Is changing the theme affect our Google ranking

Store Design
1

We are looking to change our current theme (venture) to something else. The goal is to redesign the store that speaks to our brand identity and makes the store stand.

The biggest concern is SEO ranking; there are some discussions around this, but we still don’t know what the best approach is.

If anyone can help, we really appreciate that.

1 Like
2

As long as you don’t introduce more dead links (404) into the store, it should be alright to change the theme. If some pages are going to be affected, set up redirects to preserve SEO juices.

For the new theme:

  1. Make sure it’s responsive. Support different devices. Test with Google Mobile-Friendly Test
  2. Page speed is ok
  3. Structured data (aka JSON LD) is set up by the theme (or you can use an app). Test with Google Rich Result Test.
  4. If you are using an SEO app and you installed the code snippet to theme.liquid, reinstall the code snippet again
  5. Sitemap.xml shouldn’t be changed. But you can resubmit in Google Search Console (GSC) again. Just to have a quick test
  6. Monitor the dead links after changing the theme with GSC
  7. Monitor search traffics with GA
  8. Use Google Page Speed Insight to test core web vitals of the new theme.