Does Changing Shopify Theme Affect SEO?

Sometimes, making a change to your Shopify theme can be just the thing you need to give your store a fresh start. Maybe your sales have been lagging and you're looking for a way to give your store a boost, or maybe you're just ready for a change. But does changing your Shopify theme affect your store's SEO?

The truth is, if done correctly, changing your Shopify theme doesn't adversely affect your store's SEO. Of course, there are a few things you want to keep in mind to make sure you don't unintentionally hurt your store's ranking.

In this post, we go over everything you need to remember before changing your Shopify theme to ensure you don't hurt your store's SEO in the process. We also discuss why partnering with us for comprehensive SEO services can help during the transition. 

There are several things you need to take into account before changing your Shopify theme. They include:

Your navigation is one of the most important elements of your website. It's how users get around and it's how search engines understand your website's hierarchy.

This is why it's important to keep your navigation the same when you change your Shopify theme.

If you don't, you run the risk of confusing both users and search engines, which could hurt your SEO.

Your navigation structure is the skeleton of your website; all the other elements are built around it. If you change it, then everything else has to change too.

But how does navigation affect SEO? For starters, it affects search engines’ ability to crawl your website. If your navigation is confusing, it’s harder for search engine crawlers to understand the intent of your store. This leads to them indexing fewer pages, which hurts your chances of ranking in SERPs.

It also leads to a higher bounce rate, as users have difficulty finding what they're looking for. Therefore, if you decide to change your theme, keep your new theme's navigation as similar to your old one as possible.

One of the most important things to remember when changing your theme is to maintain the same heading structure. This means that all of your H tags (H1s, H2s, H3s, etc.) should stay in the same order and convey the same meaning.

If you have a page on your old theme that’s ranking well for a certain keyword and you want to keep that ranking, make sure to use the same H tags in the new theme.

This, however, doesn't mean that you can't change the look of your headings. For example, you might want to increase the size of your H tags or make them a different color. As long as the heading tags maintain the same order and meaning, you should be fine.

In addition to maintaining the same heading structure, you'll also want to use the same URL structure. This means that if a certain page on your old theme had a certain URL, that same page on your new theme should have the same URL.

For example, let's say you had a page on your old theme with the URL "yoursite.com/page". When you switch to a new theme, that page should have the URL "yoursite.com/page".

The theme.liquid file is the main template file for your Shopify theme. It controls the overall look and feel of your shop.

When you switch to a new theme, you want to copy over all custom code from your old theme's theme.liquid file into the new theme's theme.liquid file.

This includes things like:

• Custom CSS: CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a code that controls the look of your shop. If you have any custom CSS in your old theme, ensure it’s well copied.
• Custom JavaScript: JavaScript is the coding language that allows you to add special features to your shop. If you have any custom JavaScript in your old theme, copy it to your new theme.
• Shopify's default checkout button: By default, Shopify includes a "Checkout" button on the cart page that takes customers to the checkout page. If you've removed this button in your old theme, you also want to remove it in your new theme.
• Favicon: A favicon is a small icon that appears in the browser tab when someone visits your shop. It helps people quickly identify your shop when they have multiple tabs open. If you've customized your favicon in your old theme, copy the code to the theme.liquid file.

Failure to copy this code makes your shop look broken. You need to ask your developer to help you out or be exceptionally careful when copying over this code.

Scripts are small pieces of code used to add features or functionality to your shop. Scripts are typically added to the theme.liquid file, but they can also be added to other files like the product.liquid file.

When switching Shopify themes, you want to copy over all scripts from your old theme into your new theme. This includes things like:

• Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a script that allows you to track the traffic and behavior of your shop's visitors.
• Facebook Pixel: The Facebook pixel is a script that allows you to track the actions people take on your website.
• Tiered Discounts: Tiered discounts are a script that allows you to offer different discounts based on the number of items a customer buys.
• Bundle Discount: A bundle discount is a script that allows you to offer a discount when customers buy multiple items.
• Buy One, Get One Free (BOGO): BOGO is a script that allows you to offer a buy one, get one free deal on products.

If you don't copy over these scripts, they stop working and you'll lose any data they collected. Therefore, your developer should carefully copy over all scripts when switching themes.

Rich snippets are specialized pieces of code that tell search engines more about your content. This includes product reviews, event information, and people profiles. You want to ensure that any time you change your theme, your rich snippets still appear correctly in the search results.

After redesigning your Shopify store, you need to partner with GoldenWeb for a full SEO audit. We have a proven track record for delivering successful SEO campaigns and can help you identify any potential issues with your new design.

GoldenWeb’s full audit is basically a comprehensive Shopify SEO review that covers everything from on-page optimization to technical SEO to link building. We analyze over 285 SEO and CRO potential growth opportunities to give you a comprehensive look at where your site stands and what needs to be done to improve it.

To understand our entire process, we provide a free mini SEO audit that identifies the top pain areas that need to be addressed on your site. This will give you a good idea of what to expect from our full audit service. Book your free mini audit today and see how we can help improve your Shopify store's SEO.