Now Reading ...Everybody know that Wordpress is a great blog platform. Beside having its own extend pages to add more plugins to your blog, It also have its own free theme directory.
Because it’s so easy, you tend to switch plugin and theme regularly. Well, it’s nothing wrong anyway in changing plugin. But it’s a critical problem if you switch your theme too often.
I recently stumbled on a post about reasons that make your search engine ranking dropped.
The first reason is about the changes of your blog (theme and permalinks) could effect on your search engine position.
It said that on every time you change your blog theme, search engines will re-calculate your placement on their SERP. Which mean, your current position on the keyword that you usually get inside the top 10 search results will drop, or even disappear from the result.
I’ve seen a lot of my blogger friends switching their theme often. Some even switch theme for more than 3 times in the first 3 months.
I don’t know how is the effect for them, but I felt it myself that my search engine ranking is dropping since I switch to this new theme.
But it’s not for long. Around 1-2 weeks, I started to see some better search term and result since the PR update a week ago. For example:
- I was in the 2nd and 3rd of “Transformation theme” keyword from 2.000.000 sites.
I was in the top of “wordpress different sidebar” keyword from 1.000.000 sites.Disappear!- No.12 out of 13.400.000 sites with the keyword - 10 questions 1 million dollars
Yup, it’s amazing stats for me! 
But some keyword seems not related to my post at all. It’s a funny how Google decide the relevancy of its search result.
I’m not sure how the Search Engine look at my blog, may be it’s the inbound links that I received that decide everything.
Well, that’s not the focus that you should seek. Instead, I think we must focus on using a permanent theme for more a long term (like 6 month or more) to avoid re-calculation of your blog.
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(November 7, 2007, 7:41 pm)
I run have my blog (http://ww.rotorblog.com)for about 1.5 years and I have changed my blog theme only twice and actually, if you do it smart, that can effect your search results in positive way.
I totally agree taht switching themes too often is not great idea also because you loose your blogs visual identity and branding your blog is a hard work.
Of course you can’t live without changing your theme at all.
Some reasons that may require changes:
Reply to Maris1. New advertising options and necessity for advertising space or changes in the ad position.
2. Changes in your content and idea of the bog can also require changes in design.
3. You can increase popularity of your blog by switching to something original and fresh and changing the theme may be a reason to create buzz.
And also other different factors that may ask for switching the theme.
(November 7, 2007, 11:32 pm)
I’ve also change my theme twice since 7 months ago. I plan to use this theme from 1 year duration.
You are right. If we know some SEO or optimizing tips to create a theme, we can actually bring in more positive result than ranking dropping on the SERP. We only need to wait for the re-calculation (depend on your PR also, if it’s high, may be it will be faster).
Those three points are a strong points, Maris. I believe, theme changing also great for self-stimulation. Which mean we can blog even more with a new blog theme because we have a new perspective on our own blog.
Thanks for commenting, Maris! Love to hear from you again.
Reply to Ken Xu(November 21, 2007, 9:08 am)
Well Google has a complicated search engine ranking, not possible to explain, only some observations are there.
Reply to Nirmal(April 27, 2008, 9:47 am)
Hey Thanks for that tip!
Reply to BubbleOnFire