Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. On-Page Optimization
    4. When I changes Template, why traffic goes down?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    When I changes Template, why traffic goes down?

    On-Page Optimization
    4
    5
    2006
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • hammadrafique
      hammadrafique last edited by

      I've noticed that when I change my blog's template the traffic goes down dramatically, about of 40% decrease. I know that new themes can have some problems but I have tried this with 2 different themes. First try was with genesis framework(Paid one) and just in one day traffic went down and when I reverted the old theme, the traffic became normal.

      Should I wait for 1 week to see what happens?

      What could be the potential reason of this?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • evolvingSEO
        evolvingSEO last edited by

        I'd try to get really specific on two things;

        • "traffic" - are you saying only Google traffic? All traffic?

        • if it IS google traffic, did you notice if Google has actually crawled and re-cached the new version on the website?

        • also, does traffic decrease evenly across all pages on the site? or is it limited to just certain pages or sections?

        • "changing themes" - are these theme changes only design / skin changes - or do they affect URLs, internal links, content (such as page titles/descriptions etc)

        I think answering these questions really matters in terms of figuring out what happened. I think it's very unlikely for just a surface skin/design change to hurt traffic so much - there must be deeper things going on, and it's just a matter of figuring out what the specifics are.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • kayintveen_MD
          kayintveen_MD last edited by

          If you are really carefull on links, content and theme quality the drop with be temporary. But complete structure change with different headings, changed internal link structure can really do harm on your site for a bit longer.

          As long as gross kept the same only the theme changes, and you don't build of a lot of 404's you'll be fine within 1 or 2 weeks.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote -1
          • hammadrafique
            hammadrafique last edited by

            But What should be the plan for changing the theme? I'm not a dev, nor a designer and only use premium Wordpress themes for my blog.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • MoosaHemani
              MoosaHemani Banned last edited by

              Hammad if is normal for the traffic to drop when you made any significant change on the bog and changing the entire theme can be one of them. I have worked with different clients and in my understanding the drop can be controlled to minimum if you have a shift plan, time and you should have a clear idea that the theme you are uploading didn’t have any problem.

              I believe you should be ready for it if you are changing the theme all you need is a perfect planning to make that traffic drop to minimum.

              Hope this helps!

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              Browse Questions

              Explore more categories

              • Moz Tools

                Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

              • SEO Tactics

                Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

              • Community

                Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

              • Digital Marketing

                Chat about tactics outside of SEO

              • Research & Trends

                Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

              • Support

                Connect on product support and feature requests.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • DigitalProgress

                Should I Change My Blog Permalinks to Remove The Date

                page url

                Hi All Thank you in advance for any help. Last year a website was moved to multisite and the permalinks for the blog posts were changed to include a category, the year, the month and day. As a result most of the page URL's are flagged as too long. A number of the pages are receiving good traffic, so my question is whether just to leave them as they are or to change the permalinks? My gut feeling is to take the short term hit and change the permalinks, but I thought I'd take the advice of the forum before doing so. Many Thanks

                On-Page Optimization | | DigitalProgress
                2
              • Jamesmcd03

                Best site Template, Structure, etc. for SEO

                If I were to spin up a new site what do people recommend as the best template, services, etc. Do you have an example of the perfect structure, I want to point my team to an example page and say - This is perfect, do this but for our product (structure, content amount, etc) Thank you,

                On-Page Optimization | | Jamesmcd03
                0
              • Cesare.Marchetti

                Changes taken over in the SERP's: How long do I have to wait until i can rely on the (new) position?

                I changed different things on a particular page (mainly reduced the exaggerated keyword density --> spammy). I made it recrawl by Google (Search Console). The new version has now already been integrated in the SERP's.Question: Are my latest changes (actual crawled page in the SERP's is now 2 days old) already reflected in the actual position in the SERP's or should I wait for some time (how long?) to evaluate the effect of my changes? Can I rely on the actual position or not?

                On-Page Optimization | | Cesare.Marchetti
                0
              • Dreamrealemedia

                How to change images of a page without loosing ranking?

                Hi, I have two reasons to change some images of a page on a wordpress site: 1.Google speed service advise me to optmize the images size to better spead load times. 2.I want to change images titles (to improve seo optimization for the page keyword), so i need to replace them, since im using wordpress. Now the question is: Can i just change the images without worring about any related seo issues? Or should i follow some best practice to change images in order to not affect the ranking of the page? tx for your support!

                On-Page Optimization | | Dreamrealemedia
                0
              • Adclick

                My Meta Description changes when i use different keyword in google search.

                Hello everyone, I have a question for the community. I have a website with several articles and news that i manage. I set specific meta descriptions for every page but when i search in google it gives me back different meta descriptions depending on the keyword that i use to search. What i notice is that google looks in my page for the most relevant part of the text that combines with my keyword and gives me back that result. I thought that this only happen when i have an empty meta description. Anyone felt the same ? Best Ricardo www.meuportalfinanceiro.pt

                On-Page Optimization | | Adclick
                0
              • Grafimart

                Are there any SEO benefits changing the default home page filename (index.htm) to a keyword rich filename

                II'm a newbie. I have a website using the default home page filename: index.htm. I have total control over the web server. I was wondering whether I can get any SEO improvements for my main keyword if I change the default filename with a filename that contains the main keyword, like our-main-product.htm (doing the 301 redirect and changing the server search order, of course)?

                On-Page Optimization | | Grafimart
                0
              • BeautyStop

                Changing Link Title Tags & Backlinks

                On 4/19/12 I began changing the link title tags in an effort to further optimize my website. I thought they were excessively long and it would be beneficial to make them more concise. On 4/26/12 my website traffic began to fall drastically and I'm not sure if it is from google's penguin update or from changing the link title tags. I started looking into the sudden drop of traffic and realized that when I run the site explorer tool on all of the pages I changed, the URL is redirecting. It appears that the backlinks are not passing through to the new URL. Before I Changed the Link Title Tag: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm **After I Changed the Link Title Tag: ** http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm So my questions are: The above example shows that the old title tag (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 43 backlinks and the new one (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professiona-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 0. Will the links eventually be attributed to the new URL. I understand that the user will still be directed to my website they click the any of the backlinks, but will the link juice pointing the old URL pass through the new one? Would it be better, in the long run, to continue optimizing the link title tags.

                On-Page Optimization | | BeautyStop
                0
              • Jason_342

                How long does it take for Google to see Changes to a site?

                Hi, I have a low PR site (PR 1) that I am starting to work on.  Ingeneral when you make changes to my site how long would it take Google to recognize and index those changes? The reason I am wondering is because the site I am working on had a lot of duplicate content (around 700 pages), I got rid of it all, but I wasn't sure how long it would take Google to spider all these pages and re-index them since the site is low PR. Thanks, Ken

                On-Page Optimization | | Jason_342
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.