Changing WP themes, will i lose rankings?

hey,
i am trying to change wordpress themes right now on my blog, which has good rankings for 'stock charts'.

if i change the theme to a drastically different one, is there a chance i could lose my rankings?

what can i do to avoid losing my serps?

 

This is a nice question...seems simple but i would like to hear the answer from someone that has already experienced this.

 

I see no reason your page should fall in rankings if you change the "skin" of your blog. Provided you retain the same content, folder and link structure.

 

no you won't unless u change keywords within your themes.

most of your theme is made up of the CSS code, which is basically graphical and not so much related to content. As such, it should not affect your SERPs. However, if you used the description & title part of the theme to include keywords of your site, then it may result in a small drop of keyword density although u cld easily just include them in your new theme

 

hmm, never thought about that, I need to update one of my sites, it is really old design, and I wonder if google will change the pr for that, since it will be all new.

 

I also consider that won´t change your ranks...

Ranks are more based on content and backlinks...

 

The only thing I think you have to look out for is if the php code used to generate the titles for one template is different than the other. If that is the case then you will end up with titles that are different. For instance it could change the order from "Post Title - Site Name" to "Site Name - Post Title". If that happens then I would not be surprised if the rankings change a little.

Just go into the header.php file and make sure that the php code between the title tags is the same.

 

You won't loose your rankings as long as the content remains the same.

 

Perhaps, I had a theme change also for my TechChee.com , but after a few weeks, seems like my Google's PR fluctuated btw PR0 and PR4 in number of Google's data centre... but it seems like today, it's settled down at PR4 ... I'm not sure if Google has any PR update recently or the cause of the blog's theme changed ...

 

There has been an update recently.

 

This is good advice.

 

uhh thats good coz am the guy who keeps on changing themes to amuse my visitors

 

If you change the template ,it doesnot affect your ranking or pagerank.

 

your theme doesnot affect your ranking as it is lookig for the look and feel of your blog. But make sure that your keyword nd content remains the same then it will not affect your ranking...

 

You should be ok as others have said as long as you aren't making significant changes beyond the theme.

 

OK i did something a bit different. I had a website with a PR5 and changed it last week to a wordpress blog (self hosted) and i transfered all the content i had too and now i am pretty disappointed coz my pr dropper to PR2. i was getting some results from organic results now its gone down to Zilch and I am having to work on the blog. in a way its good because i was getting relaxed with the site because it all seemed super doop. Just go ahed and change the theme if you have more to benefit fr0m it

 

but didnt a lot of people drop anyways, maybe this was just a coincidence.

 

this is different. you are literally changing the whole site from a normal site to a blog site, even though your content remains the same. The way the content appears to the spiders will also appear different, which may affect your PR. Also, u need to consider the SEO strategies employed in your previous site design, which may be better than in Wordpress. All these factors will need to be considered.

Changing a site entirely has a price to be paid. But I believe, if you employ good SEO design in your blog, with same and constantly new content, your PR will recover. Take heart!