When creating a new web design, ensuring good SEO should be your main focus.

When you apply SEO from the start, your site gets a better position on search results, brings in more visitors, and aids your marketing plan for a long period.

Here, we will look into six main practices that assist you in making your website both user-friendly and well-optimized throughout the web design process.

1. Lead with Mobile

Mobile traffic has made up about half of all web visits for years now—and in 2025, that trend is still going strong.

Google now mainly looks at the mobile version of your site when deciding how to rank it. So if your site doesn’t work well on phones or tablets, your SEO will take a hit.

To keep your site mobile-friendly, make sure it’s fully responsive. That means it should automatically adjust to fit any screen size, whether someone’s on a phone, tablet, or desktop.

Make buttons easy to tap, text easy to read, and navigation smooth without endless scrolling. It is easier for readers to read on smaller screens if you format long texts with plenty of simple layouts and white space.

Also, don’t forget about your meta tags, titles and descriptions show up differently on mobile. Try to keep page titles under 60 characters and meta descriptions under 120 to make sure they display properly.

2. Build for Speed

People don’t have the patience for slow websites. If your pages take too long to load, chances are they’ll leave before even seeing what you offer.

A fast site keeps visitors happy—and Google notices that. The quicker your pages load, the better your chances of ranking higher in search results. Try to keep load times under 2.5 seconds if you can.

Here are a few simple ways to make your site load faster:

• Compress your images: Big image files are one of the main things that slow down websites. Use tools to reduce them without losing quality. WebP is a great format that keeps images looking good but loads much faster.

• Minify code: Stripping out extra spaces and comments from your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can help things run more smoothly.

• Use browser caching: This lets repeat visitors load your site faster by saving some of the files in their browser.

• Limit redirects: Too many redirects can slow things down. Try to use as few as possible.

• Use a CDN: A content delivery network stores your site on servers in different locations, so users get faster access no matter where they are.

3. Opt for a “Flat” Site Structure

A flat website architecture means that all of your site’s key pages are within a few clicks of the homepage.

This approach to site structure lowers the number of pages that visitors (and search engines) must travel to get the desired content.

It also increases the distribution of link equity on your website.  Link equity (also known as “page authority”) refers to the ranking power given from one page to another via links.  Pages closest to the homepage tend to gain greater link equity, which might help them rank higher in search results.

To achieve a flat site layout, restrict the amount of categories and subcategories used to categorize your site’s pages.  Ideally, visitors should be able to access all key sites with three clicks or fewer.

4. Facilitate Navigation

In addition to having a flat site layout, you can help visitors and search engines find vital content by designing a clear and simple navigation system.

This includes categorizing similar pages and utilizing brief, clear labels in your major navigation menu. Just make sure you don’t give users too many alternatives. Prioritize the most important portions of your website, and think about employing dropdown menus for secondary sites.

A breadcrumb trail is used to let people understand where they are on your site and gives them a quick way to return to previous pages. Alternatively, footer navigation can point customers to important information pages that they may need but only from time to time, such as contact data, privacy policies, and terms of service.

Finally, employ contextual internal links across your website. This entails referring to relevant pages inside the body text of the content to direct viewers to further resources that they may find beneficial.

Internal links also aid your SEO efforts by moving link equity from one page to the next, allowing search engines to comprehend how various sites connect to one another.

5. Ensure Crawlability and Indexability

Google must crawl and index your pages before displaying them in search results.

Crawling is the process by which Google’s bots search your site for fresh or updated material. Google then keeps (“indexes”) information about the content in a database, allowing it to fetch and show relevant sites when users type in related terms.

As a result, if the website is hard to crawl or your pages are incorrectly indexed, they will not appear in search results.

Aside from having a well-structured and internally linked site, here are some more techniques to increase crawlability and indexability:

• Submit an XML sitemap: An XML sitemap serves as a road map for search engines to locate and prioritize the most essential pages on your website. You may submit it straight to Google Search Console.

• Review your robots.txt file: A robots.txt file instructs search engines which parts of your website to crawl or ignore. Make sure you don’t mistakenly prevent vital pages from being crawled.

• Avoid using the “noindex” tag on crucial pages: The noindex element instructs search engines not to include a page in their index, therefore it will not display in search results. Check that this tag is not mistakenly applied to the pages you wish to rank.

• Fix crawl issues: Use tools like Google Search Console to regularly audit your site for crawl faults like broken links, slow-loading pages, and blocked resources. Correct these issues as soon as possible to ensure that search engines have access to all of your key material.

6. Implement Structured Data

Structured data (also known as schema markup) is a type of coding that allows search engines to better comprehend your content.

Adding organized data to your web pages may lead to your search listings showing as rich snippets. They show extra information such as star ratings, the cost of the product, event dates, and answers to common questions within the search results.

Search results clarify and attract viewers, which often results in a bigger share of clicks.

For example, Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper helps you build and put the code on your website easily. You may then use Google’s Rich Results Test to ensure that everything is operating properly.

Final Thoughts

Make sure you keep SEO in mind right from the start when designing a website.

When you focus on SEO from the start when building your site, you will lay a strong base for high ranks, lots of organic visitors, and a great user experience.

If you put the tips shown above to use, your website should work well for everyone visiting it.

And if you want a team that knows both web design and SEO inside and out, VareWeb has been doing this for years. Reach out anytime, we’d love to help.