Before writing this, I read a handful of articles on this exact topic. What they were advocating for sounded stupid expensive. Do design and SEO together or you'll fail.

They're not wrong. It's actually not wrong at all.

But there are a couple of exceptions they fail to surface early, especially for anyone who isn't going to read a whole d**m blog post.

Exception one: not everyone is strapped with cash to fully fund a power hitter of a website.

Exception two: there's SEO that can be done in phases, and is actually better done that way.

Crazy, huh? Here we were thinking everything had to be funded at once and you just take the financial hit.

SEO and Web Design: What Has to Be Done Together

The other posts weren't wrong that SEO and web design belong together. This is just where they fogged the lens and stopped short of clear advice.

Technical SEO: The backend stuff you don't care about and never knew existed until an SEO agency flagged it 8 or 12 months after it did real damage. URL structure, page speed decisions, schema markup, title tags and meta descriptions written within a reasonable character count, properly assigned heading tags, and a lot more. Without it, your site is about as helpful a Homer Simpson drunk on Duff Beer. Non-responsive and just going to sit there.

Core service and product pages: The pillars of what your business offers. Without these you have nothing to inform or sell with. They need to be built around search intent, or everything after is wrong. You can always add a few sections later, but the pages themselves have to be built right the first time.

Keyword research, before design: I get it. Me ten years ago wouldn't have cared either. But designing a page based on looks and a vague idea of what it's about is how you end up with sections full of assumptions. You need the actual strategy of what the page should be built on, not a guess.

These three have no exception. You either launch with content you think is enough, or content you know is enough.

Why SEO Web Design Belongs With One Team, Not Two Vendors

There's incredible talent out there. Web designers who deliver experiences most agencies can't touch and don't know anything about SEO. SEO agencies that do exceptional research and don't have a design brain.

That's the problem a lot of business owners run into, whether they see it now or later. And I'm not looking to devalue anyone who's genuinely great at their specialty. Good talent is hard to pass up.

But here's the argument: these things have to be done together, and two vendors who've never worked together will puzzle-piece a process while your launch date moves further out. The SEO agency also won't have full control over technical setup or diagnosing speed issues, because the designer is building everything on their end.

So what do you do?

Option one: find an all-in-one website and SEO agency with no vendor in the middle, like us. Everything is in-house, there aren't multiple meetings to align on strategy, and you have one point of contact.

Option two: find a web design agency with a reliable SEO vendor they've worked with on past and current projects. That at least gives you some assurance it'll run smoothly.

It might be hard to see from the outside, but things move quicker when there's a working process and in-house accountability.

What SEO Work Can Wait, and Should

Doing everything at once gets expensive. Like I said, you're not strapped with cash, and you shouldn't be under the impression you need to roll it all out at once. You don't.

Prioritize what has to launch in order to communicate your offerings and positioning. That's the part that matters most to your customers, and it's how you recoup your money.

SEO takes months to compound, sometimes up to a year depending on the competitive landscape. So instead of fighting time, work with it and phase things out.

Spoke content. These are the supporting pages that branch off your core pillar pages. The spokes are additions that put out more feelers for traffic and carry information that deserves its own page rather than weighing the core pillar down.

Blog content and resources. This one's a given. Who in their right mind writes six months of content and publishes it all in one day? What do you write after that? Pace yourself, give it a rhythm, and let each page rank and compound over time. It's better that way.

Location pages, which don't apply to every industry. If you're building from scratch with no analytics data to tell you where you're weakest, wait and gather it first. You'll start seeing where people are based on form fills, tracked calls, and website visits. Start local and work outward toward where you want to reach.

But if you're an established business doing a redesign and you've never had location pages, or only had a few, build them during the redesign. You already have the data to know where you're strongest and weakest. It's the smartest play to get out in front faster.

The Part Nobody Covered: AI Search

Skimming those other posts, the one area none of them covered was AI search, which is a huge factor in AI SEO.

Ranking on page one is great. Showing up above paid search and the organic listings is visibility that builds reputation.

Properly built, on-brand pillar pages with clear and meaningful content show up in AI Overviews. The more articulate and specific you are about what makes you different, the more they pull and cite you for. Originality is favored.

Niche pages get cited too, it doesn't have to be a pillar page. One of our clients shows up in AI Overviews, and it's tracked right in SEMrush.

The catch is that those pages have to be well structured in the first place. AI SEO is still SEO. You need the foundation before writing content that earns citations.

SEO Website Design Doesn't Have to Sound Rigid

You can keep your brand voice without sounding robotic or unnatural. Maybe not 100%, but close.

Heading tags give you flexibility on which copy carries your keywords. I wouldn't suggest reassigning every heading, but use it where a compromise is needed.

That's the Practical Version

When SEO and website work has to happen before launch, and when it can wait after.

If you're ready to work with an all-in-one agency, let's start the conversation. Our website packages include SEO from the start, and our SEO packages handle the phased work after launch.

Already have a website built and the rankings and traffic aren't there? Let's talk and see what we uncover. The free report is a good place to start if you'd rather see where you stand first.

Does web design include SEO?

It should include the technical foundation and page structure, but most web design packages don't. Ask specifically whether keyword research happens before design, and who handles technical setup. If the answer is "we can add SEO later," you're just going to pay for it twice at that point.

Should SEO be done before or after web design?

Before and during. Keyword research comes first, core page structure get built in during design, and technical SEO during development and right after launch to resolve errors and warnings. Spoke content, blog posts, and some location pages can come after launch, in phases.

Can you add SEO to an existing website?

Yes, and most SEO work starts on sites someone else built. What's harder is fixing structural problems after launch, since changing URLs, page architecture, and updating page outlines means managing redirects and losing some equity in the process.

Do I need a separate SEO company?

Not if your web design agency handles it in-house or works with an SEO partner they've built a process with. What causes problems is hiring two vendors who've never worked together and expecting them to coordinate.

How long before a new website starts ranking?

Technical improvements show in days to weeks. Rankings build over months, and can take up to a year depending on your competition. That's why phasing works. You're not fighting the timeline, you're budgeting alongside it.