Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Will having two wordpress themes installed hurt seo?
-
We currently have 3 sites built on WordPress that have little to no blogging capabilities.
Currently, all published posts show up on a /category page which does not resemble the traditional blog format and is not aesthetically pleasing.
We would like to have a more traditional blog and are considering installing a second wordpress theme on the site which will strictly be used for /blog and all the posts.
My question is will having the second WordPress installation on the sites hurt us in any way on the SEO front and if we go this way should we place the install in a subfolder or on a subdomain?
Is there anything else we need to worry about with making this transition?
Thank you in advance for the advice!
Patrick
-
Travis,
Thank you for this detailed response!
Your correct with the assumption that the site does not fit our needs. The problem was that the company we work with develops WP sites using their own theme which is a very raw form of WP.
Basically out of box the site does not have the functionality of any mainstream WP theme (no blog, backed limits a lot of control, a lot of custom CSS needed, etc.)
We thought maybe installing a second theme would put a little more control in our hands (at least for the blog), and this could be done in house.
After reading all the responses including yours it seems this unfortunately is not the way to go.
Thank you for the all the info, Patrick
-
Hello, the way you are viewing it is correct!
Basically what it comes down too is time and money it will take if we have the developer custom code the blog.
We are all fairly proficient with wordpress and could create the blog in a day on our own if a new theme was installed but after reading all the comments here it seems like working the blog into the one theme is the way to go.
Thank you for the response!
-
I second, or third?, the notion that you should more than likely only have a single WordPress installation. It definitely would increase the maintenance involved. Take everything you should do to maintain an installation, then double it. I'm certain everyone in your organization could do without that.
But if your organization is willing to endure the duplication of effort, there are other things to be concerned about. Not every theme is created equal. Some themes are faster than others, some are more secure than others and most themes will differ in every other way. So one theme could be a hindrance, while the other at least pulls it's weight.
In regard to the subdomain blog or subfolder blog question, there was a time in recent history where I would have said it didn't matter. Supposedly the link equity/juice flows just fine either way. However, someone in Moz Q&A made a very good point. To paraphrase EGOL; "Algorithms change, if you install your blog on a subfolder you will always be right."
I'm not sure when your company made the jump to WordPress, but WordPress has had the ability to display static pages for years. My first agency used to run a combination of CMS Made Simple and WordPress, I think it was due to the page handling issue. That was over six years ago. They later made the jump to full WordPress about five years ago.
So it sounds like the site isn't properly configured for your purposes. Here is how you should handle that, direct from the WordPress codex. From there you can setup your site's page structure through parent/child relationships. So if you're selling widgets, your structure may look like:
**Page Hierarchy **
Posts Hierarchy
site.com/blog-diggety/sweet-post
There are Pages and Posts. You bring the hierarchy. And speaking of which, should you change your site URL structure, you will definitely want to research 301 redirects.
To me, there's no question in my mind. You should stick with one WordPress install. Hopefully that helps.
-
Hi Patrick,
Will this hurt your SEO? Maybe, but not in the more traditional way. For example, there is no direct penalty that this would fall under, but what it could do is confuse the user experience. Just keep in mind that SEO isn't just about your SERP positions.
As a user on any site, you want to see consistency. If you change theme part way through, then this can devalue the level of trust in the site as it no longer looks like the original site.
I would stick with one theme and if you aren't happy with the current look and feel, change your whole site to match this.
From Google's perspective, no, this wouldn't cause a devalued ranking by installing an additional theme (unless SEO issues arise from the installation), but there are a whole host of reason why you shouldn't do it.
-Andy
-
You should go with one theme. Parts of the site that are controlled by the theme remain static, no matter what content you're working on whether it's a page or blog post. Those things include the header and footer. I don't see how you could have multiple conflicting versions of those files in a single installation. Those files are important to SEO.
If I were you, I'd customize the existing theme(s) to include the features/functions you're currently lacking rather than try to integrate two different themes and multiple plugins (never mind the additional maintenance Unikey mentioned). I'm assuming you're using an SEO plugin but even if that's not the case, you probably have others that you will want to continue to work seamlessly.
Someone else might have experience with this. I don't, meaning I've never tried to optimize a site that uses two simultaneously installed themes. Hopefully they'll chime in if they have a different opinion. I'll be interested to hear.
-
I am not sure of the seo implications, but I would do everything I could to keep 1 installation if I could. It just seems like it would make management a lot easier. I may not be following what you are asking though. It sounds like you have a site without a blog using 1 worpress theme and then you are wanting to add a blog using another wordpress theme, is that right?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Mega Menus and SEO
Hi Everyone, I know this has been brought up before, but wanted your opinion for 2020. I have a new client that is hesitant to do a mega menu for their huge site due to the amount of links and "dilution". I have quite a few clients with mega menus with no problems at all from an SEO standpoint. But I can understand his perspective. I am suggesting that we have the main links (looking at GA) as the the navigation, then clicking them takes you to subcategory page listing all the subcats within. Problem is that the developer/designer has made this mega menu already and it is pretty slick. Now they already are killing it search-wise on Google, but don't have a mega menu or a secondary category page. Just a a category with too many products, so we are trying to go one way or the other. Any opinions on which route to best take from a user and SEO perspective?
Web Design | | vetofunk0 -
Community Discussion: UX & SEO – Your experience?
We've been looking at the relationship between SEO & UX a bit more closely lately on the blog. Our good pal Cyrus started the wheels turning with a tweet: https://twitter.com/CyrusShepard/status/748296076411625473 ...and that morphed into a Whiteboard Friday idea, which was filmed and posted here: https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/ux-vs-seo-whiteboard-friday We shared the story of one site that enjoyed rapid growth and that subsequently battled with managing that UX/SEO relationship on Thursday. And it's hard, right? UX and SEO teams often operate independently of one another, and may make decisions that affect one another's work. Sometimes it's a "hindsight is 20/20" situation. Sometimes the answer is so radical and impactful that you may want to settle for a "safe" alternative. I'd imagine many of you have encountered some big issues with user experience and search optimization in your day-to-day over the years. What's the most difficult situation you've encountered with this? How did you resolve it? (I'd bet money on there being some really creative solutions out there :). Is there a particularly challenging situation you're struggling with now that you'd want to share & crowdsource ideas for?
Web Design | | FeliciaCrawford3 -
Woocommerce SEO and Product attributes
Hi friends! I have a question that is advanced Woocommerce and seo-related.
Web Design | | JustinMurray
I'm seeing http://www.mywebsitex.com/pa_keyword/indexed in Google, but it cannot be properly optimized, and I would prefer to have a WordPress Page indexed for that keyword instead, which also lists those products and can be fully seo optimized. Woocommerce SEO plugin by Yoast lacks documentation and I have no clue if that would even fix this. I do have the Taxonomy (pa_keyword) set to not include these in the sitemap, but there doesn't seem to be a way to noindex/nofollow product attributes.
1. How can I best accomplish this?
2. Why are product attributes indexed by default?0 -
How to know if a wordpress theme is coded correctly for Seo
Hi, So I am curious if there is a tool to see if a site is coed properly for Google? I am running Avada, a standalone theme, yet I am also using a cache plugin. But when I search my code, its all like on one huge line. So I am curious if there is a way to verify or check if a theme is coded correctly? Thank you
Web Design | | Berner1 -
Old site to new WordPress site - Client concerned about Yahoo Ranking
Hello, Back Story I have a client (law firm) who has a large .html website. He has been doing his own SEO for years and it shows. I think the only reason he reached out to a professional is because he got a huge penalty from Google last fall and fell very far down in rankings. Although, he still retains a #1 spot in Yahoo for his site for the keyword phrase he wants. I have been creating a new WordPress theme for the client and creating all new pages and updating the formatting/SEO. From the beginning I have told the client that when we delete the old site and install a new WordPress site (same domain name, but different page hierarchy) he will take a bump in the search engines until all the 301 redirects get sorted out. I told him I can't guarantee any time frame of how long the dip in SEO will last. Some sites bounce right back while others take longer. Last week, during a discussion, he tells me that if he loses his #1 ranking on Yahoo for any length of time he thinks he will go out of business. Needless to say I was a little taken back. When it comes to SEO I use best practice techniques, do my research, stay on top of trends but I never guarantee rankings when moving to a new site. I'm thinking of ways I can help elevate any type of huge SEO drop off and help the client. Here is what I was thinking of suggesting to the client and I would love some feedback. Main Question He has another domain he isn't doing anything with. It's pretty much his domain name with pc added. I was thinking about using that domain to create a simple 1-2 page WordPress website with brand new content (no duplicate content) aimed at attracting his keyword phrase. I would do as much SEO as I could with a 1-2 page site and give it a month or so to see if this smaller site can get into the top #10 in Yahoo, or higher. Then, when we move the site he will still have a website on the first page of Yahoo for his keyword phrase. I hope I explained it clearly 🙂 I would be open to any suggestions anyone may have. Thanks
Web Design | | Bill_K0 -
From Google Sites to Wordpress - Anyone Ventured this SEO terrain?
We have a few sites in Google Sites - and they are ugly! We have a majority (40+) of websites in Wordpress. But we have a few websites just stuck on Google Sites, and since Google won't let you fully edit the HTML, add scripts, or implement any technology since 2000, we want to move. The sad problem - the Google sites are ranking well. We rank well in Manhattan, Atlanta, Dallas, and Philadelphia. The problem is - the sites do not give much room for growth - and the bounce rate is high because they are so ugly. Has Anyone moved from Google sites to Wordpress? Should we just stay with Google and bite the ugly bullet? My fear is that these sites will not allow for growth. It is hard to update them and even harder to make them look nice. To get a sample - beware: www.counselingphiladelphia.com Even another reason to leave: The slider is non-semantic and terrible SEO. Google won't allow a slider script with tags and a hrefs, so the only way to implement a slider is through a Google Docs Presentation that keeps sliding. I know - terrible SEO (#donthate) but we needed something. Any advice and thoughts would help! Thanks Mozzers!
Web Design | | _Thriveworks0 -
Yes or No for Ampersand "&" in SEO URLs
Hi Mozzers I would like to know how crawlers see the ampersand (& or &) in your URLs and if Google frown upon this or not? As far as I know they purely recognise this as "and" is this correct and is there any best practice for implementing this, as I know a lot of people complained before about & in links and that it is better to use it as &, but this is not on links, this is on URLs. Reason for this is that we looking to move onto an ASP.Net MVC framework (any suggestions for a different framework are welcome, we still just planning out future development) and in order to make use of the filter options we have on our site we need a parameter to indicate the difference on a routing level (routing sends to controller, controller sends to model, model sends to controller and controller sends to view < this is pattern of a request that comes in on the framework we will be using). I already have -'s and /'s in the URLs (which is for my SEO structuring) so these syntax can't be used for identifying filters the user clicks or uses to define their search as it will create a complete mess in the system. Now we looking at & to say; OK, when a user lands on /accommodation and they selects De Kelders (which is a destination in our area) the page will be /accommodation/de-kelders on this page they can define their search further to say they are looking for 5 star accommodation and it should be close to the beach, this is where the routing needs some guidance and we looking to have it as follow: /accommodation/de-kelders/5-star&close-to-the-beach. Now, does the "&" get identified by search engines on a URL level as "and" and does this cause any issues with crawling or indexation or would it be best to look at another solution? Thanks, Chris Captivate
Web Design | | DROIDSTERS0 -
Combining web pages and it's affects on SEO?
We are looking into amending a website we are working on to try and combine 2 or 3 current pages onto one page. This site is similar to an estate agents site and currently has images, map, floor plan sub pages etc. Can anyone tell me, if we were to combine these pages and include the above details on one page, how that would affect the current search engine rankings?
Web Design | | SoundinTheory0