Often it is important to adapt the existing theme of a website. New advancements, aesthetics, and trends make it difficult to maintain your current theme. Other times, you would like to change things up by giving your site a new appearance.
Yes, it is true that changing themes has an impact on SEO, but not always negatively. Being SEO experts ourselves, we will tell you how to update themes effectively and how changing the theme of your website can affect your SEO rankings.
Table of Contents
- How to Switch Themes Without Affecting Organic Ranking: 2 Ways
- How Does Changing Themes Help SEO?
- Conclusion
How to Switch Themes Without Affecting Organic Ranking: 2 Ways
When upgrading your theme, you can follow a few steps to limit negative effects on your SEO and assure only good improvements.
Put a New Theme to the Test
You can try out different themes to see how it looks and works. Keep an eye out for updates in the header and layout. Check its loading times. Also, have other people evaluate the new theme and provide valuable feedback. They may detect changes that you do not.
Make Use of a High-Rated, SEO-Friendly Theme
Themes frequently generate a lot of user feedback. Analyze what they have to say and look for ones that indicate good changes to the site or SEO. It can change your SEO stats.
With a brief insight on changing themes effectively, it’s time to talk about how rankings react to updated themes.
How Does Changing Themes Help SEO?
When you change your theme, you are practically making significant changes to your entire website. Themes can have different effects on your SEO.
Here are some ways of keeping an eye out while experimenting with a new theme. They are indeed likely to have an impact on your experience, either positive or negative.
Metadata
Some themes will generate metadata for your websites. You may be completely unaware of how the theme is accomplishing this, resulting in data loss. Using a plugin to maximize your metadata is one approach to avoid this issue. As long as you’ve got the plugin, your details will remain the same when you switch layouts.
Format Changes
Based on our experience, new themes alter the format of your postings. However, small modifications, such as typeface, may not be a problem. Any design that modifies the headlines of your page, on the other hand, is not a good sign. Heading sizes that are not in the correct order might wreak havoc on your SEO. Some theme effects can result in even more serious formatting errors.
The User Experience
A user’s poor online experience will lose SEO ranking, while a positive one will allow you to gain SEO ranking. Irrespective of how great the website looks or how much helpful information it contains, SEO will suffer if your website is difficult to use, browse, or read.
Users are more likely to abandon a website if they struggle to utilize it. Because Google analyzes how long people stay on a specific page, a higher rank might harm your SEO. The more individuals who abandon your website, the more Google will believe that your webpages do not consist of the data those users need.
Junk Files
One of the most typical issues with theme updates is hoarding too much “junk” that interferes with the site’s functioning. If you do not clear unnecessary files, the new theme will have severe trouble operating. When you include old stock photos and media, it will significantly slow down the site in some circumstances. Sites that load slowly are unwanted.
Conclusion
Any change to the theme of your website can affect user experience and might impact your SEO, so choose themes that convey your content. So, while changing a theme, make sure you’re doing it right or ask a professional to do it for you.
