Why do most web re-designs lose rankings?

We do a lot of SEO recovery work. Clients call saying they just re-designed their website and rankings dropped. Any of you notice the same? Web companies sell in the glamour but know very little about embedding SEO into the design. They forget the re-directs, URLs structure, onpage tagging, etc. Then want us to clean it all up afterwards. Frustrating!

 

This is usually happens when changing the designs of the website and I think user experience is the reason why the rankings decreased in the search results.

 

Good point Kylie. The design changes also change the taxonomy (content architecture). So if the design does not consider the SEO elements then rankings drop.

 

Actually the main reason behind this is, changing content of the website. Because Google not read your design of the website. Google read your content, meta tags, alt tags, etc in your website. When someone redesign his website then he also change his content as well as his website old seo structure. Thats why that website will be loss his ranking on google.

 

that's it. and Google can't find the new files (i.e. no re-directs). its a pity web design companies don't understand this (well not many :-(

 

Rank drops after redesigns might often not be due to the fact the design changed, but the information architecture, if you suddenly change your URL's and navigation without redirecting all the old URL's to the new pages, then Google will see all the links that are indexed as "dead" even though they still exist, but have changed URL.

 

Exactly. Good point. There are very few web companies in New Zealand that understand your point :-(.