Does changing your WP Theme Affect SEO?
 

Working on a relaunch of our website, new customized theme , and wondering if it will impact SEO?

If so - anything I can do to mitigate it?

Thanks!

There is few things I check when changing WP theme - what happens with bounce rate/time spend on site after change? Is the new theme 100% compatible with mobile devices? How fast does it load? There are huge differences between individual themes and it all affects SEO.

It definitely does have an influence on your SEO, user experience is a important factor that's easily overlooked.

Also make sure your new theme is optimized, crop images, optimize coding etc..

it does, all html structure is there.

Check out:
Does Changing WordPress Theme Affect SEO & Traffic?
https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/a...seo-checklist/

Yes it can to a great extent. It depends how poor the coding is on the other theme and how your code is on your theme already.

Wow...good to know. From what my programmer tells me - coding is better on the new theme. But that all makes sense - page structures will change, pages won't be where they originally were - something huge to consider.

appreciate all the advice.

Any change in user experience and page/link structure will definitely have an SEO impact. Monitor all the important stuff, 404 errors, site speed and time on page..