Building an SEO-Friendly Website from Scratch

How to Create and Design Your Website: Expert Tips and Recommendations

It is easier to create a website on your own than it might seem at first. Stay tuned for a customizable approach to building a website from scratch for any business.

Ideally, you build your own websites with SEO tactics in mind and take care of brand promotion and recognition simultaneously — that’s how the best results can be achieved. Still, there are numerous search engine optimization web design practices to choose from. 

Although it feels like a complicated puzzle, figuring out how to build SEO for websites is simpler when you take one knowledgeable step at a time. Let’s check what decisions will help you develop the best website design for SEO. Mind the gap!

How to Create a Website from Scratch

Whatever tactics you go for, it is essential to label the “how to design your own websites” project in the following manner:

➡️ Easy to use. No matter how many pages your platform includes, its navigation has to stand out and cater to potential end users’ expectations. Without the fast load speed, your site will be quickly abandoned and hit rock bottom of SERPs, not to mention your ROI rates.

➡️ Search-focused. When choosing the right website layout and content style, keep it search-friendly, following Google’s guidelines. Adding authoritative When launching a website, it's important to prioritize search-focused strategies such as adding authoritative backlinks, using concise and descriptive URLs, optimizing title and description tags, and selecting the best keywords.

➡️ Technically sound. Your site’s health doesn’t only depend on what SEO tactics you choose. When you're setting up your tools and systems, make sure to brainstorm and create your sitemap. Think of a sitemap.xml as a roadmap or an index that guides search engines through your website. It lists all the important pages on your site, ensuring that search engines like Google can find and understand them.


This will help discover new pages via search engine crawlers and regular health check-ins by SEO experts.

Easy Website Building with SEO in Mind

Your platform’s friendliness has to be second to none. If you seek long-term results that satisfy your business goals, your task is to make SEO-friendly content and ensure each page you add to your domain’s architecture is search engine optimized. Here is a short website checklist:

  • You can start a blog section and easily add more entertaining materials without dropping the page load speed;

  • You have top-quality content of different formats and styles, including videos, long-read articles, infographics, etc.;

  • You are ready to prepare XML sitemaps;

  • You have intuitive and well-optimized navigation patterns in mind (ensured with keyword research);

  • You will keep an adaptable and versatile web design.

When creating a site's interface, consider what message you want to convey to prospective readers and search engines.

Now, let’s move to the basic requirements for SEO-friendly content.

Content Should Include Keywords

Your pages have to be SEO-compliant. One of the ways to achieve this goal is to raise your domain’s ranking in SERPs by using relevant keywords that work for your industry. It is not enough to focus on primary keywords only. Do your in-depth keyword research to increase your site’s visibility and ensure it satisfies more related search intents. With services like Google Trends, you can navigate through popular topics and trends to tailor your content strategy to market requirements and end-user expectations.

Structure Your Website

To create a good website, you need to know your business, audience, and search algorithms Google, Bing, and other engines have. In the right hands, web-linked, linear, and tree-like structures can drastically transform how you build your websites.

The same goes for the ease of navigation. That’s how you can reach proper page crawling in the twinkle of the eye. To sum up, here are the most important elements of your site’s structure to consider:

✅ sitemap;

✅ breadcrumbs;

✅ internal and external links;

✅ categories and URL design.

Also, check how your page is displayed on mobile screens — changing navigation elements' size and placement. You can quickly inspect your web page using a Mobile-friendly test to ensure you are on the right track.

Optimize Your Web Pages’ Load Speed

Any website checklist to build a website can’t be complete without tips and suggestions on how to boost the target platform’s speed. By increasing this parameter, you positively influence customer satisfaction and reduce the probability of bouncing. To build a site qualitatively, make it a habit to measure and test its speed. There are numerous popular solutions for non-tech-savvy users, but you can easily start with Google PageSpeed Insights.

Use Google Tools

As you can see, Google offers several services to let users adapt their custom websites effortlessly and efficiently. They will help you stick to the guidelines and come in handy for creating your website with advanced support. Feel free to test how these tools work:

➡️ Google Keyword Planner;

➡️ Google Analytics;

➡️ Google Ads, etc.

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Optimize the Title Tag and Meta Description

This data boosts your SEO. First, you leave a simple message to show your pages in SERPs for relevant user queries. Secondly, it entices prospective visitors to check your platform. By optimizing distinctive categories with individual metadata and high-volume keywords, you can effortlessly boost organic traffic on the site.

Unethical Practice of Manipulating User Behavior Data

For long-term results without the risk of being penalized by Google, it is crucial to maintain your backlinks profile reputable and made with white-hat link-building methods. On the contrary, black-hat SEO will be a sample of what is better to avoid at all costs.

This term describes confusing, deceptive, and misleading patterns that intentionally trick end users and make them take actions for your benefit yet unwillingly. From irritating popping-up messages that can’t be exited to pre-checked boxes with hidden fees, there are several red-flag cases to consider and exclude from your strategy to build a website from scratch.

Enhance the Content with Images and Videos

Statistics reveal that 65% of individuals thrive in their learning journey when it's served up with a visual twist. This is precisely why the potency of all-encompassing content marketing tactics receives a substantial boost when building an easy website with a rich assortment of visually engaging elements. 

The list doesn’t boil down to photos and videos only. You can also play with infographics and animations to create a website with high user engagement rates. If you wonder how to make your webpage with lots of content without tons of text, here is a quick rule of thumb to remember — visuals make ideas clearer and easier to perceive.

Key Takeaways

Building an SEO-friendly website is not difficult, even if you have a small budget and limited expertise. Start by figuring out what you need. Then, pick a content management system that can improve user experience, save money on marketing, and build a strong brand reputation. Make sure the website is mobile-friendly and well-structured. To efficiently answer the question “How do I make a website?”, use the tips and suggestions in this guide. Feel free to combine free and pre-paid tools to boost your promotion, content, and marketing strategy.

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Eugene Zayats

Digital Marketing Expert

I set up marketing processes during my career and created and implemented omnichannel promotion strategies. In my first management position, I headed a small internet marketing agency (8 people). Now, this quantity is much larger.

At the pandemic's beginning, I started managing remote employees (marketers, designers, copywriters, and developers) and created a marketing department from scratch.