Does my website theme make a difference to SEO

[gau061]

I have recently built a brand new website theme for my website , I was wondering what impact does it have on SEO when changing theme for a website?

 

[pilgrim.marketing]

If you change from one theme to another, you might find that it uses certain tags differently. Things like:

• Header tags (h1, h2, h3 etc) might be placed differently
• Title tags might have different organisation of data (e.g. Business name then page name vs page name then business name)

Whilst it can't be said whether this has a net negative or positive effect on your search rankings you need to be aware that these things might be different so you know how to manage it.

To see the difference try using a spider tool like ScreamingFrog before and after the theme change to see how search engines see the data contained on your pages.

In addition certain themes may contain:

• Microdata markup that helps describe what certain data means to search engines
• Opengraph markup enabling rich snippets in social media

Whilst these might no affect your SEO they are nice to have when it comes to generating social shares, which is almost certainly a ranking factor.

 

[WebDesires]

Usability, Readability, Responsiveness.

Assuming everything else is roughly the same these are the 3 things to worry about, I would assume though that your new theme is much better than the old one.

Like the guy above said, make sure you are doing all the SEO stuff either exactly as you was before, or better and this will not be a problem.

Meta tags, OG tags, Twitter cards, H1, nofollows etc.

 

[CarlReed]

As long as the on page SEO and content is the same it shouldn't matter, just avoid themes which push the content way below the fold as I've seen a negative affect on rankings due to this reason

 

[Luke R]

Some themes seem to be rather slow - make sure yours is fast enough as speed impacts the success of your website. I've often had to ditch slow themes.

 

[gau061]

Thanks all for valuable insights.

 

[fisicx]

In your case I'd say yes. Check your site on the google speed test: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http://www.alphansotech.com/&tab=mobile

And you are using bootstrap which is bloated and unnecessary. And sliders and a whole load of other stylesheets and scripts which you don't need. Every line of extra code is something else google has to wade through to get to your content. So get rid of everything you don't need.

PS: Join the forum as a full member and get a website review, there are loads of things you could do to make your site more effective. One of which would be to employ a copy writer, they will get rid of all the spammy copy.

 

[MaureenP]

I have recently built a brand new website theme for my website , I was wondering what impact does it have on SEO when changing theme for a website?

Theme of the website doesn't matter to make a difference in the SEO but yes content always make a difference in it. So, give more importance to content compared to theme.

Website them is used to attract visitors/users towards the website.

 

[Richard Ashton]

If you change from one theme to another, you might find that it uses certain tags differently. Things like:

• Header tags (h1, h2, h3 etc) might be placed differently
• Title tags might have different organisation of data (e.g. Business name then page name vs page name then business name)

Whilst it can't be said whether this has a net negative or positive effect on your search rankings you need to be aware that these things might be different so you know how to manage it.

To see the difference try using a spider tool like ScreamingFrog before and after the theme change to see how search engines see the data contained on your pages.

In addition certain themes may contain:

• Microdata markup that helps describe what certain data means to search engines
• Opengraph markup enabling rich snippets in social media

Whilst these might no affect your SEO they are nice to have when it comes to generating social shares, which is almost certainly a ranking factor.

One handy thing i would of done is used a tool like semrush ran it through the site audit prior to the theme change, and then do the same thing after the theme change and see if it flags the same issues (like h1, h2, h3 tag misplacement)

 

[justinaldridge]

One of the biggest issues with theme changes is altering link crawl paths, i.e., breaking the current paths that Google follows via the internal links to find (and rank) your pages.

Always ensure crawl/link paths are maintained as much as possible.

 

[rf-harris]

Yes, changing theme does make a difference to SEO. You will have different codes in new theme and both themes are most likely have many other things different as well like one theme is more responsive to other and things like that.

 

[webgeek]

10 Ways Theme Choice can Impact SEO (Online Marketing)?

1) Page loading times - page speed is important - minimising calls, incorporating CDN's, and other practices for reducing loading times is a key part of a good theme
2) No use of mixed https and http content - go one way, the other or // neutral, but don't mix and match. SSL may be slower, but it is considered the gold standard at the type of this post.
3) Use of semantic markup for html5 - things like header, main, nav, section, article, aside, etc
4) Use of structured data - though hard to quantify in benefits, why not make it easier for search engines, by marking up your addresses, and other key bits of information, using search engine friendly markup
5) If using WordPress, or other common platform, bundled plugin choices - the right plugins - and not too many of them weighting down a site unnecessarily can be key to speed optimisation, ease of maintenance, security, and behaving as expected (plugins doing what they should do). Most popular is not the same as best, otherwise McDonalds hamburgers would be considered the finest in the world... Yoast is the McDonalds of SEO plugins - largely due to his unending love for canonicals, despite being proven time and time again that they cause more messes than they fix - especially when 301's are an option instead.
6) Mobile friendly - if it isn't mobile friendly out of the box, then one can't expect a non-technical site owner to 'whip up' a mobile friendly version, plumb it in and make it all work seamlessly together
7) Social Sharing - it's gotta make it easy for people to share with those they consider important to them
8) Easy Calls to Action - if someone has to find a button every time they want to make a call to action, then you've done them no favours. While this isn't organic SEO, it is important to the online marketing success of the site, hence the reason I've included it. Newsletter sign ups, and the reasons why people should sign up, should be easily inserted into the calls to action.
9) Lead Nurturing - while 8 above deals with lead capture, this item 9 deals with lead nurturing - once you get their email address and interest, have you made it easy for them to be notified when new posts appear in a category of their interest, have you made it easy for them to be notified of any new products, certain keywords mentioned, notified of contests won, or just kept in touch with when you regularly publish a newsletter every couple of weeks.... Built-in marketing comms and/or integrated marketing automation is one big difference that separates most mom and pops from the top brands they want to compete against.
10) Analytics - conversion tracking needs to be a pre-planned activity, not a bolt-on afterthought. People want websites because they will bring in new business. If you aren't able to measure those who convert, where they came from, what page they were on, what button they clicked, what videos they saw, what contact form they filled in, as well as those that didn't complete the contact form, then you've effectively built a blind site - one that hamstrings the site owner before they even get started in the world of online business.