Wordpress themes causing google penalty(need experts to settle a debate)
-
Hi, I have been having a disagreement with another online marketing company. We are both promoting the same product under a different brand name but we ended up using the same theme to build our WordPress sites off of but in no way is the content the same.
They are telling me that using the same theme in the same industry will cause a Google penalty. I do not believe this and do not see this causing a problem. The sites are relatively new so there is no proof of traffic dropping or penalties as of yet.
What is everyone's professional opinion on this? Can a WordPress theme cause duplicate content penalty? If so would that not mean that anyone using themes will have some sort of penalty?
-
HI thanks for the response,
This is exactly what I thought I am not sure why they are so confident that this will cause a penalty. The structure of the sites are definitely different a no links have been made between them as they are essentially two site competing in the same market under different brands.
I am going to send them this thread so I can finally end this ongoing debate. Its a waste of my time.
Thanks again.
-
The theme generally doesn't matter at all. As long as the content is unique on your site, then there's no problem whatsoever. Like previously mentioned, there are plenty of people using the same WordPress theme, and it's the content that's unique, not the theme.
-
Thank you Jane
This is what I was thinking...
..."or they're trying to scare the competition into spending time and money on something that doesn't matter."
-Andy
-
It's a pretty straight forward 'no' Tyson. If all that is used that is the same is the theme, there is no penalty to be handed out here.
If they are concerned about it, tell them to change their theme, but you don't need to worry about this at all
-Andy
-
I think that if you have completely different content this should not be an issue.
You should also notice you guys are not
- using the same phone / visible email address
- linking between each other (tough its only 2 sites)
- have the exact same structure
My other recommendation is that one of you change the structure (not the theme)... each theme - or at least the good ones allow you to create a different structure, different widgets, different icons and similar structure related items.
For example you can use additional tabs in your homepage, use different widgets in your footer and so fourth.
Keep in mind that many people buy the same theme and in a world where themes are content related in many cases meaning real-estate themes, transportation themes and so on it not logical that Google would rate a site just based on the theme.
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
-
Do things like using labels on an element that is not a form input affect how google sees us in regards to accessibility?
Do things like using labels on an element that is not a form input affect how google sees us? It's an accessibility error that our devs have made - using a label element because it looks good, not because it's an actual label on a form field. Just wondering how that affects accessibility in Google's eyes.
Web Design | | GregLB0 -
Need to find a wordpress theme
Hi, while browsing i found a wordpress website (http://www.zoompondy.com/). This website was really nice. Explored about the theme and unable to find the theme name. Even, I Tried WP theme detector. No solution. Please assist me in finding this theme.
Web Design | | jkovalan0 -
Are wordpress themes like from themeforest bad?
Hi to all. Ok so as I read around the internet I see a lot of people who dislike theme forest and using their themes. I have a them from them, the Avada theme. Ok so they have made a TON of money. But would so many people buy the theme if it was that bad? Going forward, my question is, are wordpress themes a bad thing to do? I feel like its peer pressure to switch to a framework like Genesis. There are so many people who state that a framework and child theme is the way to go. But I am using this avada theme and having under 2.5 sec load times. A lot of people say the code is bloated and is horrible. I understand this and got a cache plugin that makes a huge difference. But I do want to learn and I do want to approach websites in a positive way. So if you have any thoughts on themes, please tell me your thoughts. I am no developer, so they seem to work, but is it at a price? Like bad seo and serps? Thank you chris
Web Design | | asbchris0 -
My site build in HTML has been badly hit this recent update and I have been toying on the idea of changing it to Wordpress
My site build in HTML has been badly hit this recent update and I have been toying on the idea of changing it to Wordpress. Would this help in my rankings? It seems the hit came only that last 2-4 days when business become much quieter. Frankly i have no idea on why the site fell in ranking all of a sudden. Been comparing to competitors and even a friend in the same industry and nothing makes sense so far (link profile, DA, PA etc) This site has been ranking well for 3 years prior to this. 2. My site has loads of content and visitors arrive from various landpages. But by changing it wordpress, the url of most of them would probably change. What should i do? 301 redirect all of them or is there a better method?
Web Design | | rester0 -
Sudden disappearance from visibility on Google
Our Google position had a sudden and precipitous drop from #3 to #15 in October for our two main keywords: "web design Santa Barbara" and "Santa Barbara web design". I have steadily gotten it back to #7 by putting a lot of effort to our on-page SEO. As of my December 24 SEOMoz report, it was #7, and as of my check yesterday, Dec. 28 it was #7. We were #3 for "web designers Santa Barbara" as of yesterday. Today, i cannot even find our listing on the first 5 pages. Recently, our partner company was engaging in some link building for us that may have just occurred and I'm worried that this may be the cause. I have not yet had a report and actually don't know for sure yet, it has even been accomplished. We had also done some link building in October by a different company we subcontract to and there was a Google type hack of our site. Those were the two major changes that occurred at that time. I thought it would be safe to have some more link building done now, since we'd already survived that first "sudden" increase of links in October. Does anyone have any idea what may have happened and how I can fix this? I am trying not to panic. Thank you in advance for any ideas to understand and/or remedy the situation!
Web Design | | gfiedel0 -
Wordpress/ Insert Tables/ SEO
I'm using Wordpress to create websites and blogs. I have limited (non-existent) HTML Coding knowledge. I'm looking to insert tables within my pages with information. Inside of these tables I want certain names to link to another page with more specific information about that name. I'm using a plugin called "WP Tables Reloaded" it simple helps you to create aesthetically pleasing tables without needing to know HTML Code or CSS. The issue is... when you create this table and insert it to the post, the only thing that shows on the sites back-end page is the table I.D. and the only thing that shows in the HTML is the tables I.D. It looks like this... [table id=2 /] I don't think search engines will be able to crawl this table, thus I won't be receiving any credit for the links being used within the table. Am I right about this?
Web Design | | AndySolo0 -
Switched From Wordpress, Traffic Dropped In Half
Hello, Thank you for taking a look at my issue. My site: http://www.getrightmusic.com A month ago, I switched from Wordpress to ExpressionEngine. The reason being I wanted a more powerful membership functionality with media uploading. After I switched, my traffic basically dropped in half. I was averaging around 4-6,000 unique visitors per day and now I am at about 2,000 per day. I resubmitted a new sitemap to Google webmasters. I also set up 301 redirects on my top 80 urls that were ranking well and driving traffic in Google. Not only did Google kick me off of my top spots in the SERP's, but I no longer get indexed as quickly as I used to. With the old Wordpress site I would get url's indexed within minutes. Now they aren't even getting indexed really at all. Is this a normal occurrence when switching site designs and systems? Do you think Google will just take a little time before they give me back some respect? Is there anything I should be doing to get back to ranking and getting indexed faster? Thanks for any help or any insight you may have. Jesse
Web Design | | getrightmusic0 -
The primary search keywords for our news release network have dropped like a rock in Google... we are not sure why.
Hi, On April 11th, a month after the farmer update was released for U.S. users of Google, the primary keywords for ALL our sites significantly dropped in Google. I have some ideas why, but I wanted to get some second opinions also. First off, I did some research if Google did anything on the 11th of April... they did. They implemented the farmer update internationally, but that does not explain why our ranks did not drop in March for U.S. Google users... unless they rolled out their update based on what site the domain is registered in... in our case, Canada. The primary news release site is www.hotelnewsresource.com, but we have many running on the same server. EG. www.restaurantnewsresource.com, www.travelindustrywire.com and many more. We were number 1 or had top ranks for terms like ¨Hotel News¨, ¨Hotel Industry¨, ¨Hotel Financing¨, ¨Hotel Jobs¨, ¨Hotels for Sale¨, etc... and now, for most of these we have dropped in a big way. It seems that Google has issued a penalty for every internal page we link to. Couple obvious issues with the current template we use... too many links, and we intend to change that asap, but it has never been a problem before. The domain hotelnewsresource.com is 10 years old and still holds a page rank of 6. Secondly, the way our news system works, it´s possible to access an article from any domain in the network. E.G. I can read an article that was assigned to www.hotelnewsresource.com on www.restaurantnewsresource.com... we don´t post links to the irrelevant domain, but it does sometimes get indexed. So, we are going to implement the Google source meta tag option. The bottom line is that I think we put too much faith in the maturity of the domain... thinking that may protect us... not the case and it´s now a big mess. Any insight you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Do you think it was farmer or possibly something else? Thanks, Jarrett
Web Design | | jarrett.mackay0