Change website template, can it hurt your SEO ranking?

[NichelleRae]

I would keep the content on all the pages of my website but change its web template to a better new looking design, can it hurt my web site SEO ranking?
If I change, which ones do I need to keep to maintain my SEO rankings?
All your suggestions are appreciated.

 

[elcidofaguy]

If you change your website theme - just make sure that all of the links such as navigation, categories, tags etc is still intact... That way you'll make sure that web crawlers will not lose any information which it had previously which could result in a loss of rankings due to 404 errors etc... Once done I would also recommend that you spend some time to improve your on-page SEO...

 

[sagabizsolutions]

That is only truth if the new theme that you are going to use has errors. If it has been SEO'ed and all the content will be the same, you may some rankings decline until Google spiders the new site and re index it. But that shouldn't take very long.

You need to think on the users first, will the users love the new site? If they will, then Google will follow, don't worry about that.

Thanks & Regards,
Saga Biz Solutions

 

[SEOPub]

If the template changes the layout and where things fall in the code, it can impact your rankings.

For example, some Wordpress templates have the sidebar show up first in the layout before the content container. Others have it show after the content. I do not mean right or left side. I mean when you look at the text version of the webpage, the sidebar content shows up first, then the content box.

That can have a big impact because it pushes your main content down and suddenly puts more emphasis on the sidebar.

Stuff like that is important.

 

[NichelleRae]

NichelleRae

You are right but are there any ways to keep the rankings if I change my website template?

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Yeah, make sure the layout of the code does not change. Take a look at the text version of your site in the Google cache. You want things to layout as close to that as possible.