Question about theme change and SEO

[roukousnel]

Hello good people out there!
I'm opening a new thread to discuss something that has been troubling me for some time!
I already own a well established website about the local company of my father.I have been getting some serious conversion rates (i.e phone calls,enquiries etc) and my website appears
on the first page of google for some good keywords. The only problem is that i use a rather slow, nulled theme that i found somewhere about 5-6 years ago. I'm considering changing the theme to a newer one; a paid one which is thought to be extremely fast and generally good for SEO,plus it is updated for additional security . However i'm kinda afraid that i might lose my rankings if i change the theme. Is it true ? i haven't made any SEO tweaks except keyword placement, bolds,italics and some meta tags in my website as it stands right now...
What do you suggest? Shall i make the transition? Is there any way to compare my current and my next theme ?
Thank you in advance

[BlackBlizzard78]

There are tools that help you see a website as a crawling bot does. ASESOP9 for example.

Method to check new theme.
Make sure txt looks the same in both versions, this is very important.
You can do this using wampserver on your local machine.
You can set up mulitple copies of your website and compare them.
Its relatively easy to setup, only issue I haven't sorted out is IONCUBE encoding, for that must test online.
You can use programs like backup buddy for wordpress sites to transfer them from domain to domain.
You can use one of the free TLD to test the site, it doesn't matter what.

cheers.

[roukousnel]

WoW...Thanks for the reply...gonna test this ASAP!!!Reps given

As I've posted this thread in the Black Hat Seo too,and Non Conformer replied there, I will quote him in order to have all replies gathered here, in case anyone visits the thread!

Thanks again :)

(11-26-2014 08:43 AM)NonConformer Wrote:  I'll let it go, some people might not see your other thread. It's a good topic/question.

I like to follow the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mantra. HOWEVER, it's worth testing because you could be leaving a shitton of traffic on the table so to speak by keep an old clunky theme.

What you could do, too, is install the theme on a sub directory and start building content and traffic and leave the other one alone. Simple start building up additional content and cross link it to the older theme content.

[senoob]

As long as your url and post/page content did not changed, your ranking should be intact. Changing theme mostly involve lots of css tweaking work and make sure the theme structure is close to the one that you are currently using. Example, the no./location of menus and widgets, and you may need to move/create some new menus and widgets. Knowing some CSS and html is definitely helpful when changing themes.