Changing Your Theme?

Will changing your theme on your website affect your Google ranking and traffic? I really hadn’t given it much thought until I thought of making changes after seeing others change their themes pretty often. What I have found is a mixture of answers to this specific question. So I wondered have you noticed any changes when you changed the theme on your website or blog?

Here are some of the answers I found along the way:

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.

I was actually just going to start a thread about this. I switched my theme and my rankings completely tanked. Ive switched back, its been a few days and the rankings still haven’t come back. I haven’t done anything to the site other then change the theme in weeks so I can’t really think it would be anything else.

 

What other factors affect the Google ranking that could be theme related?

• Fresh Images – Would changing the theme help this one? (a Panda update).
• Image Size -  This is an upgrade  to how we use the size of images as a ranking signal in Image Search. With this change, you’ll see more images with larger full-size versions.
• Fresh Content – Does changing the theme mean “fresh content? “
• Faster Mobile Browsing – If you changed to a responsive theme would that increase your Google ranking in the speed area? Or if you went from a responsive theme to a non-responsive theme would it hurt your Google ranking?
• Page Layouts – Content must be “above” the fold. If a theme made this better would it also help for page layouts?
• Browser Size Tool – This is how your blog will look under various browsers. If the new theme improves in this area wouldn’t it improve the rank and thus traffic?

I’d love to hear from those of you have changed your theme this past year and if it has affected your Google ranking or traffic in any way.