When Changing Website Themes Does Not Hurt Your Google Rankings

The other week we covered how Google’s John Mueller said that changing your website theme or WordPress theme, can impact your rankings. But when will changing your website theme not impact your rankings?

John Mueller of Google actually addressed this question a few months ago on Twitter. He said that when you change the colors on your site or move HTML elements around, that should not really have an impact on your Google search rankings. But if changing the website theme results in the layout changing, how your internal linking looks and the overall site design – then that can impact your Google rankings.

John said “If you’re changing the color & moving HTML elements around, I wouldn’t expect issues. If it’s the theme (layout, linking, design, etc), then yes, you can see changes. Sometimes up, sometimes down. Think about what you want in a theme, and make sure it includes SEO improvements!”

Here are those tweets:

If you’re changing the color & moving HTML elements around, I wouldn’t expect issues. If it’s the theme (layout, linking, design, etc), then yes, you can see changes. Sometimes up, sometimes down. Think about what you want in a theme, and make sure it includes SEO improvements!

— ???? John ???? (@JohnMu) June 8, 2021

Here is the video from last week which doesn’t go into it like this:

Forum discussion at Twitter.

Note: This was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today, I am currently offline for Succos.