When I changes Template, why traffic goes down?
-
I've noticed that when I change my blog's template the traffic goes down dramatically, about of 40% decrease. I know that new themes can have some problems but I have tried this with 2 different themes. First try was with genesis framework(Paid one) and just in one day traffic went down and when I reverted the old theme, the traffic became normal.
Should I wait for 1 week to see what happens?
What could be the potential reason of this?
-
I'd try to get really specific on two things;
-
"traffic" - are you saying only Google traffic? All traffic?
-
if it IS google traffic, did you notice if Google has actually crawled and re-cached the new version on the website?
-
also, does traffic decrease evenly across all pages on the site? or is it limited to just certain pages or sections?
-
"changing themes" - are these theme changes only design / skin changes - or do they affect URLs, internal links, content (such as page titles/descriptions etc)
I think answering these questions really matters in terms of figuring out what happened. I think it's very unlikely for just a surface skin/design change to hurt traffic so much - there must be deeper things going on, and it's just a matter of figuring out what the specifics are.
-
-
If you are really carefull on links, content and theme quality the drop with be temporary. But complete structure change with different headings, changed internal link structure can really do harm on your site for a bit longer.
As long as gross kept the same only the theme changes, and you don't build of a lot of 404's you'll be fine within 1 or 2 weeks.
-
But What should be the plan for changing the theme? I'm not a dev, nor a designer and only use premium Wordpress themes for my blog.
-
Hammad if is normal for the traffic to drop when you made any significant change on the bog and changing the entire theme can be one of them. I have worked with different clients and in my understanding the drop can be controlled to minimum if you have a shift plan, time and you should have a clear idea that the theme you are uploading didn’t have any problem.
I believe you should be ready for it if you are changing the theme all you need is a perfect planning to make that traffic drop to minimum.
Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Changing a product page from "example.com" to "example.com/keyword" affect SEO and Ranking?
We're in a situation to move the page from "example.com" to "example.com/keyword". And adding new content to the "example.com" page. Does this change affect our ranking? If so how can we overcome this problem? Can anyone help?
On-Page Optimization | | Mohamednatheem0 -
Need to change permalink structure - need advice on these two options
I have a client with a robust Wordpress blog that ranks well for a number of high-volume terms. We are doing a site rebuild, and they are adamant they don't want to lose any SERP ranking. However, their permalink structure contains the date the post was published, i.e. https://www.company.com/blog/2018/10/28/blog-post-title The date inclusion is not ideal for obvious reasons, but also because it's creating 404 links when pre-scheduling with Hubspot. Option 1: Change the permalink structure for all posts, past and future, and implement 301 redirects The only reason I'm not outright doing this is because there will be some slippage in the rankings, given that redirects only pass on a percentage of juice. The client doesn't want any slippage. Option 2: Create a new instance of Wordpress in a new subdirectory and continue the blog from there This will mandate a new structure for the blog posts; now posts will be children of /industry-blog/ instead of /blog/, but the old posts will remain as they are under /blog/ (and with dates intact). But I don't know if this will cause some hierarchical confusion that will negatively impact both the old blog and the new blog. Any advice given is appreciated. Please feel free to correct me if I've gotten anything wrong, I've only been practicing SEO for a few years now.
On-Page Optimization | | Marce5210 -
Change SEO focus from homepage to other page on the domain
Hi, we are (were) ranking top 5 with gietvloer-wand.nl by focussing the homepage for a certain keyword. We're trying to change to focus from the homepage to /gietvloeren with more content / information. How to go about this? how to tell Google that /gietvloeren is more relevant / important then than the homepage? Or any experiences how long it will take for Google to see that the page has more information than the homepage? It's a test and any experiences you can share would be great. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Heers0 -
Does Google's algo look at all traffic mediums with regs to onpage metrics or only organic traffic metrics?
Hi folks, This is something I've pondered for a while. I've ask a couple of Googlers but no reponse yet and I don't I'll get one! In your opinion, do you think Google looks at on page metrics like bounce rate for example from all traffic mediums (organic, paid, email, social referral etc etc) or they only look at on page metrics from organic traffic? I'm not talking about direct correlations from other mediums. I'm only talking about when a user lands on a website, do the actions they take matter with regards to Google's search algo no matter of the referring medium, or do Google only look at onpage metrics on visits which came to the site via organic search as a medium. Option 1 As a very simplified example: Google gives extra weight in the SERPs to website A which has an average bounce rate of 30% from all mediums compared to website B which has a bounce rate of 50% from all mediums. Option 2 Google gives extra weight in the SERPs to website A which has an average bounce rate of 30% from organic traffic only compared to website B which has a bounce rate of 50% from organic traffic only. I'm not sure if anyone outside Google has the answer/proof of this but was keen to get other people's thoughts. If you think the also uses one or the other, can you give an insights/proof of one or the other? For me it would make sense for them only to use onpage metrics from sessions which came from organic seach traffic, but who knows! Merci buckets, Gill.
On-Page Optimization | | Cannetastic0 -
Hello, I need some help: Organic Traffic going down
Hello, I need some help, i am trying to figure out why my Organic traffic has gone down so much in the last six months and trying to find a solution, but I am at a lost as to what i should be looking to see how to fix it. http://goo.gl/arwlON I hope you can help or give me some ideas as to why. Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | blinky510 -
My Meta Description changes when i use different keyword in google search.
Hello everyone, I have a question for the community. I have a website with several articles and news that i manage. I set specific meta descriptions for every page but when i search in google it gives me back different meta descriptions depending on the keyword that i use to search. What i notice is that google looks in my page for the most relevant part of the text that combines with my keyword and gives me back that result. I thought that this only happen when i have an empty meta description. Anyone felt the same ? Best Ricardo www.meuportalfinanceiro.pt
On-Page Optimization | | Adclick0 -
Rebranding and Domain Name Changes
Hi All, One of my clients wants to rebrand http://indiaretailnews.com/ so that it's clear that the site is under the operational umbrella of http://tradebriefs.com/. indiaretailnews.com has a lower domain authority of 20, but because of the domain name it ranks number #2 for the keyword "retail news" for Google India. The client's question: Can we change the site names to TradeBriefsRetail.com orTradeBriefsIndiaRetail.com without affecting the SEO on each site? How do we do this – redirect from TradeBriefsIndiaRetail.com to IndiaRetailNews.com and so on or simply put all the content on the new sites and get rid of the old domains or some other way? Do long domain names cause a problem? Another option is TradeBriefsRetail.in, etc with the domain extension showing the country that the content is for.. In a year or two, we will be expanding to markets outside India. My opinion: Keep the old domains and redirect to something like http://tradebriefs.com/india-retail-news Or perhaps a subdomain: http://indiaretailnews.tradebriefs.com In the short term, I'd imagine rankings will drop, but if we wanted to consolidate domain authority, I was thinking that http://tradebriefs.com/india-retail-news would be the best bet. Thoughts? Kenji
On-Page Optimization | | KenjiCrosland0 -
What is the best practice for changing a url of an existing page
I a looking through the on-page SEO reports in SEOmoz for one of my sites. It suggests that I change the url of a particular page to match the desired search term I want to rank for. In this case it is a site for a local business and the url is example.com/testimonials. when it probabaly should have instead been example.com/city-business-reviews. I have just a couple links to this page and I'm stuck towards the bottom of page 1 in the SERPs currently. Questions... 1. Should I change the url to include the exact keyword term I want the page to rank for? 2. If yes, what is the best method to ensure that any existing link juice to the current url is retained? Would I change the url, then create a new page with the old url and apply a 301 redirect to point it to the new page? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | fastestmanalive0