By changing the wordpress theme what need to take for seo consideration?

[andrewwatson92]

Hi guys!

we have a site that been using a theme for a year now and we decided to change to a new one, the question here is, does it affect seo? or it is possible to remain 100% for the seo?

What caution tips that you guys can share for changing the theme? Does just remaining the same URL works?

[andrewwatson92]

does moz cawel test tool is sufficient enough to crawl a whole site ?

[andrewwatson92]

so i assume the best way is use seo frog to gather all the links from the domain and redirect to the right page right?

[BlueprintMarketing]

Do not use your homepage 301 redirect default . You have to use the most relevant page for 404 errors in order to have any value from them and not create a spam he mess.

[andrewwatson92]

hi another question, is there anyway to redirect all 404, using 301 to the homepage? if doing so would it be better for seo?

[Patrick_G]

I agree with everything BlueprintMarketing said.

I would add that you should back up your blog posts, just in case something goes berserk. If you're on a paid theme or going to another paid theme, normally their support might have some advice for you.

I second Genesis/Studio Press framework from Copyblogger Media. I have one, and never had any issues when I switched from a free theme to a paid one. Never used Woo Themes, but I've heard good things.

[BlueprintMarketing]

I am assuming this means you're keeping your content and everything else link structure at the same correct?

** If you are going to be changing URLs and things like that please let me know so I can answer this more appropriately for that.**

If you use a high-quality developer to make sure all the minor things that will be changing that make up the theme are handled properly you can get away without being touched by Google and may be going up. Although the opposite can happen if you do not take precautions.

The quality of the theme can hurt your rankings as well as boost them. Use a high quality developer to guide you through this. I would run “screaming frog seo spider” before the change then again after. Also pay close attention to Google Webmaster tools.

I know that there can be changes with JavaScript, CSS and many other things because of a theme change you'll want to be very conscious of these things and they can affect your site architecture.

there's a good chance that there will be other things inside the site that will be changing. You will want to look out for 404's you want to be certain that the theme you are changing it with his a high quality theme at least from WordPress.org I prefer studio press or Woo themes that these are my preferences.

you will have a lot of small things change inside your site you'll want to use the crawl tool to monitor issues and take care of them right away.

One tip if you use Genesis-based framework or studio press themes you get built-in schema which is a nice perk.

I hope this is helpful and remember to check your site for changes that most likely will occur when you modify your site.

Sincerely,

Thomas