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.
Does changing template for a wordpress site affect SEO
-
Hi I work for an Inventory Management Software company and we already have a WordPress site but I am currently working on re-designing of our WordPress site and in this process, we are looking for moving to a new template.
I want to know what will be the impact on SEO performance while taking a shift to a new template.
-
Yes there can be big impacts, as template changes may result in any of the following changes:
- Design and UX
- Site Architecture
- Internal Linking
- Page Speed
- Other possible inconsistencies between themes, depending on your WordPress setup in general (title tags, structured data, etc)
In general, to mitigate against these, I would do the following:
- Design and UX - at minimum take a 'gut check' and be sure the new theme is a design and UX improvement - ie: is content still above the fold? Are there any weird scrolling issues (I see this sometimes with themes that try to be too fancy), are the menus still easy to navigate?
- Architecture - make sure the new theme doesn't break anything like your URL structure, or pagination links to archive pages etc.
- Internal linking - aim to keep your menus (main nav, drop downs, footer, sidebars) exactly the same at least for now - if your footer nav has links to important pages for example and those links go away, this might hurt the performance of those pages.
- Page Speed - as Donald astutely noted, make sure the new theme is at least the same in page speed, or better an improvement. You can use a few tools like WebPageTest or GTMetrix to test.
- Other - also as noted, try to get your SEO settings situated correctly before making the switch, and use the Yoast plugin. Then when you switch your theme, be sure the Yoast plugin settings are still primary and your new theme has not overridden anything.
Hope that helps!
-Dan
-
I second that, I've a site based on a multi-purpose theme. Now years down the line with my understanding of SEO I'm aware of the problems but to change it now with hundreds of pages designed with a visual builder I'm stuck with it. Swapping to a lighter theme is a major undertaking.
-
If you mean themes, then I would say yes.
I changed a theme on my blog recently and it resulted in major organic impressions growth. I'm pretty sure it's the theme because I didn't change anything else.
-
WordPress does not use templates it uses themes. These themes can be customized as necessary including best SEO practices for your brand.
There can be many issues for your SEO when switching themes, however they may not be realized until you adventure into the theme. For instance custom post types that might be available in one theme may not be available in another affecting possible urls causing 404 errors or any number of issues.
If you use Yoast for WordPress SEO plugin you can customize your SEO titles and descriptions. This should stay current between themes. A rule of thumb, stay away from themes that have a lot of bloat. Many themes found on theme forest are designed to cover a multitude of businesses and niches causing bloat. Bloat causes site slow down and can hamper SEO rankings. Choose a theme that is light and does not have as many bells and whistles. If you need these things you can always ad on later with plugins.
Thanks,
Don Silvernail
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
-
Breaking up a site into multiple sites
Hi, I am working on plan to divide up mid-number DA website into multiple sites. So the current site's content will be divided up among these new sites. We can't share anything going forward because each site will be independent. The current homepage will change to just link out to the new sites and have minimal content. I am thinking the websites will take a hit in rankings but I don't know how much and how long the drop will last. I know if you redirect an entire domain to a new domain the impact is negligible but in this case I'm only redirecting parts of a site to a new domain. Say we rank #1 for "blue widget" on the current site. That page is going to be redirected to new site and new domain. How much of a drop can we expect? How hard will it be to rank for other new keywords say "purple widget" that we don't have now? How much link juice can i expect to pass from current website to new websites? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | timdavis0 -
Does having a different sub domain for your Landing Page and Blog affect your overall SEO benefits and Ranking?
We have a domain www.spintadigital.com that is hosted with dreamhost and we also have a seperate subdomain blog.spintadigital.com which is hosted in the Ghost platform and we are also using Unbounce landing pages with the sub domain get.spintadigital.com. I wanted to know whether having subdomain like this would affect the traffic metric and ineffect affect the SEO and Rankings of our site. I think it does not affect the increase in domain authority, but in places like similar web i get different traffic metrics for the different domains. As far as i can see in many of the metrics these are considered as seperate websites. We are currently concentrating more on our blogs and wanted to make sure that it does help in the overall domain. We do not have the bandwidth to promote three different websites, and hence need the community's help to understand what is the best option to take this forward.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vinodh-spintadigital0 -
Moving to a new site while keeping old site live
For reasons I won't get into here, I need to move most of my site to a new domain (DOMAIN B) while keeping every single current detail on the old domain (DOMAIN A) as it is. Meaning, there will be 2 live websites that have mostly the same content, but I want the content to appear to search engines as though it now belongs to DOMAIN B. Weird situation. I know. I've run around in circles trying to figure out the best course of action. What do you think is the best way of going about this? Do I simply point DOMAIN A's canonical tags to the copied content on DOMAIN B and call it good? Should I ask sites that link to DOMAIN A to change their links to DOMAIN B, or start fresh and cut my losses? Should I still file a change of address with GWT, even though I'm not going to 301 redirect anything?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kdaniels0 -
How does having multiple pages on similar topics affect SEO?
Hey everyone, On our site we have multiple pages that have similar content. As an example, we have a section on Cars (in general) and then specific pages for Used Cars, European Cars, Remodeled Cars etc. Much of the content is similar on these page and the only difference is some content and the additional term in the URL (for example car.com/remodeled-cars and /european-cars). In the past few months, we've noticed a dip in our organic ranking and started doing research. Also, we noticed that Google, in SERPs, shows the general page (cars.com/cars) and not the specific page (/european-cars), even if the specific page has more content. Can having multiple pages with similar content hurt SEO? If so, what is the best way to remedy this? We can consolidate some of the pages and make the difference between them a little clearer, but does it make that much of a difference for rankings? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonathonOhayon0 -
How to perform Local SEO for sites like Angies List/Task Rabbit or Craigslist
I have a new SEO client that has a business model similar to Criagslist and Angies List or Task Rabbit, Where they offer local based services nationwide. My first thought was Local link building and citation building etc. But the issue is they are a purely online service company and they don't have a phyiscal address in every city/state they will be offering their services in. What is the best course of action for providing SEO services for this type of business model. I am pretty much at a stand still on how to rank them locally for the areas they provide services in. it's a business model that involves local businesses and customers looking for services from those local businesses.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VITALBGS0 -
Micro sites?
Hi, I have been speaking to seo firms regarding strategies and they mentioned setting up micro sites under domains that are relevant. i.e setting up armanidoamin.co.uk and we use it as a blog type site to update all info, product reviews, news relating to armani. Whats peoples thoughts on this? Does it work? Is it worth the effort? Im not so sure but obviously looking for ideas. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YNWA0 -
Do widgets and gadgets affect SEO?
I have added a number of widgets and gadgets to my site that I suspect act like Iframes. If true do these widgets and gadgets and the content that they are linked to help or hurt my site from an SEO perspective? Examples are facebook gadget, wordpress blidget, weather gadget, google maps widget.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340 -
Does Blocking ICMP Requests Affect SEO?
All in the title really. One of our clients came up with errors with a server header check, so I pinged them and it times out. The hosting company have told them that it's because they're blocking ICMP requests and this doesn't affect SEO at all... but I know that sometimes pinging posts, etc... can be beneficial so is this correct? Thanks, Steve.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveOllington0