Ouch.
The above graph really does show it all (click for larger view).
I have often shared here that one of your greatest assets as an entrepreneur and starter is to experiment – never stop experimenting and evolving as an individual for your own personal growth as well as your business.
Of course, this goes for your blog as well and I continue to experiment wildly on a number of stealth blog projects (as I like to call them) – even with things as drastic as changing the core WordPress Theme that is being used.
Well, I set out to do just that with one of my blog projects and like most of my experiments I set a time-limit which is most typically a full 30 days to see if the change is working as intended.
Well, I sometimes have to break that rule when the results are so obvious that it’s painful to watch as the graph above clearly shows. What I did was I switched WordPress Themes and instantly saw a drop of traffic – it was so dramatic that I wrestled with abandoning the experiment altogether within the first 48 hours, something I rarely do.
Typically switching a WordPress Theme won’t see much movement at all in terms of traffic, both up or down – but this time it was incredible shift in the wrong direction.
Ouch… again…
But I decided to grin and bear it to at least see if it could somehow recover itself – 2 weeks later I had enough and I quickly switched back to my previous WordPress Theme (Standard Theme) to see it the site could recover the loss.
So far, the damage appears to be permanent and is not trending very well at all. Crap. As you can see in the Google traffic chart the month-over-month from the last period is trouncing the current period.
The biggest issue? SEO. This particular blog project had nearly 99% organic search engine traffic, which is the good stuff to have and maintain as you continue to scale and absorb keyword relevancy for the content. Google (and the other major search engines) took my change of Theme so poorly that they have redirected a chunk of that traffic to this particular blog’s competitors.
Ugh.
The worst cut of all is that this particular WordPress Theme marketed itself as an “SEO optimized” Theme and that it was built “specifically to enhance” your organic search engine traffic. I’ll admit that I’m partly to blame as I didn’t audit the codebase before installing it which I normally do to ensure consistency of code structure, quality, and SEO-related signals.
The cost of this experiment is already playing itself out as my traffic is down, the monetization is at an all-time low, and I’ve lost strategic positioning in vital keywords in organic search. This is the ultimate danger of a poorly developed WordPress Theme.
But here’s the kicker: Many of you may not even be aware of the impact that your current WordPress Theme is having on your traffic today! In fact, some of you might be getting a fraction of the traffic that your blog deserves to be getting because you’re currently running a theme that is poorly developed.
In other words, your current theme is holding your blog back from scaling and growing as it really ought to. Yikes.
Unfortunately, as many of my blog projects go, I have little time to devote to them which means that I’m not sure if I have the extra time to invest in fighting for those lost keywords through strategic blog content. Hopefully the search engine Gods will favor my decision, see my repentance, and notice that I rebooted the project with my previous WordPress Theme.
Or so I pray…
Great thoughts, and I love your desire to experiment. Question: could the same be said of a bad web host? Are there web hosts that attract traffic? And vice versa. Interested in your thoughts.
I use 2011. Is that basically the same thing as standard?
Nope! Standard theme is a premium theme that John helps develop with his team at 8Bit. Check it out at http://standardtheme.com/
I just answered my own question. I was never able to find “Standard” theme on my WP dashboard. Now I see it’s a paid theme. What do you think about the default theme? Is there a clear advantage to Standard over 2011?
Standard is superior in a lot of ways. Just browse through the features on the product page, http://www.standardtheme.com, and you’ll see.
Have you assessed EXACTLY which aspect of the rogue theme was giving you the -ve seo effect, John?
i have and i’m wondering if i should “out” the particular theme in question.
Personally, I wouldn’t be as interested on k.owing which theme as I would be in an aspect or two of the theme that made it particularly detrimental.
Thanks John.
I agree, Adam. If I’m running that theme on any of my blogs, it would be better than gold knowing that.
John, you must tell!
Maybe not ‘out’ the theme John – but can you succinctly explain where the error is taking place within the theme? Duplicate content? Automatic keyword stuffing somewhere?
Yes, please share with us the theme that caused the drop in traffic.
Yes, please do. Maybe email people who request it in private or email to subscribers and reveal. Especially if it’s a premium theme. If we’re not techie enough to determine what the differences are, how are we ever going to know? Thanks.
OUCH! If that isn’t an awesome advertisement for Standard Theme I don’t know what is!
What theme did you switch over to using? Please share to keep others from making the same mistake
The thing is most people go with one theme and stick with it. You tried the experiment failed, and rebooted. Now others (me) have to switch themes to try this experiment and see what the results are. Its only one way to go and that is just to try.
I agree Lincoln. Which is why it would be useful if John were willing to share the offending elements that cause the -ve seo.
But, and unfortuantely, most of us wouldn’t know how to fix an internal issue like this regarding SEO, other than to change themes.
You might be able to Charles. I suspect there is a simple basic problem here. Once you know what to look out for, just check every Theme to ensure the same mistake is not replicated. I suspect this is a bit of a ‘duh’ error on behalf of the thememaster.
This is a topic that’s been on my mind for over a month. I’m not an SEO expert or Google analytics expert by any means, but when I switched from Standard 2 to Standard 3 on 10/16, I saw some pretty bizzare moves in my analytics regarding bounce rate.
Since March 2011 my bounce rate had been under 0.50%. A steady flat line. The day after switching to Standard 3 it spiked to over 60% and hasn’t been under 40% in the last 1.5 months.
My pages/visit has also seen a dip which is concerning.
Any thoughts?
Since 2006, I’ve switched themes a lot. I love to experiment. John, you’ll be happy to know that since I switched to Standard Theme a few months ago, I’ve seen a drastic difference. People stay on the site longer, read more posts at one time, and my email list is growing like never before.
How do you know if your theme is a problem? Obviously if you make a change, you can tell. But we’ve felt our traffic was too low all along and haven’t been able to figure out why. Any tips for determining if it’s the theme?
Great question Patty. I was thinking the same thing.
I had a site that was displaying a database error to visitors for a month. Lost a ton of traffic for two months. Fixed the error and the traffic came back after about one month.
Is the author listening? We are all wondering about the theme or the offending element of the theme.
I use Standard for my main blog, so this is good to know. But I just started a new blog with a different theme, and wonder if I chose the wrong one when it comes to SEO.
I’m using the Standard Theme on my site and love it. I also use the plugin WordPress SEO by Yoast, but your blog post made me wonder if I would have better traffic just using the built in SEO in Standard Theme.
Have you ever tested this, John. Standard Theme SEO vs. other plugins.
That is a great question Dillon and one that I am interested in as well. I mean, I usually use Yoast as well, but have wondered what the difference is and if I am really gaining anything.
I dont have standard, but do have full confidence in it. What you gain from toast primarily is things like title tags easy to change (probably your biggest on page factor), easy descriptions, redirections, automatic canonical urls, and title templates…all good. Standard will give structure that will help seo, maybe other goodies.
Both can help. If you just install yoast and don’t do anything with it though, it really wont help much.