How do you build an SEO-friendly website?

Building an SEO-friendly website means planning its goals, content, navigation, and technical settings together from the outset—not adding keywords after the site is finished. The core aim is to help search engines crawl, understand, and index the content while making it easy for visitors to read and find the information they need. Early checks can cover page titles, URLs, indexing settings, sitemaps, mobile display, and loading speed. These are website-building fundamentals, not guarantees of rankings.

Define the website’s goals before discussing design and the backend

An e-commerce site and a corporate website should not simply follow the same plan. The former needs to focus on purchase conversions and shopping behavior; a corporate website serving markets in different languages needs to plan its language-specific content in advance. Clarifying the audience and the website’s purpose first helps determine page layouts, navigation, and content direction.

A website-building discussion on Mobile01 notes that SEO involves planning, design, and programming when building a site from scratch, with communication needed at every stage. This is practical advice, not a requirement to hire the same company for both website development and SEO. When choosing a system, also check whether its backend makes it easy to edit SEO information and customize URLs, so future updates do not become difficult to manage.

Make each page clearly answer users’ questions

A page needs more than text—it needs a clear purpose. Welly recommends focusing on users’ needs, using clear headings, natural language, and short paragraphs rather than repeatedly stuffing in keywords.

• Titles: Clearly describe the page’s content, incorporate the main keyword, and tell readers what information they can expect when they click through.
• Body content: Organize the content around the problem it needs to solve. For example, a product description should clearly explain the product rather than merely repeat its name.
• URLs: Use concise, readable names, reduce unnecessary parameters and symbols, and include relevant keywords where appropriate.

Distinguish crawling from indexing, then prepare a sitemap

robots.txt and noindex are not the same thing: the former is used to restrict crawling, while the latter is used to restrict indexing. According to Da Vinci, incorrect settings can prevent search engines from accessing or indexing content. Pre-launch checks should therefore confirm that restrictions match each page’s purpose, rather than treating these settings as switches that improve rankings.

Creating a sitemap that lists the website’s pages and submitting it to Google Search Console can also help search engines understand the site’s structure. Update the sitemap whenever content is added or changed so that the list reflects the actual content. The point is to provide page information, not to promise immediate indexing after submission.

Include mobile readability and loading speed in your checks

The website should display well on phones and tablets, and its navigation should make content easy for visitors to find. Check whether pages are easy to read, buttons are clearly identifiable, and users can easily reach the information they need.

To improve loading speed, start by compressing images, choosing suitable formats such as WebP, and reducing unnecessary redirect chains. If the site needs to load for users across different regions, you can also assess whether a CDN would be useful. Plan these tasks alongside content and navigation rather than focusing solely on visual effects at the expense of the actual user experience.