WordPress is one of the most preferred content management systems there is. It is a free and open source which offers splendid features and tools to web developers. Maintaining a top ranking in your WordPress website is very important since you are able to generate more traffic for your site. This is, however, not easy-to-do.

Since WordPress brings up new themes now and then, the main question is, ‘is it recommended to change your WordPress theme often?’ This has been a dilemma for many digital marketers’ enthusiasts. In this article, we shall look into how changing your WordPress theme affects your website and also the best way to do the changes.

Changing your WordPress Theme

There are two main questions that many people are always asking regarding changing the WordPress theme:

1. What will happen to my blog’s traffic? 

2. What will happen to my blog’s SEO?

The change that takes place here depends on the situation that the WordPress passes through. Handling a WordPress website requires that you check whether the SEO of your website is being handled either by a plugin or through a particular WordPress theme. The types of WordPress themes are different as well as the plugins for the SEO. The SEO plugin can, for instance, hinder or even help your SEO.

Changing your theme

Before you make a change on your WordPress there are different things that you ought to consider and look into. Results for the SEO will not just come, however, have a prior research to understand the kind of new theme you want on board.

There are a few things that you ought to ensure that you understand before we proceed further:

• If you are using SEO WordPress plugin in handling your blog’s SEO, you are likely to retain your SEO. This will happen however if the new WordPress theme has already been optimized.
• There are many WordPress themes including Genesis and Thesis which come along with inbuilt options for SEO. When you chose to use the theme’s SEO’s features, your blog will definitely be affected.

Your website hosting

To have a stable SEO website even after changing your WordPress theme requires that you have a stable web host. Delays in loading your page mean that visitors are turning away. A decent host is therefore vital and you can read these reviews on MangoMatter before you choose your web hosting company.

Changing WordPress Themes vs SEO results

Loss of the Custom Theme Settings

All your custom settings in your previous theme can be lost upon switching to your new theme. The new theme, therefore, lacks the features that you had upgraded with the old one. This happens since there are different ways of coding used in themes, therefore, you are able to get different design and functionality.

The order in which your theme loads the tools involved as well matters. There are those that will load the sidebars than the body whereas your old them had different settings.

Heading tags change

Tags, where post titles are used or hyperlinked, affects the entire SEO of your WordPress. You, therefore, need to know tags for post title used in the new theme.

Backup helps

Before migrating to the new SEO plugin, back up the theme and database of your website. When you have a set backup, in case the new theme doesn’t work right you can use the old theme.

If chosen smartly, the new WordPress theme can have drastic positive effects on the SEO. It can as well ruin the recent ranking of your WordPress theme if not selected appropriately. You, therefore, need to have a concrete checklist before launching the new WordPress theme.