were different from the previous one. The less images and frames associated with a theme makes it easier for the bots to read.

What is your response?

Question answered by: Garry Conn

Date/Time: 1-8-2009 16:34:08 Reference: #1991

This is coming from someone who changes his theme more than he changes his clothes. Changing your theme can indeed cause drastic changes to how your content ranks in Google. If you change your theme and don’t want things to degrade in SEO you have to make sure that everything in the code is the same as your previous. The skeleton structure of your blog needs to stay the same and you should use CSS to change the SKIN of your blog. If you are not happy with your existing SEO, then by all means, make structural changes.

What is your response?

Question answered by: Nick Subscribed to comments via email

Date/Time: 1-8-2009 17:02:22 Reference: #1996

Interesting, I would have guessed that all else would stay the same, but I guess you make a very good point that different “structures” would have vastly different results. The trick then is to find a structure that performs well and then create several different style.css files to make it look different as you desire….

Do you have a well performing skeleton that you wouldn’t mind emailing me?

What is your response?

Question answered by: Garry Conn

Date/Time: 1-9-2009 23:36:24 Reference: #2063

I use the default theme. lol

In fact, even BloggingQuestions.com is a modified version of the Default theme.

(Comments wont nest below this level)

Question answered by: Nick Subscribed to comments via email

Date/Time: 1-10-2009 00:18:50 Reference: #2065

So you’re saying that everything on gdcd, and blogging questions that is different from the default theme is done by modifying the css of the default theme? I doubt that!

Reply here