--- title: What Makes a Website SEO Friendly? A Plain Guide for Owners | Blue Lake Web Design description: What search engine friendly web design means, what to ask before you hire, and which design choices help Google find and understand your small business site. url: https://bluelakewebdesign.com/seo-friendly-web-design/ --- What Makes a Website SEO Friendly? A Plain Guide for Owners | Blue Lake Web Design - Call # What Makes a Website SEO Friendly? A Plain Guide for Owners What search engine friendly web design means, what to ask before you hire, and which design choices help Google find and understand your small business site. Eric Plotts / November 12, 2026 Want this handled for you? Custom sites starting at $899. Most go live in about two weeks. Get a free quote Or call (248) 800-1855 An SEO friendly website is built so Google can find every page, read what is on it, and load it quickly on a phone. SEO stands for search engine optimization, which just means making your site easy for search engines to understand so the right people can find you. Most of it is decided while the site is being designed, not added afterward. This guide explains what those design choices are, what you should get from a web designer, and how to check the work without being a technical person. Blue Lake Web Design Build a Website With SEO in Mind Blue Lake Web Design combines fast-loading website design with integrated SEO to help Michigan businesses improve their online visibility. Visit ## TL;DR An SEO friendly site is one search engines can reach, read and understand, and one visitors find fast and easy to use. - The big design decisions are a simple page structure, clear page addresses, a title and main heading on every page, a layout that works on phones, and fast loading. - You do not need dozens of pages. You need the right pages, each with a clear job, linked together sensibly. - Before hiring, ask for a fixed price, a clear list of what is included, and a plain explanation of how the site will be set up for search. - Nobody honest can promise you a ranking. A good designer builds the foundation and tells you what they did. ## What “SEO friendly” means in plain English Think of Google as a very fast visitor who cannot see your site the way you do. It follows links from page to page, reads the text, and tries to work out what each page is about and who it would help. Search Engine Land describes SEO friendly design as building sites that search engines can fully access and index , which is the technical way of saying “easy to find and easy to read.” The same guide points out that many search best practices overlap with things your customers already want: simple navigation, fast loading, and pages that work on a phone. That is good news. You are not designing for a robot at the expense of people. A site that is clear and quick for a customer is usually clear and quick for Google too. A site can look beautiful and still be hard for search engines to use. Common examples: - Text baked into images, so there are no real words for Google to read. - Pages that are not linked from anywhere, so nothing leads to them. - Every page titled “Home” or “Untitled.” - A layout that is tiny and awkward on a phone. - Huge photos that make pages crawl. None of these are fixed by writing more blog posts. They are design and build problems, and they are far cheaper to avoid at the start than to repair later. ## Why the design affects how you show up Semrush notes that mobile readiness and site speed, two things that influence organic rankings, come directly from how a site is designed . “Organic” means the regular results, not the paid ads at the top. In practice, design touches search in four ways: - Access. Can Google reach all your important pages? - Understanding. Does each page clearly say what it is about? - Experience. Does the page load quickly and work on every screen? - Trust. Are your business name, address, phone number and other basics easy to find? The rest of this guide goes through those four in order. ## Build a simple structure so every page can be found Site structure is how your pages are organized and connected. For a small business it usually looks like this: a home page, a page for each main service, an about page, a contact page, and maybe a page for each area you serve. Search Engine Land’s site architecture guide recommends a shallow structure, where important pages can be reached from the home page in three to four clicks . Similarweb makes the same point and adds that search engines may treat pages buried far from the home page as less important . For a ten-page site this is easy: put your services in the main menu and you are done. It matters more as a site grows, and a shallow site structure also keeps visitors from getting lost. ### Link your pages to each other Google’s own guidance says every page you care about should be linked from at least one other page on your site . A page nobody links to is called an orphan page, and it is easy for both visitors and Google to miss. The words you use for a link matter too. The same Google page says good link text is descriptive and short, and that phrases like “click here” or “read more” are poor choices. A link that says “our furnace repair service” tells Google and the reader what is on the other side. Your menu, your service pages and your blog posts should all link to each other this way. ### Give every page one clear job A common mistake is trying to make one page cover everything you do. A plumber who lists drain cleaning, water heaters, and sump pumps all on one page gives Google a muddy picture. Separate pages, each about one service, make it clear what each page is for. Our guide on how to optimize a service page for Google walks through this in more detail. ## Use page addresses, titles and headings that say something These are small details, but they are some of the most direct signals you can give. Page addresses (URLs). A URL is the web address of a page. Google’s SEO Starter Guide recommends using real words in the address that help people understand the page instead of random strings of numbers and letters. Compare yoursite.com/services/furnace-repair with yoursite.com/page?id=4821 . The first tells a customer and Google exactly where they are. Page titles. The title is the blue clickable line in search results. The same Google guide advises unique, clear and concise titles. Every page needs its own, and it should say what the page is and who you are. Keeping it under about 70 characters, as Grand Valley State University’s SEO guide suggests, helps it display without being cut off. Main headings. Each page should have one main heading that says what the page is about, with smaller headings under it dividing the content into sections. Google’s Search Essentials says to use the words people would search for in prominent places like the title and main heading . Write like a person, not like a keyword list. “Furnace Repair in Novi, Michigan” beats “Best Cheap Furnace Repair Novi Michigan Heating HVAC.” Photo descriptions. Every meaningful photo should have a short written description, called alt text, that explains what is in it. It helps people using screen readers and helps Google understand the image. We cover how to write it in our alt text guide . For a full list you can check page by page, see our on-page SEO checklist . ## Make it work on a phone first Google mostly looks at the phone version of your site when deciding how to treat it. Search Engine Land explains that mobile should be designed from the start rather than added later , because Google uses a mobile-first index. Its guide for new sites also says most web traffic is mobile and recommends a layout that adapts to different screen sizes . A quick phone check you can do yourself: - Can you read the text without zooming in? - Is your phone number tappable so a customer can call with one touch? - Are buttons big enough to press without hitting the wrong one? - Does the menu open and close easily? - Does anything slide off the side of the screen? A site that adjusts to any screen is called responsive. Our article on the benefits of a responsive website explains why it matters beyond search. ## Keep pages fast Slow pages frustrate visitors, and visitors leave. HubSpot’s SEO web design guide lists the usual causes of slow pages: large images, too many requests, redirects and caching problems . The biggest culprit on small business sites is nearly always oversized photos, such as a four megabyte picture from a phone camera dropped straight into the page. Design choices that keep a site quick: - Photos resized and compressed before they go on the page. - Only the fonts, animations and add-ons the site truly needs. - A clean build without piles of unused code. - Sliders, auto-playing video and pop-ups used sparingly. Google measures page experience with a set of timing checks called Core Web Vitals. You can read about them in plain terms in our guides on what Core Web Vitals are and whether page speed affects SEO . For landing pages used with paid ads, see fixing speed on Google Ads landing pages . ## Make sure you have not blocked Google by accident This happens more than you would think. During a build, designers often switch on a setting that tells search engines to stay away from the unfinished site. If it is not switched off at launch, your new site can stay invisible. A small file called robots.txt can also block search engines from the whole site if it is set up wrong. Our robots.txt launch checklist shows what to ask your designer to confirm before the site goes live. Semrush also explains that crawlability is how well search engines can reach your pages, and that poor internal linking or endless redirect loops can stop them . Duplicate pages with no clear main version can confuse Google about which one to show. ## Show Google where you are If you serve customers in a specific area, your site should say so plainly. Search Engine Land’s location page guide says pages with contact information, photos and reviews from local customers help show Google that a business has a real location near searchers . For a Michigan business, that means: - Your business name, address and phone number on every page, typed as text, not placed in an image. - A contact page with a map. - A page for each main area you serve, with real information about that area, not the same text with the town name swapped. - The same name, address and phone number everywhere else online. Our guide to local citations explains this. For a closer look at appearing on Google Maps, see our map pack plan and our local landing pages guide . ## Write for people, not for search engines Google’s SEO Starter Guide says to create content that is easy to read, well organized, unique, up to date and written for people first. That is the standard to follow. For a small business, it means: - Say what you do, who it is for, and where you do it, in the first few lines. - Answer the questions customers ask you on the phone. - List what is included and how the process works. - Skip the filler. Repeating a phrase twenty times does not help anyone. If writing is the hard part, our content creation service is there for exactly that. ## Our perspective We have built websites in Metro Detroit and Oakland County since 2011, and the same thing keeps coming up. Owners are told SEO is a mysterious, ongoing expense, when most of the groundwork is simply how the site gets built. That is why we build search basics into every website from the start: clear page structure, descriptive titles and headings, fast-loading pages, and a layout that works on phones. We use modern frameworks so the site is quick without piling on extras. You should not have to pay later for what should have been in the first quote. We also think you should know exactly what you are paying for. Our prices are published, our quotes are fixed, and there are no contracts. We describe what we do for your site. We do not promise rankings, because nobody outside Google controls them, and anyone who guarantees them is guessing. Eric Plotts ## How to check a web designer’s work You do not need technical skills to ask good questions. Before you hire anyone, ask: - What is the full price, and what does it include? You want a fixed quote in writing, not a vague range. - Are there any contracts or monthly fees? Hosting and maintenance may be optional extras. Find out which, and what they cost. - How long will it take? A clear schedule is a sign of an organized process. - How will my pages be set up for search? Listen for plain answers about titles, headings, page addresses, mobile layout and speed. - Will you check that Google is allowed to see the site at launch? - Can I see work you have done? Look at the designer’s web design portfolio and test the sites on your own phone. - Do I own the site? You should. If you already have a site and are thinking of replacing it, ask what the plan is to keep the pages that already bring in visitors. We lay out that process in our website redesign SEO plan . ## Checking whether it is working Google offers a free tool called Search Console that shows how your site appears in search. Search Engine Land recommends looking at total impressions under Performance and Search results to see whether your site is indexed and discoverable . An impression means your page appeared in someone’s results, even if they did not click. Two habits keep you honest: - Write down a starting point before changes. Note the date, the number of impressions, and the number of clicks. - Give changes time. Search results move slowly, and a day-to-day swing says very little. Also watch the numbers that matter most to your business: phone calls, form submissions and quote requests. Search visibility is a means to that end. ## What this costs with us We build search basics into our websites, with the work scoped up front: - Three page website: $899 - Eight page website: $1,999 - Anything larger: a fixed quote We aim to have a finished, working site ready in about two weeks, and there is no contract. Our web design page has the details, and our pricing page shows what each package includes. ## Ready for a site built this way? We are Blue Lake Web Design in Novi, Michigan, owner operated by Eric Plotts, serving Metro Detroit and Oakland County. If you want a website that is set up properly for search from day one, with a fixed price and no contract, we would be glad to talk. See our website pricing or call us at (248) 800-1855. If you want ongoing help getting found, look at our search engine optimization services and local SEO and Google Maps work . ## FAQ ### What kind of website is best for SEO? The best site is one that is simple, fast and clear. It has a logical page structure, one page per main service, descriptive titles and headings, and a layout that works on phones. Any modern platform can meet that standard when it is built with care. ### Do I need a lot of pages to rank well? No. You need the right pages, not the most pages. A small business often does well with a home page, a page for each main service, an about page and a contact page, each with real content. Add more when you have something useful to say. ### Can I make my existing website SEO friendly? Often, yes. Start with the basics: unique page titles, one clear main heading per page, readable page addresses, resized photos, a phone check, and links between your pages. If the site is slow or hard to fix, a redesign may be simpler, and it should be planned so you keep what already works. ### Is a site that works on mobile really that important? Yes. Google mainly uses the phone version of your site to decide how to treat it, and most visitors are on phones. A site that is hard to use on a small screen loses both visitors and search visibility. ### Can anyone guarantee my site will rank first? No. Search results depend on many factors that nobody outside Google controls. A good designer builds a site that search engines can read and that people enjoy using, then tells you honestly what was done. ## Recommended - On Page SEO Checklist: 13 Checks for Search, AI, and Core Web Vitals - How Do I Optimize a Service Page for Google? - How Long Should a Blog Post Be for SEO? - Does Page Speed Affect SEO? What Small Businesses Should Know Written by Eric Plotts Web designer and SEO consultant in Novi, Michigan. Building websites for small and mid sized businesses since 2011. More about Eric . Get started ## Want this handled for you? Call (248) 800-1855 for a free quote. Fixed price, no contract, and most sites are live in about two weeks. Start a Project Book 15 Minutes