Opinion? Would changing your Wordpress theme have an effect on optimization?

[ExtravagantMedia]

Here is the challenge.
I am trying to determine through actual testing, whether or not certain Wordpress themes are getting Google penalties.
I was wondering if anyone here has already looked into this?

[incrediblehelp]

Sure it could. A theme controls all different types of things like internal linking of pages. Out bound links through blog rolls. How content is shown on the page. etc etc etc. All of these things are vital to SEO.

[ExtravagantMedia]

Thanks for the response.
Right, but I'm not meaning from a canonical point of view, that would be a very newbish thing for me to ask.
What I meant was if the theme was changed but all other structure remained intact, do you think it would have an impact?

[chowell]

I would think that just changing a stylesheet would have no impact on your results, but a lot of theme designers put a backlink (or two) in the footer.

If that designer's site is of poor quality or if they're spamming the engines somehow, the outward link could have a negative effect on your site.

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by ExtravagantMedia

Thanks for the response.
Right, but I'm not meaning from a canonical point of view, that would be a very newbish thing for me to ask.
What I meant was if the theme was changed but all other structure remained intact, do you think it would have an impact?

Tough to answer without looking at a case in point. There may be quite a bit of structural difference between one theme and the next, so it *could* as inc'help correctly suggested.

I recently updated a site (not a blog) that had enjoyed top 5 SERPs for more than 5 years. Nothing was changed in terms of text or links, but we went from an old, terribly outdated HTML clogged with font code to a clean CSS driven HTML ... nothing else changed but the site has dropped an average of 4 positions.

So, depending on the differences between the themes.

BTW, I didn't see inc'help's response as related to canonical issues, nor do I think canonical issues are unsophisticated. Quite the contrary.

[tenkiya]

It could have a huge impact on SEO. It could have none. You should be able to tell from reading the code of the template.

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by tenkiya

It could have a huge impact on SEO. It could have none. You should be able to tell from reading the code of the template.

How can you tell from the template code? What exactly would we look for?

[Webnauts]

It depends how good you are in editing robots.txt.

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

It depends how good you are in editing robots.txt.

What would you recommend on editing robots.txt? I have been told to disallow archives ... do you agree? What else?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by mjtaylor

What would you recommend on editing robots.txt? I have been told to disallow archives ... do you agree? What else?

There are several folders/pages that should be disallowed. I just created for our members here a robots.txt that can be implemented right away for Wordpress without problems. And it will help you to get rid of most, if not all of pages found in Googles the supplemental results, which cause a harmful leak of PR.

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /*?*
Disallow: /*?
Disallow: /*.php$
Disallow: /*.js$
Disallow: /*.inc$
Disallow: /*.css$
Disallow: /*.gz$
Disallow: /*.wmv$
Disallow: /*.tar$
Disallow: /*.tgz$
Disallow: /*.cgi$
Disallow: /*.xhtml$
Disallow: /category/*/*
Disallow: */comments
Disallow: /feed/$
Disallow: /*/feed/$
Disallow: /*/*/feed/$
Disallow: /*/*/*/feed/$
Disallow: /*/feed/rss/$
Disallow: /*/*/feed/rss/$
Disallow: /*/*/*/feed/rss/$
Disallow: */trackback
Disallow: /*/trackback/$
Disallow: /*/*/trackback/$
Disallow: /*/*/*/trackback/$
Allow: /wp-content/uploads

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /wp-
Disallow: /wp-admin
Disallow: /wp-includes
Disallow: /wp-register.php
Disallow: /wp-login.php
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Disallow: /wp-content/cache
Disallow: /wp-content/themes
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: /rss/
Disallow: /comments/feed/
Disallow: /page/
Disallow: /date/
Disallow: /comments/
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /stats/
Disallow: /contact/
Disallow: /about/
Disallow: /archives/
Disallow: /dh_

There are probably more folders or files that might need to be disallowed. For example as you mentioned, the archives.

I hope this is useful for you and others here.

[mjtaylor]

Thanks! You are da' bomb!

And that is for the robots.txt for the entire site, or is there a special one for wordpress?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by mjtaylor

Thanks! You are da' bomb!

And that is for the robots.txt for the entire site, or is there a special one for wordpress?

The one I posted above is special for Wordpress. Every site has its owns needs, so you cannot just edit a default robots.txt.

[ExtravagantMedia]

Webnauts thanks!! This is a big help!

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by ExtravagantMedia

Webnauts thanks!! This is a big help!

You are always welcome.

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

The one I posted above is special for Wordpress. Every site has its owns needs, so you cannot just edit a default robots.txt.

Thanks ... my question was not clear, but you seemed to understand me. So, a site which also has static pages might need additional elements, but this example you generously gave us would be a good base for a site that is a wordpress blog only?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by mjtaylor

So, a site which also has static pages might need additional elements, but this example you generously gave us would be a good base for a site that is a wordpress blog only?

That's right MJ.

[lukkyjay]

Very helpful Webnauts. If my blog is http://mysite.com/blog

would I just put

/blog

in front of all those?