Web Design & SEO: Building a Website That Ranks in 2025

If we look back over the past 15-20 years, until relatively recently, websites were built for visual impact first, with SEO bolted on as an afterthought.

(Actually, who are we kidding? Many websites still do that today.)

That meant there were many beautiful websites that were borderline unusable. Conversely, there were many bland and unengaging website experiences that loaded like greased lightning.

Fast forward to 2025 and, broadly speaking, the landscape has changed (for the better). Performance and design go hand-in-hand, and the smart approach is to consider both from the get-go. But why? And how do you go about building a website that ranks in 2025?

In this article, we’ll cover the factors prioritised by search engines in 2025, design principles that directly impact organic rankings, how to get your content and SEO foundations right, and how to make sure your website is future-proof. 

What factors impact search rankings in 2025?

Core Web Vitals & site speed

Since 2010, site speed has been growing in importance, culminating (so far) in Google’s introduction of its Core Web Vitals in 2021.

In Google’s own words:

“Core Web Vitals is a set of metrics that measure real-world user experience for loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability of the page. We highly recommend site owners achieve good Core Web Vitals for success with Search and to ensure a great user experience generally. This, along with other page experience aspects, aligns with what our core ranking systems seek to reward.”

In other words, if you have a slow website (or a website that works in unexpected ways), you're putting it at risk of being deprioritised in organic search results and A-generated answers, driving traffic down, and damaging revenues in the long term.

It’s not even just about speed and search engine ranking factors. Users now expect better experiences online, experiences that keep them engaged. And site speed is a huge factor in that engagement, with users turned off if made to wait too long for pages to load.

Mobile first & accessibility

Search engines now assume the mobile version of your site is the primary one. If your website doesn’t load quickly, display correctly, or work smoothly on mobile devices, it will struggle to rank. And because more than half of all web traffic comes from mobile, this isn’t just about Google; it’s about meeting your audience where they are.

Accessibility is also a growing factor in both user experience and search visibility. Meeting standards like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) helps ensure your site works for users with cognitive or learning disabilities, low vision, or with disabilities on mobile devices

Building with accessibility in mind not only helps rankings but also demonstrates brand responsibility. It widens your potential audience, strengthens trust, and sends clear signals to both users and search engines that your site is inclusive by design.

Security and trust signals

Security has become a baseline requirement for search visibility. It has long been confirmed that HTTPS encryption is a ranking factor, but the story goes beyond the technical.

Secure, well-maintained websites demonstrate trustworthiness, which is something both AI systems and human users are actively looking for.

Features like SSL certificates, clear privacy policies, cookie transparency, and protection against intrusive ads or malware all play a role in building credibility.

From a brand perspective, these elements reassure users that their data is safe and that your company can be trusted. In 2025, that reassurance is no longer optional; it’s essential for visibility, reputation, and conversion.

Web Design Principles That Directly Impact Search Rankings

Speed and technical performance

As we’ve seen, having a website that loads quickly and behaves as expected is now table stakes for both search engines and users. A fast, efficient site keeps users engaged, reduces bounce rates, and builds trust with search engines.

Google’s Core Web Vitals provide a fantastic technical yardstick for whether your website is set up to perform. They break performance into 3 measurable areas:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): how quickly the largest visible element on a page loads (images, videos, or text blocks). Google recommends under 2.5 seconds.

First Input Delay (FID) / Interaction to Next Paint (INP): how quickly the site responds to user interaction: clicking a button, tapping a link. A responsive site should react in under 200ms.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): how visually stable a page is as it loads. Unexpected shifts, like a button moving just as you try to click it, damage both user trust and ranking signals.

These metrics aren’t abstract. They tie directly to user behaviour: a slow LCP leads to drop-offs, poor INP frustrates users, and unstable layouts drive mistrust.

From a design and build perspective, achieving strong performance means:

Optimising media: serving appropriately sized, compressed, and responsive images (e.g., WebP/AVIF formats) and deferring non-critical assets. But do not lazy-load the LCP element!

Clean code: avoiding bloated page builders or unnecessary scripts that weigh down performance. Especially avoid JavaScript bloat (code libraries and plugins, for example).

Efficient hosting and caching: using modern infrastructure (CDNs, edge caching) to deliver content faster globally. Make sure you consider network speeds and device usage.

Prioritising critical content: ensuring key above-the-fold elements load first, keeping the user engaged while the rest follows.

Navigation and site architecture

Strong site architecture ensures both users and search engines can move through content intuitively. Poor navigation creates friction for people and confusion for crawlers.

Three core principles matter most:

Logical hierarchy: content grouped under clear categories, supported by a clean URL structure.

Internal linking: connecting related pages to distribute authority and guide both users and search engines deeper into the site.

Broken links: monitor and fix broken links and limit redirects where possible, both internally and for incoming backlinks.

XML sitemaps and breadcrumbs: helping Google understand relationships between pages and giving users orientation.

Accessibility and user experience

Accessibility ensures every visitor can get the most out of your content, while user experience signals directly feed into search visibility. Google evaluates engagement metrics such as bounce rate and dwell time, and both are influenced by the usability of your site.

Key elements to address:

WCAG compliance: following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (currently WCAG 2.1) for headings, alt text, and keyboard navigation.

Readable design: ensuring colour contrast ratios meet minimum standards (4.5:1 for body text) and text is legible on all devices.

Consistent interaction points: buttons, forms, and CTAs that are predictable and easy to use with different input methods.

To get a quick sense of how your site performs, tools like WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool) or axe DevTools can highlight common accessibility issues. While they don’t replace a full audit, they offer a clear starting point for discussion with designers and developers.

Importantly, web developers should take care when striking a balance between accessibility and SEO. Trying to keyword stuff into alt and title attributes for SEO purposes can harm accessibility. Use a page reader to hear what a non-sighted user would hear. 

Responsive and mobile-friendly design

With Google’s mobile-first indexing, the mobile version of your site is effectively your “main” website in the eyes of search engines. A site that doesn’t adapt seamlessly across devices risks poor rankings and frustrated users. Consider:

Fluid layouts: content should reflow automatically to fit different screen sizes without distortion or awkward scrolling.

Touch-friendly design: buttons, menus, and forms must be large enough to tap with a thumb, spaced to avoid accidental clicks.

Optimised media and code: compressed images, adaptive image sizes, and lean scripts to ensure fast load times on mobile connections.

Readable text and spacing: body text should be legible without zooming, with sufficient white space for easy scanning on small screens.

To check how your site performs, tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights give instant feedback on usability issues and speed bottlenecks. These tests highlight practical improvements, from font sizes and tap targets to load performance on 4G/5G networks.

The best CMS for website performance

Your content management system (CMS) is more than just a publishing tool; it provides the foundations of performance, functionality, and flexibility. 

A bloated or restrictive CMS can slow your site down, make on-page optimisation clunky, and limit your ability to adapt to new search priorities like AI visibility.

This is why we build with Craft CMS. Unlike plugin-heavy platforms such as WordPress, Craft is lightweight, flexible, and designed to scale.

💡 Read more about why Craft CMS is our CMS of choice in 2025 (and always!)

In short, it gives developers complete control over code and structure, while giving marketers an intuitive interface for publishing content. That combination means:

Faster performance: no reliance on dozens of third-party plugins that bloat load times and have the potential to cause security concerns.

Cleaner SEO foundations: structured fields and flexible content models make optimisation straightforward.

Design freedom: sites aren’t constrained by pre-built themes, so the design can be truly bespoke.

AI Search: The New Frontier of Visibility

What is AI Search?

Until recently, search meant lists of blue links. Now, tools like Google’s AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, and Perplexity answer users directly. They pull content from multiple sources, stitch it together, and present it in a conversational format, citing brands and websites by name.

That shift means visibility isn’t just about “ranking” anymore. It’s about being recognised as a credible source that AI models choose to include in their answers. 

AI Search is reshaping how people discover information:

Fewer clicks: users often get what they need without leaving the search results.

Higher trust barrier: only brands with authority and consistency are likely to be cited.

Entity-based visibility: instead of chasing keywords alone, it’s about how well your brand is understood and referenced across the web (on Reddit, for instance).

How to build a website ready for AI Search

While there’s no guaranteed formula - this is still a new thing - there are practical steps that improve your chances of being surfaced in AI-generated answers:

Structured content: use schema markup (FAQ, HowTo, Product) to make pages easier for machines to navigate and understand.

Entity signals: be consistent in how you name and describe your brand, products, and services.

Authoritative content: create resources that answer questions comprehensively, the type AI systems draw from when forming answers.

Strong technical SEO: fast, secure, mobile-friendly sites remain a baseline requirement.

One thing we’ve noticed is that the SEOmatic plugin blocks a few AI crawlers by default. This is something to be aware of as you want these bots to be able to access, parse, and serve your website in AI-generated answers. 

AI Search isn’t a passing trend. Investing in technical SEO, brand authority, and structured content today makes your brand more likely to appear not only in search rankings but in the AI-driven results shaping discoverability.

Conclusion: Web Design for Visibility in 2025

Well, firstly, no one should be treating SEO as an afterthought in 2025. That means, search performance and visibility (AI-generated results) start at the design stage. The way your site loads, the customer journey, how accessible it is, and how credible and trustworthy it is for both users and crawlers are important factors.

It’s a fairly simple message. A website can’t just look good as a visual representation of your brand; it has to be navigable and perform well. All of this should be considered from day 1.