Maybe some of you have seen the iMagz landing page template review from Jago Design . So what do you think?
 |
| How to Change Blog Templates Safely |
KIn the past, we might have been confused about choosing between blog template wordpressFletro or Median UI because we both needed features for our blog. And the question arises as to why the features in the Median UI template are not available in the Fletro pro template and vice versa.
Perhaps answering that question, the creator Muhammad Maki released his new template, namely iMagz, with the addition of a landing page and a multitude of other features which are reportedly also being developed for WordPress blog templates.
However, the appearance of the iMagz template actually raises new concerns for those of us who are comfortable using the Median UI or Fletro Pro templates. Moreover, we have done a lot of customization.
So what if we are interested in using the iMagz template?
Considerations before changing to a new template
There's nothing wrong if you want to replace an existing template with a new blogger template, but before that there are several considerations that must be taken into account, including:
-
Template Original
-
HTML structure changes
-
Link Crawl changes
-
Decreased SEO and SERP quality of Website/Blog
-
Website/Blog Structure Settings
-
Increase in Website/Blog Spamscore (SS).
For those of you who have more funds, there's no harm in replacing the template you are using with a new Blogger or WordPress template. But in a legal way, yes, because it is for future technical support. Of course, you don't want the blog you've built for a long time to be damaged because of an illegal/clone template with lots of scripts that have the potential to be spam or scam.
Changing a blog template means changing all the HTML structure in a blog, everything will change and this can damage the SEO structure that has been neatly arranged.
Whatever happens, no matter how cool the template you choose, pay attention to the crawl structure such as post and author. Failure to crawl by Google-bot will cause a significant drop in visitors.
Did you know that the better the website template, the better the SEO in search engines. A quality template will provide good SEO optimization, but on the other hand, if you choose the wrong template, the SEO quality will decrease and the worst thing is that your ranking in search engines will decrease. Usually each template has its own grade from grade A to F. Grade A has the best speed quality. To check, please use GTmetrix and similar.
Each template has a different HTML code, so when you change the website template you will also change the previous settings. So when changing, the display is not organized and is still random, this will make it more difficult to organize everything, especially if you are still not very skilled in HTML programming and so on.
There is no definite article that explains the effect of changing templates too often on spamscrore values on blogs. However, you should pay attention to this. For those of you who are managing a blog, you will definitely want to keep your blog's spamscore low. And more than that, based on personal experience, changing the template incorrectly will cause Google to unilaterally block/suspend our blog.
How to change blog templates safely
Here I will share tips for changing a new blog template so that your blog visitors can increase and not decrease , as follows:
1. Choose a good & quality blog template.
There are lots of templates that you can download and use, both free templates and premium (paid) templates, but before you use them, you should make sure that the template you choose is a good, quality blog template.
Some criteria for a good and quality blog template are as follows:
A. Light
Light templates or fast loading, remember that light templates are the ones that can influence page rankings in search engines, because loading speed has become part of the Google ranking factor , the lighter a template loads, the better it is.
B. Mobile friendly
A mobile friendly template is a template that is very light when accessed using a mobile device, and the display will adjust to the screen width of the device used without having to scroll left and right, this is highly prioritized especially now that mobile friendly has become a Google ranking factor that will influence blog rankings in search results.
C. Responsive
A responsive template is a template whose appearance will adjust to the screen size of the device that is accessing it, and users do not have to scroll the screen left and right.
D. Have a good data structure
Even though data structure is not an SEO factor, it will help Google display your blog information better when found in search results, data structure indirectly has a correlation with SEO.
E. Has a small file size
A small file size represents that the template code structure is good, and can affect the loading speed of the template, the smaller the file size, the better.
2. Measuring the quality of Blogger Templates?
To measure the quality of the template starting from the data structure, page speed and whether the HTML structure on the blog is valid or not, there are several special tools that you can try. Are as follows :
- Google Rich Result Test
<meta>- Check Blog structure validation - W3C Markup Validator - looks at HTML structure validation
- Pagespeed Insight - to measure Blog speed
3. Backup your old template before changing it
Don't forget to backup your old template before changing it, the aim is that if bad things happen after changing the template that you can't control then you can return your blog to the old blog template.
4. Move important code in the old template to the new template
Before changing the template, you should make sure that the important codes used in the old template have been moved to the new template.
Important blog codes are usually in the form of meta which is located between the code <head>and </head>or
<!--<head>--></head>you can see in HTMLyour blog template code.
This meta stores important information about your blog that can be understood by search engine robots (Google bot), so that Googlebot doesn't get confused with the new template. You should move the meta codes to the new blog template before replacing it and make sure it's the same.
Some important blog template codes are as follows:
A. Meta tag
Make sure all <meta>old template tags are the same as the new template meta tags.
B. Kode Sife Verification
Don't forget to transfer the Google and Bing webmaster tool verification code. If your template doesn't have the code above, you should register it immediately, so that your blog will appear more easily in search engines.
C. Kode Meta Opengraph
Opengraph code <meta>is no less important and is often missed when changing templates.
To make it easier to move, please open the dashboard of the old HTML template blog editor, then open the new blog template using notepad++ or notepad, please compare and move the important codes from the old blog template to the new blog template, then save.
5. Test your new template.
Before using a new template, it is recommended to test your new template to ensure that the template works well. Please use your test blog to try it out.
6. Change the template during low visitor hours
It's best to change to a new blog template at times when visitors are quiet, usually in the early morning around 1 to 4 in the morning, visitors are very quiet.
This aims to ensure that changing the template does not disturb the comfort of visitors, and usually the Google index is very busy when there are lots of visitors. When there are few visitors, Googlebot, which is tasked with indexing templates, will work more slowly.
Change the template quickly so that it doesn't affect the online user experience too much.
You can change the template manually (copy HTMLthe new blog template code then paste it into the HTMLold template editor dashboard) or you can also use the template changing service provided by the blog.
7. Update articles as often as possible
After changing the template, it is recommended that you post articles frequently to invite Google bot to reindex important parts of your new blog template.
It would be a good idea for you to have prepared several post articles before changing to a new blog template, so that when you replace them, the post articles are ready.
Conclusion
Changing templates is very easy, and if done in a good and correct way, your blog's performance will remain good or even better. If done incorrectly, in some cases changing templates can have a bad impact and result in a decrease in blog visitors.
The method above is the method that I usually use when changing templates, and mostly after changing the template blog visitors tend to increase. like my blog, I have changed the template 3 times and the visitors are better than before.