With over 835 million active WordPress websites, it’s no surprise that there are many different ways to skin a cat – and that includes theme choices. But what if those choices significantly impact your website’s Google ranking? A website theme is what lets search engines such as Google know what theme or topic you are offering to your audience. The best WordPress themes also let your visitors quickly find the type of content they are looking for. In this article, we’ll explore the possible fallout from changing your WordPress theme – and just how likely it will significantly impact your rankings.
What are the Different Types of WordPress Themes?
WordPress themes are the foundation of any WordPress-powered website. They provide a template for your website’s content, design, and functionality. Because of this, the quality and design of your WordPress theme can significantly impact your website’s overall user experience.
There are three main types of WordPress themes: custom-built, free, and premium. Custom-built themes are created by WordPress developers and typically cost money to purchase. Free themes are typically sites that use WordPress as a platform to generate revenue (examples include The Huffington Post and Mashable). Premium themes, like those from Themeforest and Nitro, are typically more feature rich and expensive than free or custom-built themes.
The quality of your theme is important for two reasons. It affects how users perceive your site. When users see a poorly designed site, it can lower their confidence in your brand and deter them from visiting or engaging with your content.
When Does It Make Sense to Change Your Theme?
There are a few factors to consider before making a change, including your website’s SEO goals, the look and feel you’re aiming for, and what elements of your current theme are working well. Here’s a look at each.
SEO Goals
Loading a website slowly can have a negative effect on its traffic. This is because slow websites often result in high bounce rates, since users may decide that their time is better spent on a faster site. If you want to improve your website’s search engine ranking, it may make sense to switch to a fast-loading WordPress theme. A faster theme can give your site a fresh look and improve its organic traffic, which can boost your site’s overall ranking. However, be sure to keep all of your other SEO strategies in mind—including internal linking and on-page optimization—before making any changes.
The Look and Feel of Your Site
Another factor to consider is the look and feel of your site. Some themes are designed with an eye toward aesthetics rather than functionality, which can detract from the overall user experience. If you want your website to be easy to navigate and learn how to use, it may be better to stick with a more traditional WordPress theme.
How Theme Changes Can Affect Site Speed
Google has a feature called “PageSpeed Insights” that calculates how fast a website is loading. If it finds that the website is loading too slowly, it will give it a lower ranking in the search engine results. If you make changes to your WordPress theme and those changes impact site speed, your ranking could be affected. If you’re not sure whether a particular change to your theme is causing your site to slow down, you can use Google Page Speed Test or GT Metrix to measure your site’s loading time.
Website owners can strike a balance between rich website content and responsive load times by choosing quality themes that meet their needs. Quality themes are designed with performance in mind, so they load quickly and look great on all devices. They also include features that allow website owners to customize the look and feel of their sites.
How Theme Changes Can Affect User Experience
Changes made to a WordPress theme can affect how users experience your website or blog. Theme changes can include changes to the layout, design, and functionality of your website or blog. Changes made to a WordPress theme can also impact how search engine behave with your website or blog for search results.
When making changes to a WordPress theme, it is important to consider how these changes will impact the user experience. If you plan to make major changes to the look and feel of your website or blog, it is important to test these changes with a small group of users before implementing them on a larger scale. Changes made without testing can result in frustrating users who are not expecting these changes, impacting your site’s bounce rate and, ultimately the ranking in Google search results.
If you do decide to make a theme change, be sure to follow these tips:
1. Use a well-known and fast-loading theme. This will help ensure that any changes you make will have minimal impact on your site’s overall look and feel.
2. Test your changes before publishing them on the site. If there are any issues with the design or functionality of your new theme, you can fix them quickly and without interfering with traffic.
3. Keep all of your content in the same format and layout as before – this will minimize the chances that Google will penalize you for updates to your content hierarchy or style.
4. Always keep an eye on Google Analytics data in order to track how changes to your site are impacting the rankings.
Conclusion
The answer to this question largely depends on the theme you are using and how customizable it is. If your WordPress theme doesn’t have any built-in features that could impact your Google ranking, then changes made to your site won’t do much harm. However, if a change affects one of the themes key components (like its title or metadata), then it could have an adverse effect on your site’s ranking. So be sure to test any changes you make before going live so that you can minimize any potential damage done to your site’s SEO.