Does duplicating and modifying a theme harm SEO?

[jro13]

Does duplicating current theme, making design changes and publishing hurt SEO?

[Artzen_tech]

Not at all, google or other search engines will see the currently published theme only, so if you will make any changes to the published theme it won't hurt the SEO at all.

[jro13]

Just to clarify- I would duplicate the current them, change the home page images and then make the duplicate live. Will that effect my SEO rankings on products?

[Artzen_tech]

Yes, once you make the duplicate theme live, search engines can see it crawled it so it can affect your SEO.

[jro13 · Accepted solution]

Thank you!

[Dbuglabpvtltd]

Hi @jro13 

If you used custom css according to sections ID's then it will affect design.

Otherwise no issue in duplicate theme.

[jro13]

So if I just change banners on a duplicate theme and published it will not hurt SEO?

[amorlett]

please mark this as solved