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Can a Wordpress theme change cause a drop in traffic? (12 posts)

Adam Gottlieb said
1 year, 2 months ago:
I run a site on Wordpress (frugalentrepreneur.com), and about a week ago I decided to purchase a new theme. Now, after activating it, this whole week I’ve noticed that my traffic has been down about 15-20%. I get a significant amount of traffic from search, and that seems to be where the decrease is happening. Could the change in theme change the way Google is now indexing my site? The bounce rate has also increased.
My website url’s haven’t changed, and I don’t think my site was affected (negatively anyway) by any of the recent algorithm updates. Any ideas what could be happening and how I can fix it?
@adamgottlieb | # | Top
Glen Gorham said
1 year, 2 months ago:
@adamgottlieb a couple things come to mind, rerun your SEO addon (Yoast or whatever) usually they have steps you can go through and make sure your theme is presenting the H1, H2 tags, site titles etc etc etc right?
Two, could this be normal? Has this been an off week for articles?
Three don’t panic, just be patient.
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Adam Gottlieb said
1 year, 2 months ago:
Thanks Glen for the suggestions, and, no, it doesn’t seem to be a normal change in traffic. I’ll try re-running my SEO plugin and see if it helps… and maybe stay away from Google Analytics for a few days.
@adamgottlieb | # | Top
Paul Wylie said
1 year, 2 months ago:
@adamgottlieb It could be theme related issue some themes aren’t worth a damn. You need to be careful when switching themes make sure you know the developer hasn’t coded it wrong. @glengorham is right don’t panic be patient it could just mean that the search engines are re-acting to the changes it will take a few weeks to sort out.
@ptwylie | # | Top
Nichole Schlecht said
1 year, 2 months ago:
@adamgottlieb
No, changing your theme won’t make a difference to search engines and you wouldn’t see a huge decrease in traffic so quickly.
Google announced Friday that they rolled out a new Panda update which definitely could have been the culprit. If this is the case wait a week, typically after Google updates, things get a little wonky but balance themselves out.
You can always check your analytics and do a comparative analysis. It could just be coincidence.
@iamconsulting | # | Top
Adam Gottlieb said
1 year, 2 months ago:
@iamconsulting Talking about “wonky”… my Google analytics account suddenly looks like it needs new batteries. Though page views seem a bit more normal, now it’s telling me I have a bounce rate of about 2%, and almost every single person who visits a page, any page, makes sure to load it twice (i.e. every page view is recorded twice).
I have Adsense on the site and the page views don’t match up at all to those in Analytics. Anyone else getting some weird analytics numbers lately?
@adamgottlieb | # | Top
Nichole Schlecht said
1 year, 2 months ago:
@adamgottlieb
Definitely wonky…have you tried replacing the code? I did find this post here that sounds like a similar issue that involves the page tracking code - https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!category-topic/analytics/discuss-tracking-and-implementation-issues/quhMuVY2j9c
Maybe check the code and replace it with fresh code to ensure your numbers are accurate.
@iamconsulting | # | Top
Romy Singh said
1 year, 2 months ago:
Hello Adam,
There could many reasons why your website traffic gone down, but as far as theme changing is concerned i don’t think that it plays a huge role in traffic.
But it plays huge role in user engagement. if you want to find out the reason, you should revise SEO of your website back and compare the things when you had your old theme live with new one. you would find something to work on..
And please check out that your site is not hit by Panda, because Google recently enrolled it….
@romysingh | # | Top
Adam Gottlieb said
1 year, 2 months ago:
@iamconsulting I had checked the Google forums, but somehow missed this thread. I looked at my source code and there actually was a second version of analytics code on the page. How it got there, I have no idea. But I took one off and now things seem to be working again. Thanks for the link!
In terms of traffic. It’s still at little down…. the theme is from a trusted developer, and it was a big improvement to the site in terms of layout and engagement. I don’t think I should have been affected by the recent algorithm refreshment. So, I’ll just wait and see what happens over the next couple of weeks.
Thanks @romysingh and @ptwylie for the suggestions.
@adamgottlieb | # | Top
Nichole Schlecht said
1 year, 2 months ago:
@adamgottlieb
That’s great to hear! As far as traffic goes, your theme shouldn’t have any effect. The latest Panda update I mentioned before may have contributed to the decrease in traffic. You should also check your SEO to make sure it transferred to the new theme. I’ve swapped themes plenty of times and occasionally it doesn’t always transfer. It’s possible it’s just a coincidence but always a good idea to check to make sure things are still in order.
@iamconsulting | # | Top
Adam Gottlieb said
1 year, 2 months ago:
@iamconsulting
“You should also check your SEO to make sure it transferred to the new theme.”
What do you mean by that? SEO-related plugins are working? Titles, meta-tags, descriptions, etc are still there? Both of the above? None of the above?
@adamgottlieb | # | Top
Nichole Schlecht said
1 year, 2 months ago:
@adamgottlieb
I just meant you should check the plugin to make sure it’s still activated. I took a peek at your site however and it does appear to be working properly.
@iamconsulting | # | Top

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