Question

If i change my wordpress theme, will it effect my SEO ?  

Answer 1

I agree with @kingfisher13887 here. I would say it largely depends on the theme. However, I would tend to veer towards "yes". For instance, a lot of themes are horribly coded. They sacrifice code efficiency for "eye candy", so they end up being clunky and bloated. A mess when you're trying to improve site speed. Other themes might need to make more server requests for various tasks. A new theme might also affect old custom settings. Some of your old custom developments might not be available anymore, which means you will have to find new solutions to old problems. It also depends on how strict or how permissive the theme is in terms of space for content and on how apt you are at modifying said theme to fit your needs. As a rule of thumb, the more "eye candy" fluff the theme brings to the table out-of-the-box (without any modding), the more likely it is to be heavily bloated and cumbersome.  

Comments

@sst I would add the human factor. Any change brings - beside the technical aspects that you already covered very well, the "opportunity" to make mistakes.  

Answer 2

Must drop your traffic

Answer 3

It could affect conversions which might be more important.  

Answer 4

Yes for sure. I have done this more then 5 times and everytime drop in rankings. However, its recovered after few weeks.  

Answer 5

Happened with me twice, drop rankings for weeks then recover

Comments

Do you know why this Happend

Answer 6

Maybe. Depends on the themes involved, their coding, how it changes your layout, etc.  

Answer 7

It totally depends on your existing and new themes, I normally get positive impact because new themes normally more seo friendly

Answer 8

I have to wonder. I see a lot of people answering "no" without qualifying that reply at all. Does that mean that no-one has ever encountered badly developed, bloated themes? :)

Answer 9

For me, the main point while switching, testing the new theme would be to check if all urls are still working the same. Then I would check the main things like title, h-tags, content, if it stays the same. The html/css boilerplate should be not so important, but the position of content in the code is. So, in the end - there's 99% probability of seo positions fluctuation. Expert would check the points described above and run Screaming frog on the old vs new template. Would compare the speeds. And he would be able to predict some results. But conversions are another thing, which nobody can predict :) It could actually improve rankings sometimes, because of the new freshness, changes on the site :)

Answer 10

DON'T DO IT!!  

Answer 11

Might it affect your Seo? Yes. Will it affect your Seo? Unknown. It’s most likely you’d get a drop as google re-evaluated the page and then you’d bounce back.  

Answer 12

If it slows your site down, and/or makes it less easy to use, then it could hurt your rank. If it loads faster and is easier to use, then it could help your rank.  

Answer 13

Most likely. I have found changing a crap theme to something clean = ranking gain. I have done this on prob 10 sites in the past year & all had good results

Answer 14

If you do it for a better user experience, it will just work fine.  

Answer 15

No. but make sure theme is clean and good loading speed

Answer 16

You van change easily but make sure everything is ported over. Here's a good guide showing a process of hope it SHOULD be done  
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/s...math/