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.
Will having two wordpress themes installed hurt seo?
-
We currently have 3 sites built on WordPress that have little to no blogging capabilities.
Currently, all published posts show up on a /category page which does not resemble the traditional blog format and is not aesthetically pleasing.
We would like to have a more traditional blog and are considering installing a second wordpress theme on the site which will strictly be used for /blog and all the posts.
My question is will having the second WordPress installation on the sites hurt us in any way on the SEO front and if we go this way should we place the install in a subfolder or on a subdomain?
Is there anything else we need to worry about with making this transition?
Thank you in advance for the advice!
Patrick
-
Travis,
Thank you for this detailed response!
Your correct with the assumption that the site does not fit our needs. The problem was that the company we work with develops WP sites using their own theme which is a very raw form of WP.
Basically out of box the site does not have the functionality of any mainstream WP theme (no blog, backed limits a lot of control, a lot of custom CSS needed, etc.)
We thought maybe installing a second theme would put a little more control in our hands (at least for the blog), and this could be done in house.
After reading all the responses including yours it seems this unfortunately is not the way to go.
Thank you for the all the info, Patrick
-
Hello, the way you are viewing it is correct!
Basically what it comes down too is time and money it will take if we have the developer custom code the blog.
We are all fairly proficient with wordpress and could create the blog in a day on our own if a new theme was installed but after reading all the comments here it seems like working the blog into the one theme is the way to go.
Thank you for the response!
-
I second, or third?, the notion that you should more than likely only have a single WordPress installation. It definitely would increase the maintenance involved. Take everything you should do to maintain an installation, then double it. I'm certain everyone in your organization could do without that.
But if your organization is willing to endure the duplication of effort, there are other things to be concerned about. Not every theme is created equal. Some themes are faster than others, some are more secure than others and most themes will differ in every other way. So one theme could be a hindrance, while the other at least pulls it's weight.
In regard to the subdomain blog or subfolder blog question, there was a time in recent history where I would have said it didn't matter. Supposedly the link equity/juice flows just fine either way. However, someone in Moz Q&A made a very good point. To paraphrase EGOL; "Algorithms change, if you install your blog on a subfolder you will always be right."
I'm not sure when your company made the jump to WordPress, but WordPress has had the ability to display static pages for years. My first agency used to run a combination of CMS Made Simple and WordPress, I think it was due to the page handling issue. That was over six years ago. They later made the jump to full WordPress about five years ago.
So it sounds like the site isn't properly configured for your purposes. Here is how you should handle that, direct from the WordPress codex. From there you can setup your site's page structure through parent/child relationships. So if you're selling widgets, your structure may look like:
**Page Hierarchy **
Posts Hierarchy
site.com/blog-diggety/sweet-post
There are Pages and Posts. You bring the hierarchy. And speaking of which, should you change your site URL structure, you will definitely want to research 301 redirects.
To me, there's no question in my mind. You should stick with one WordPress install. Hopefully that helps.
-
Hi Patrick,
Will this hurt your SEO? Maybe, but not in the more traditional way. For example, there is no direct penalty that this would fall under, but what it could do is confuse the user experience. Just keep in mind that SEO isn't just about your SERP positions.
As a user on any site, you want to see consistency. If you change theme part way through, then this can devalue the level of trust in the site as it no longer looks like the original site.
I would stick with one theme and if you aren't happy with the current look and feel, change your whole site to match this.
From Google's perspective, no, this wouldn't cause a devalued ranking by installing an additional theme (unless SEO issues arise from the installation), but there are a whole host of reason why you shouldn't do it.
-Andy
-
You should go with one theme. Parts of the site that are controlled by the theme remain static, no matter what content you're working on whether it's a page or blog post. Those things include the header and footer. I don't see how you could have multiple conflicting versions of those files in a single installation. Those files are important to SEO.
If I were you, I'd customize the existing theme(s) to include the features/functions you're currently lacking rather than try to integrate two different themes and multiple plugins (never mind the additional maintenance Unikey mentioned). I'm assuming you're using an SEO plugin but even if that's not the case, you probably have others that you will want to continue to work seamlessly.
Someone else might have experience with this. I don't, meaning I've never tried to optimize a site that uses two simultaneously installed themes. Hopefully they'll chime in if they have a different opinion. I'll be interested to hear.
-
I am not sure of the seo implications, but I would do everything I could to keep 1 installation if I could. It just seems like it would make management a lot easier. I may not be following what you are asking though. It sounds like you have a site without a blog using 1 worpress theme and then you are wanting to add a blog using another wordpress theme, is that right?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
Woocommerce SEO and Product attributes
Hi friends! I have a question that is advanced Woocommerce and seo-related.
Web Design | | JustinMurray
I'm seeing http://www.mywebsitex.com/pa_keyword/indexed in Google, but it cannot be properly optimized, and I would prefer to have a WordPress Page indexed for that keyword instead, which also lists those products and can be fully seo optimized. Woocommerce SEO plugin by Yoast lacks documentation and I have no clue if that would even fix this. I do have the Taxonomy (pa_keyword) set to not include these in the sitemap, but there doesn't seem to be a way to noindex/nofollow product attributes.
1. How can I best accomplish this?
2. Why are product attributes indexed by default?0 -
WordPress Category page title h1 or h2
Hi friends, I know this is a minor technical change, but we are in an extremely competitive market and I don't want to have any points against us. On our WordPress Category pages i.e. http://www.domain.com/category/�tegory-title%/ I looked at the code behind the the Title of the category page, which is "Browsing: %Category Title%" The code is an h2. I look at the posts in the category archive below, and those are also h2's. The theme preview is here and you can click on Entertainment - Reviews to see exactly what I'm referring to - http://themeforest.net/item/smartmag-responsive-retina-wordpress-magazine/full_screen_preview/6652608 I changed the code for the "Browsing: %Category Title%" to h1, which I believe is more consistent and standard formatting. 1. Is this a correct technical on-page optimization? 2. Would it be beneficial to remove "Browsing"?
Web Design | | JustinMurray0 -
Prismic.io CMS and SEO?
Looking for community feedback: Some of our In house developers want to use Prismic.io over Wordpress for it's alleged ease of organizing and "deploying" content. It's essentially a repository for content from which you make API calls to. It's a rather new platform. There a few posts in Quora around SEO but looking to see if anyone has had experience with platform. My concern is around page load times, excessive server requests, and content viewed as code. Any thoughts/ experiences would be much appreciated!
Web Design | | ArcherMalmo0 -
SEO and Squarespace? Is this Really an Option?
Hi all, Any feedback on Squarespace, SEO capabilites and ranking factors? I have a client wishing to use the platform and despite the good reviews, which appear to be from resellers by the way, the forums say not. Although apparently Rand Fishkin, SEOMoz (yes right here!) gave them a big thumbs up “The square space team have put together a remarkable platform, SEO friendliness! Really not sure here and don’t agree, there are many limitations and hosting with a template provider is always big no no. Cheers
Web Design | | VirginiaC
Virginia0 -
Can white text over images hurt your SEO?
Hi everyone, I run a travel website that has about 30 pre-search city landing pages. In a redesign last year we added large "hero" images to the top of the page, and put our h1 headlines on top of them in white. The result is attractive, but I'm wondering if Google could be reading this page as "white text on white page", which is an obvious no-no, especially if it could seem that we're trying to hide text. Here's an example: http://www.eurocheapo.com/paris/ H1: Expert reviews of cheap hotels in Paris I should add that our SERPs for these city pages has dropped (for "Cheap hotels in X"), but it could obviously be related to other issues. Any advice would be appreciated. Many thanks! Tom
Web Design | | TomNYC0 -
Yes or No for Ampersand "&" in SEO URLs
Hi Mozzers I would like to know how crawlers see the ampersand (& or &) in your URLs and if Google frown upon this or not? As far as I know they purely recognise this as "and" is this correct and is there any best practice for implementing this, as I know a lot of people complained before about & in links and that it is better to use it as &, but this is not on links, this is on URLs. Reason for this is that we looking to move onto an ASP.Net MVC framework (any suggestions for a different framework are welcome, we still just planning out future development) and in order to make use of the filter options we have on our site we need a parameter to indicate the difference on a routing level (routing sends to controller, controller sends to model, model sends to controller and controller sends to view < this is pattern of a request that comes in on the framework we will be using). I already have -'s and /'s in the URLs (which is for my SEO structuring) so these syntax can't be used for identifying filters the user clicks or uses to define their search as it will create a complete mess in the system. Now we looking at & to say; OK, when a user lands on /accommodation and they selects De Kelders (which is a destination in our area) the page will be /accommodation/de-kelders on this page they can define their search further to say they are looking for 5 star accommodation and it should be close to the beach, this is where the routing needs some guidance and we looking to have it as follow: /accommodation/de-kelders/5-star&close-to-the-beach. Now, does the "&" get identified by search engines on a URL level as "and" and does this cause any issues with crawling or indexation or would it be best to look at another solution? Thanks, Chris Captivate
Web Design | | DROIDSTERS0 -
Seo and CSS media queries
Hello to all participants! I'm starting on responsive design with css media queries and I was wondering if hidding content can, in this case, can also be bad for seo? I know that hidding content is bad (eg. display: none;), but is it also like that with responsive design or does Google see it other way? If I have a news column with title, image and text for 1024px and hide the text and image leaving just the title for 768px, or smaller, will Google consider this black hat and will it be bad for seo? are there any articles I can read about this subject, and other similar subjects? sorry for my english 🙂 thanks
Web Design | | Lusodados1 -
SEO and Server Connectivity....
Good Morning/Evening Mozzers, I arrive at work this morning with 5 emails from GWT for my separate domains reading, **"Googlebot can't access your site - **Over the last 24 hours, Googlebot encountered 39 errors while attempting to connect to your site. Your site's overall connection failure rate is 15.1%." I have passed this on to the Web Dev team to resolve ASAP. My Question, will server connectivity issues harm my rankings? Is there a danger if this continues that URL's could be de-indexed? Input would be greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | RobertChapman0