Will having two wordpress themes installed hurt seo?

[PlanetDISH]

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

[PlanetDISH]

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

[PlanetDISH]

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!

[Travis_Bailey]

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 **

site.com/widgets/

site.com/widgets/blue-widgets

site.com/widgets/red-widgets

Posts Hierarchy

site.com/blog-diggety/

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.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

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

[DonnaDuncan]

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.

[unikey]

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?