Ever heard the saying “you can’t build a house without a strong foundation”? Well, the same goes for building a website that attracts and engages visitors meaningfully – whatever that looks like for your business. In this case, however, the foundations are a strategy that combines web design and search engine optimisation.

There is a lot of confusion around SEO, with algorithm changes, link building, and technical SEO being the three biggest challenges of 2024, according to the State of SEO 2025 report. But that’s not a reason to bury your head in the sand.

Here’s why, and how you can start building search engine optimisation into your web design and development process.

5 SEO elements to incorporate into your web design

Here are some of the elements of SEO to consider when building or updating your website design. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it should give you an idea of what you need to plan for.

1. Core Web Vitals

Search engines like Google want to put sites that are accessible and easy to use in front of their visitors. For this reason, it’s key to consider Core Web Vitals when designing and developing your site. This is a set of metrics that measure:

• Loading performance (Largest Contentful Paint)
• Responsiveness (Interaction to Next Paint)
• Visual stability (Cumulative Layout Shift)

You can learn more about these and the best practices for implementing them into your website via Google.

2. Site structure

How you organise your site plays an important role in how search engines understand it. This is your opportunity to tell search engines which pages it should analyse and include in search results (“indexing”), and which pages are the most important to your site.

It might be helpful to create a sitemap (a visual representation of your webpage hierarchy) so that you can plan out how visitors will move throughout the site. You can then include internal links to help visitors navigate with ease – such as a call-to-action button taking people from your homepage to your services or product pages, for instance.

Without links to related content, or pages that might intuitively come next in the visitor’s journey, then what’s to stop them from leaving your site altogether?

3. Content optimisation

Google considers the quality of content when ranking websites. Using an E-E-A-T framework, the search engine puts results in front of people that demonstrate expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

To give your website the best possible chance of being found by visitors on search engine results pages (SERPs), you need to create a content strategy that is optimised for the keywords and phrases they’re searching for from the very beginning. This will feed into your site structure, so make sure you consider these two elements together.

We offer tips for combining these two elements in our blog, 4 web content strategy frameworks to nurture buyer journeys.

4. Site speed

If your website is full of large images and bulky widgets, for instance, then it’s likely to take a while to load. And, when it comes to page load times, every second matters. Google found that when page loading times jump from 1 to 3 seconds, the probability of a visitor bouncing increases by more than 30%.

Although a website’s bounce rate is not a confirmed ranking factor for Google, it’s an important indicator of user experience and the quality of your content. Ultimately, you want to create a website that your target audience finds genuinely useful, shares with others, and links to. This will help you to drive up your organic traffic.

5. Mobile friendliness

In 2023, around half of global web traffic came from mobile devices. If your website isn’t easy to navigate or read for mobile users, then you could alienate a lot of people. Visitors may exit your site and look for other options, ultimately increasing their organic search traffic instead.

There are lots of ways to make your website mobile-friendly. Some key factors to consider are page loading speeds, as discussed above, and a design that adapts to a smaller screen. Text blocks and design elements should resize automatically, so that users can enjoy the same experience whether they are on mobile or desktop.

3 reasons to consider web design and SEO together

When you bear in mind the number of elements that impact SEO, it’s clear that it requires a long-term approach. That’s why it’s important to embed SEO into your website at the earliest design and development stages, if you can.

Here are three major reasons why.

1. It improves the user experience

Starting with SEO from day one means creating a fantastic user experience that builds trust, and creates a great experience, right out of the gate. For instance, you can create a page structure that visitors can move through fluidly, and consider the types of content they’re searching for.

Plus, you can reach the visitors that matter instead of attracting traffic from people who won’t continue to engage with your brand.

2. It encourages a more data-driven approach

Employing a data-driven marketing approach can help you shape a winning business strategy (and avoid unnecessary risks).

One of the things that I love about SEO is how it combines a need to engage with your audience through creative messaging, with a data-driven strategy and outlook. I often find that thinking about the needs of SEO makes me take on a data-driven perspective, which can shed light into other areas of my work.

For example, analysing search terms and missing keywords that competitors are chasing might highlight new growth opportunities. A shift in news and search volumes may mean that we need to quickly adapt and change our strategy.

3. It stops you from getting overtaken by competitors

Everyone knows that industries are quick to evolve and shift, and your competitors are always looking for new ways to intercept your audience and snag a conversion. They might even turn to hostile keyword strategies, which involve ranking for terms that are emblematic of your company to outrank you in as many ways as possible. That’s before we even consider PPC, where aggressive ranking dictated by budget is commonplace.

Overcoming this challenge requires turning to a high-quality, long-term SEO strategy. One which aligns with a healthy and trusted site, and one that’s continuously updated. With this strategy in place, you can ensure that your site’s SEO foundations are cemented from day one – continuing to drive value and help you outrank your competitors with the future in mind.

Start creating your SEO strategy with our tips

SEO isn’t something to be put off until later—it’s a vital component of your online success from day one. To navigate new, constantly changing online spaces, a long-term approach to SEO isn’t just beneficial, it’s essential.

Check out our advice for doing so in ‘Building a great SEO strategy: 7 tried-and-tested tips’.