Gian Stavin
In this week’s Q&A section, we have selected the following topic from our subscriber: “does changing website theme affect its SEO, ranking and performance?”
Question From Melissa Hoffman
“Recently, I’ve been seeing a bunch of new website themes on one platform and there is one theme that caught my attention. It is designed well and very elegant. I can’t help myself and always tempted to switch my current blog theme into that new theme, but I wonder if there is any negative impact on my site’s SEO?”
Changing theme from time to time is quite common in a website lifetime. The truth is, the webmasters are evolving their site layout and theme to catch up with the recent trend changes on the internet.
Every once in a while, changing theme could be a great idea in term of giving a new fresh look and it will look much better for your readers.
However, what’s under the surface doesn’t always reveal the hidden underneath. Especially, if your website is relying on the organic traffic, you might be curious if changing the website theme can affect your overall SEO.
Don’t worry! I have the answer for that.
Real Life Case
During my years of experience in owning several website, I changed the theme from time to time.
I’m going to share you my personal experience of changing website theme.
In 2019, my organic monthly traffic of one of my site was around 60K visitors. In the middle of 2019, I decided to change this website theme to a new theme with a more fancy look, layout, more features, and better formatting.
And here’s what I found out during the first month after changing the website theme:
- There is a significant drop in my organic traffic from 60K to 40K visitors a month. That is about 33% decrease!
- When I did the page rank audit, I noticed several of my posts that are already rank for number 1 on Google are downgraded into third and fourth position.
- Around 14% of the my total pages are completely disappeared from the SERP.
I noticed that these declines are caused by the page speed (the page speed of the new theme is 25% slower than before due to heavy custom plugins and features). Therefore, I decided to uninstall several plugins that are not really important since I consider the formatting and the layout is the main reasons to change my theme.
Two months later, I started to recover 40% my lost SEO ranking and position in the SERP and now, I’ve gained much more than that. Although the site speed is still a little bit slower than the old theme, it turn out that my current new theme impact in lower bounce rate, therefore, higher UX.
Does Changing Website Theme Affect Its SEO, Ranking and Performance?
So, to answer this question: yes, changing website theme will affect SEO, ranking, and performance.
It can be positive or negative impact, depending on which theme you choose.
Design can get you a fancier website look and layout, but always measure the weight of how much speed you will lose.
Apart from the website theme’s performance itself, a change in theme can sometimes cost you a decline in the SERP ranking and organic traffic for a short duration (could be the first few weeks or even months after the change).
This might happen if it alters the type of content that is being indexed by the search engine.
However, don’t need to worry as this decline is just temporary. If your new theme is SEO friendly, you’ll gain back the traffic and ranking in no time.
Important to Know
Changing into a new theme could be tricky sometimes. It is not as simple as changing we’re changing our clothes on daily basis.
Sometimes, some of the website structure are also changing due to the new theme implementation.
1. Pay Attention on URL Structure
Breadcrumb or URL structure might be the most important thing that you want to take note.
A change in website theme can sometimes lead to change in the URL structure too.
For example, the directory path can change from www.website.com/blog/post1 into www.website.com/post1.
When this happen, it will alter all your current ranking on the SERP since the search engine found a different set of URL for your pages.
It will also reset the backlinks value that are previously directed to the old URL.
Therefore, always double check what kind of directory path that the new theme have.
2. Get The New Theme Performance Metrics
A fancy and elegant design look themes are not always correlated with a low website speed. Sometimes, it can load faster than a theme that seems simpler and boring.
This is coming from the site’s backend installer and code itself.
Lucky for you, there is a way to check the speed without even installing the theme to your site yet:
- Check if there is any demo page of the new theme.
- Copy the demo page’s URL and test it on GTMetrix.
- To get even more accurate data, you can try to find any websites that are already using that theme and repeat the step 2.
3. Always Back Up Your Site Before Installing New Theme
Whenever you’re planning a major change in your website, having a backup is necessary.
You will never know if there is any technical error that happen after installing the new theme (for example, the PHP version is not compatible with the theme that can cause fatal error).
At this time, you can just return to use the old backup that you saved last time.
4. Re-Input Any Tags, Tracking Codes, Robots.txt, and Sitemap File
When you change your website theme into a new theme, you’re actually replacing all the HTML backend code which eliminate all the tags, tracking codes that you have inserted before.
Prior installing the new theme, you can check your current HTML file and copy all the tracking codes and tags that you inserted before. Afterwards, just copy and paste it once you have installed the new theme to your website.
Meanwhile, robots.txt and sitemap.xml does not always necessarily disappeared after switching theme. However, it is still worth to double check if there is nothing change into both files.
5. Avoid Frequent Theme Changing in The Future
Have you ever noticed big sites like Forbes, NYTimes changed their theme from time to time?
Nope? Yes. In fact, they’re most likely never change their theme.
Changing your theme inherently affects your SEO because it fundamentally alters all of the pages search engines have indexed from your site.
With that in mind, it’s a good idea to stick with your new theme for as long as possible. If you choose an SEO-friendly theme that suits your brand and commit to using it for the long haul, you won’t have to worry about this again for a long time.