Matthew Widdop
Matty is a Junior SEO Executive at Intelligency, helping our clients to improve their digital performance. Matty is currently studying for his Level 3 Multi-Channel Marketer apprenticeship and has completed a Sport Journalism Degree at the University of Huddersfield.
SEO is the process of optimising your website to rank higher on search engines, when designing websites SEO should have a critical role in your site design to avoid causing technical problems in the future that need to be addressed retroactively. In this article, we will discuss different aspects of web design that are directly impacted by SEO and considerations for users to make when building their websites.
Mobile Friendliness
Mobile is king. Searches on mobile account for 60% of web traffic in 2025, despite this, many businesses still design their websites on desktop, making an impressive website, but treating mobile optimisation as an afterthought. Websites should be designed with mobile as a number one priority due to the sheer amount of search traffic it currently generates. Having a site that is equipped to enhance the user experience on mobile and desktop devices will improve your search rankings.
Page Load Speed
Page load speed is an important ranking factor on Google and is something that should be considered when designing a new site. Content management systems, such as WordPress, have plug-ins which allow users to add custom functionality to their sites but these plug-ins can come at the cost of page speed as they are all separately loaded onto the page. It is better for sites to be designed with extra functionality written into the code and limited use of plug-ins in order to make sure page speed remains fast.
Image size can also affect page speed. If image files are too big, they can increase page speed, making sure all images are optimised for a site when designing your site is important for SEO web design.
Copy and Content Optimisation
When designing websites, people can try to limit the amount of words they have on their site to try to make it more visually appealing and engaging. While this can be good, there needs to be a balance for SEO purposes. There should still be enough scope to add copy to improve keywords rankings and optimise content for SEO. Being able to explain concepts in detail and giving a user all the information they need is precisely what makes Google value content higher up the site when it is high in rich content.
Site Structure
Having a well thought out site structure is important for SEO as it allows Google to crawl and index your site and understand your content easier. This is extremely important for appearing high on the SERP, if Google is confused by your content or site architecture it will make it difficult to rank meaningfully. Therefore having SEO in mind when designing your site architecture is important, make sure to not include unnecessary pages on your site that confuse search engines and users.
