Does changing template for a wordpress site affect SEO

[Cin7_Marketing]

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.

[donsilvernail]

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

[Igor.Go]

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.

[Libra_Photographic]

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.

[evolvingSEO]

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