Does changing WordPress Theme Affect My SEO?

[Isa Al]

Hey

I have a WP website and my alexa rank is around 300k now and getting a good ranking in the search engines and I wanna change the theme but I am afraid that it will cause any problems with the indexing or ranking or messing up the content of my website or any other problems like I won't be able to go back again to the old theme


so please I need your advise and experience

Thanks!

[Rob]

The change in wp theme does affect the seo only when there are some seo plugins installed are in previous theme or the theme is seo friendly...

[Matt]

When you change the theme, you're only changing cosmetic aspects of the site. Search engines don't consider your aesthetic appearance in their algorithms, so you should be fine.

The only exception to this is if you use WordPress plugins that are not supported by your new theme. But even then, the change would be miniscule.

[Peter Nikolow]

Yes - it MAY affect your actual SEO and SERP.

[Nitu]

I say not to upload any new themes onto your server we dont no what dirctly come to your server -you never know wht you could catch.you just installed xampp and am running wordpress

[Arun Nath J]

Literally changing theme doesn't affect your page ranks. But when you change your theme, it is obvious that it affects the page load speed, readability and usability. And if your new theme takes much time to load or uncomfortable for a reader, they will close the window and as a result bounce rate will go high and page rank may go down.

So if your new theme is good for readers, i.e, if it makes your audience easy navigation and readability, it won't make any problem to your page rank.

[Algernon]

It may cause the site to jump around in the SERPs temporarily, but if the on-page SEO is roughly the same or better than it was previously, it should come back or get higher than it was before.

[Thomas]

It depends how weak the coding is on the other theme and how your code is on your theme already.It may help your seo if the coding is better.For instance if the coding uses sections, headers, navs, articles etc and your theme doesn't then it will be greater when you swap themes, but if you obtain a theme which doesn't and also does not allocate the correct header titles in the correct manner then you might get worst.I would check the coding before purchasing.If your website does not use the latest sections, articles, apart, header, footer, navs etc then that side does not matter if the other theme does not, but I would suggest to be sure that the title headers h1, h2 etc are allocated in the right manner.

[rdysip]

It should not affect your previous ranking, content, page authority. However, it can affect some other ranking factors like site speed, ads above the fold, internal linking, mobile version, UX, etc. You should research its features before buying it.

[Pixelrage]

Only content and site structure will affect your site standing. Changing themes should not affect either, unless you are using a very sophisticated theme that changes the entire structure of your site (for instance, if you're switching from a magazine theme to a classified ads theme).

As long as the "directory tree" and flow of your site stay the same, as well as META titles, body content, number of on-page links, number of external links and number of internal links are all the same from one theme to the next, there should be no change (positive nor negative) by switching themes.