Search engine optimization is almost always an afterthought for businesses when designing a Website.

Tasks like reviewing mockups, organizing content, getting photography done and completing the hundreds of other tasks necessary to make a Website come alive are enough to deal with on their own.

[source: Rankings.io] Yet laying the groundwork for good performance in search will pay dividends long into the future. Starting out with an SEO friendly Website design can prevent duplication of efforts in the long run and make it faster for a future SEO company to come in and improve rankings.

The following are several key elements for making a Website that is designed to rank well in search.

Content Umbrellas

A logical content hierarchy is as important for search engines as it is for the sanity of your users. Content should be organized in a manner that suits the subject matter and makes it easy for people to find what they are looking for.

Be methodical in your planning. Choose one main theme for your site, then build out pages that are subtopics of that theme. For example, a personal injury lawyer would have personal injury law as her main Website theme. Subtopics of that theme (i.e., the pages that comprise the site) would be car accidents, truck accidents, slip and fall accidents, and so on.

Each page on the site should have a purpose and focus on a singular topic area.

Site Speed

Google made page speed a ranking factor in 2010, meaning that the company’s algorithm will favor sites with pages that load faster over those with pages that load more slowly. Google’s data shows that users are significantly more likely to abandon a search result if the page does not load quickly enough. The surge in mobile device use has also made page load speed a greater priority as devices with less powerful processors are consuming Web pages at much higher rates.

Site owners can use Google’s page speed analysis tool to see how they shape up in the speed department. Google also provides a report after the analysis that shows you exactly what needs to be fixed.

Mobile-friendliness

Google is moving to a mobile-first index, meaning that the Web pages it serves in its results will be tailored to mobile devices. Google has also made mobile friendliness — in terms of the design and programming of a site — a ranking factor in its algorithm.

Site owners who generate leads or conduct all of their business on the internet and don’t have a mobile responsive site should seriously consider converting. New Websites should be built as responsive sites from the beginning. A responsive site is simply one that changes styling and dimensions based on the device viewing it.

Schema

Schema, or structured data, is code that makes content machine-understandable. It does not influence search rankings, but it does influence how search engines display content from the pages in their search results.

For example, a search engine knows that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is a string of alphanumeric characters. Applying schema to that string would enable a search engine to understand that it is an address to a building with significant historical meaning to the American people.

Applying schema markup to information such as addresses, business names, people, phone numbers, emails, Web addresses, reviews, and star ratings can help Google display that information in search results. This, in turn, can improve click-through rates in search results pages.

Internal Linking

Google’s original system for grading Web pages was based on the hyperlinks that connected them. Decades later, the company’s algorithm has become far more sophisticated, but links are still an important metric for rankings.

That’s true outside of a Website, but it’s also true within a Website. When designing a Website, it’s important to have all pages internally linked to one another so that link authority from the outside can flow freely through a site. Orphaning pages or creating cumbersome, deep navigation can make it harder for important pages to rank well in search.

Search Engine Friendly URLs

Programmers buried in the minutiae of building out a site’s architecture aren’t thinking about a search engine’s ability to crawl URLs. They certainly aren’t thinking that a person needs to be able to read them.

Search engines have gotten better at handling obscure characters and long, ugly URLs, but they still aren’t perfect. These are also prime opportunities to take advantage of keyword placement and marketing for users. URLs should be short, descriptive and easy to read. Avoid using special characters like underscores, ampersands or percentage symbols. The easier they are to read, the better — both for people and for search engines.

Conclusion

Web designers and coders aren’t always SEO people. If you’re lucky, they may be somewhat aware of best practices. If you’re thinking of a redesign or a brand new site, make sure the people building it are at least leaving room to grow with SEO. Think of it in terms of building a house: If the contractor’s only job is to do the rough framing, he has to make sure he builds things in a way that makes it easy for the electrician and the plumber to come in and do their jobs, too.