Is it worth changing themes to be Responsive, and risk a SERP change?
-
I've got a site that ranks #1 for it's term. It's Worpress on Thesis 1.85. The site is not responsive and cannot be because Thesis 1x is not (and Thesis 1x is a dead end). I really would like my site responsive, but I fear changing things might affect my #1 rank.
The least impactful change I could do is move to Thesis 2.x, but I have come to really dislike the company and hate to get locked in again. There are other frameworks I would prefer to move to, but their impact on my pages' source would be much more.
So, my question is, is it worth moving to a new theme (keeping the layout looking exactly the same, although the "source" would look different) just to make the site responsive? Is it that important?
-
Hi bizzer,
Everyone should ideally have a mobile-friendly website, because the percentage of people accessing your site on mobile devices will only continue to increase. And if you already have a Wordpress site, switching to a responsive theme is a great way to achieve that. But...as you note, there are other considerations, such as potentially lost rankings.
Only you know how much of a drop you can afford. It's a short-term sacrifice for long-term results.
Generally speaking, my recommendation would always be that if you can possibly do it, you should. And Miki and Moosa made some good suggestions above for how to minimise the negative impact somewhat. Combined with good technical SEO going into the new source code, you should hopefully be able to regain your position fairly quickly.
To answer your follow-up question: we don't know for sure, but it seems likely that having a mobile-friendly website could be a quality factor, whether now or later. Google have certainly discussed best practice guidelines for mobile, which seems to indicate that a good mobile experience is something which they care about. Apart from anything else, ~60% of mobile users will bounce if they land on a non-mobile-friendly site and go to a competitor, so that in itself will send a negative signal if you have a significant amount of mobile traffic. (and 15-20% isn't too shabby - even if some of that is tablet traffic, a responsive design will provide a better experience for them as well).
Hope that helps!
-
Well, I have about 15-20% coming from mobile devices. However not all of them are phone-size, some are ipad size. But I'm sure the number will be growing.
But let me ask this follow-on question. At the moment, I'm more concerned with how my site ranks in desktop Google, rather than mobile Google. So, in order to help make my decision, does having a website that is responsive, also help my desktop SERP position? I know it does not directly affect it, but perhaps it might indirectly, as Google could use it as a quality factor. You know, like "hey this site isn't even mobile, let's take a few points off the ranking score on desktop." They are always trying to calculate which are the quality sites, the ones that the owner is serious about.
-
It will depend on your industry and what type of customers you are looking to target. If making the site responsive will cause a strong influx of traffic to the website (i.e. if many of your users are from a mobile device), it may be worth the move. It is important to remember that SEO is a marathon and not a sprint. The long term results of changing your website may be worth the sacrifice of a short lived top ranking.
Whenever the topic of possibly sacrificing current position for future growth potential arises, you must first evaluate how beneficial can a move like this be? Will it attract a market that has been neglected up until now? and if it does drop in rankings how will that affect revenue and are you in the right position to regain your spot on top?
Two important things to remember in preparation of a change like this is:
1. Make backups of your site as insurance.
2. Try to gain as many quality links and boost your social media presence as much as possible before the change. This will help regain the top spot if it does hurt the ranking.Hope this helped!
-
I would first start by looking at how much of your visitors are on mobile devices and then base my decision on that.
-
Whenever I stuck with such a situation on my client’s side I usually prefer to make changes in order to make website design a more responsive and user friendly because in the longer run Google and other search engines are actually working on tracking the HQ website that should be loved by users...
But before implementing the final changes makes a website promotional plan in terms of social and getting more quality links to the website... this way if you lose the first spot chances are that will be for temporary period only and you will regain your position within days and weeks!
Hope this helps!
-
There is no set defined answer really. There are a few factors and each case will be different. Ultimately, it will come to a trade off on whether you feel the update will bring you enough value to the possibility of losing the top spot.
One comparison may be to value how much the SEO would cost to bring it back to the number 1 spot after a fall verses how much not changing will affect your business.
Please ensure that you have backed up EVERYTHING. Data corruption always hits the unexpected.
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
-
Is a Wordpress AMP plugin sufficient, or should we upgrade our WP theme to an AMP theme?
Hello there, our site is on a Flatsome Wordpress theme (which is responsive and does not support AMP), and we are currently using the AMP for Wordpress plugin on our blog and other content rich pages. My question is - is a plugin sufficient to make our pages AMP friendly? Or should we consider switching to a theme that is AMP enabled already? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tnixis
Katie0 -
Is there a benefit to changing .com domain to .edu?
Hey All! I'm wondering if there is any benefit (or if benefit could possibly outweigh the cost) to changing a domain from .com to a new .edu domain. The current .com domain has decent credibility already, and the .edu will have never been used before.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | frankandmaven1 -
Need to update Google Search Console profile for http to https change. Will a "change of address" option suffice or do we need to create a new GSC profile?
In the past I have seen most clients create new Google Search Profile when they update to a https URL. However a colleague of mine asked if just updating the change of address option will suffice https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106. Would it be best to just update the change of address for the Google Search Console profile to keep the data seamless? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
URL Changes Twice in the Same Year
I've got a new client with a great site, great off-page optimization and some scars and a hangover from a bad developer relationship. I'd be so grateful for your thoughts on this situation: Some time in the not-too-distant-past, the website is established and new content is posted. We'll call this Alpha. In April 2015, the client migrates to WordPress, implementing 301 redirects on every content page because of the capitalization issues of the old CMS. That means Alpha URLs are redirecting to Betas. Problem is, the new Beta WordPress URLs are the the permalink structure: /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/ and update by default when the page content is updated meaning that any updates to existing content cause another 301. It's my belief that for evergreen content, dates in the URL do nothing to help you and might even hurt from a user-experience standpoint, if not a search engine one. So, naturally, I'd like to move to the simple/%postname%/ structure, which would be Gamma. So, here's how I think we should fix it. Step 1: Update the sitemap and navigation and make the desired URL (Gamma) structure the default and the canonical. Step 2: Change the Alpha -> Beta redirects to Alpha -> Gamma Step 3: Add Beta -> Gamma redirects Anyone done this in the past? Anyone have any problems with it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LindsayDayton0 -
Is our Third Party Subdomain hurting our SERPs?
Hello! Our Moz report under the root domain godelta.com displays 696 high priority issues that we cannot control that are all caused by a third party subdomain. promotionalproducts.godelta.com We don’t have any control of the SEO on the third party website. Our blog posts link to the third party subdomain from our blog subdomain. blog.godelta.com Is the third party subdomain affecting our SERP and should we replace the subdomain with its own domain name? Hopefully we can clear this up and end the debate with our internal team and our HubSpot account manager. David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wakadaca0 -
Website change of address
Hi Everyone, I apologize if the answer to this questions is obvious, but I wanted some input on how changing our web address of our site will affect our SERP. We are looking to change our website address from a.com to b.com due to rebranding of our company (primarly to expand our product line as our current url and company name are restricting). I understand that this can be done using 301 direct and via webmaster tools with google. My question is how does this work exactly? Will our old website address show in SERP rankings, and when a user clicks on the listing are they redirected to our new address? With regards to building new links from press releases etc, do we have links point to our new web address or the old one in order to increase SERP? Does google see our old address and new address as the same website and therefor it does not matter where inbound links point to and both will increase our ranking positions? It took 6 years of in house seo to get our website to rank on the first page of all the major search engines for our keywords, so we am being very cautious before we do anything. Thanks everyone for your input, it is greatly appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AgentMonkey0 -
Date stamp in the SERP
How to remove date stamp in the SERP? I removed dates In the blog posts of one of the blogs and it removed date stamp in the SERP. How about regular sites? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gmk15670 -
How does changing hosting affect rankings?
I have a hosting account that is ancient. So is it's CPanel, its way of operation (I have to call in to change the zone file), and its hardware and software (It can't even recognize Wordpress as a user so i have to change permissions to change anything.) I plan on moving the site, but I want to prepare for any changes that may happen. Currently the site ranks between #1 or 3 for quite a few very valuable words. It is also in season for this business. I know changing hosting data or servers can cause google to temporarily drop rankings. Does anyone have any experience with this or now how long the faded rankings can last? Or if its even true?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarloSchneider0