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You’ve invested in a beautiful new website. The colours are perfect, the photography looks fantastic, and your homepage has just the right amount of animation. Everyone in the office loves it.
There’s just one small problem.
Nobody can find it.
This happens more often than you might think. Businesses spend considerable time and money getting their websites to look exactly right, only to discover that search engine optimization (SEO) was barely considered during development.
We’ve been designing and developing websites at Digital Tea since 1999, and there’s one lesson worth sharing: SEO and website design should be planned together, right from the beginning.
Throwing a few keywords onto a finished website isn’t much of a strategy. Neither is installing an SEO plugin and expecting Google to suddenly become your biggest fan.
And with AI-powered search changing how people discover businesses, there’s even more reason to get the fundamentals right.
Here’s how thoughtful website design can improve your visibility in traditional search results, support discovery through AI search, and help turn more visitors into customers.
SEO Starts Before Anyone Picks a Colour
A successful website begins with understanding who you’re trying to reach and what they’re searching for.
For example, an Edmonton landscaping company might assume its homepage should focus on “landscape construction.” That makes sense internally, but potential customers may be searching for “backyard landscaping Edmonton,” “patio installation,” or “retaining wall contractors near me.”
Those differences matter.
Keyword research helps identify the language customers actually use. That research should influence your navigation, page structure, headings, and content before the visual design gets too far along.
If retaining wall construction is an important service, it probably deserves its own properly developed page rather than a passing mention halfway down the homepage.
A logical structure might look something like this:
- Home
- Landscaping Services
- Patio Design and Installation
- Retaining Walls
- Residential Landscaping
- Projects
- About Us
- Contact
Individual service pages leave you with room to answer specific questions customers may have, talk about what sets your business apart, show relevant examples, and target searches with clearer intent.
Google also needs to discover those pages. Descriptive URLs, internal links, and properly organized navigation make that easier.
It’s much less expensive to plan this properly at the beginning than to reorganize an entire website after launch.
Your Images Can Contribute to SEO, Too
Here’s an opportunity businesses frequently overlook.
That beautiful photograph of your latest project can do more than make your website look impressive. Properly optimized images can help search engines understand your content and potentially attract visitors through image search.
Suppose you’re an Edmonton renovation company showcasing a recently completed kitchen.
Instead of uploading a photograph named IMG_4837.jpg, use something descriptive, such as modern-kitchen-renovation-edmonton.jpg.
Then add meaningful alternative text that speaks to what the photo is showing, commonly called alt text.
- Poor alt text: “Kitchen image”
- Better alt text: “Modern kitchen renovation featuring white oak cabinets and a large quartz island.”
What is the purpose of alt text? Its primary function is to describe images for website users utilizing assistive technologies such as screen readers. It has a secondary, but also important, optimization function that helps search engines interpret the visual content on websites. You can include things like location details when they’re genuinely relevant, but don’t add them to simply squeeze another keyword into the page.
Photographs also benefit from surrounding context. A project gallery featuring actual Edmonton renovations, with useful descriptions of the work, gives visitors considerably more information than a grid of anonymous pictures.
Don’t Hide Important Content Inside Graphics
Designers occasionally create attractive banners containing headlines, service descriptions, and calls to action embedded directly into an image.
They can look great, but there’s a problem.
Text baked into an image isn’t as accessible or reliably understood as properly implemented website text.
Whenever possible, use actual HTML headings and paragraphs layered over or positioned alongside your graphics.
You still get the visual impact, while giving search engines and assistive technologies something meaningful to work with.
And please resist the temptation to upload enormous photographs directly from your camera. Compress images, choose appropriate formats such as WebP or AVIF, and serve dimensions suited to the visitor’s device.
Your customers will appreciate the faster loading times, particularly on mobile.
Design for Real People, Not Just Search Engines
Search visibility is important, but getting someone onto your website is only half the job.
Once they’re there, can they actually find what they’re looking for?
A visitor searching for commercial roofing services probably wants to know what you do, whether you serve their area, and how to request an estimate.
They don’t necessarily want to watch a 30-second introductory animation before discovering your phone number.
Good user experience (UX) design puts important information where people expect to find it.
That includes readable text, straightforward navigation, accessible forms, logical and user-focused page layouts, and clear calls to action.
Mobile design deserves particular attention. Menus that are easy to navigate on a desktop can become frustrating on a phone. Buttons need enough space to tap, and forms shouldn’t require extraordinary patience to complete.
Google uses mobile versions of website content for indexing, so important information should remain available and accessible across devices.
A good-looking website is nice. One that people can actually use is considerably more valuable.
Make Your Website Technically Sound
There are less glamorous parts of website development that visitors rarely notice until something goes wrong.
Website speed is one of them.
Large image files, excessive scripts, poorly configured plugins, and inadequate hosting can make an otherwise attractive website painfully slow.
Developers can use tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights to identify performance problems and evaluate Google’s Core Web Vitals.
Security matters too. HTTPS, software updates, reliable backups, and properly maintained hosting are essential for protecting your website and customer information.
Accessibility considerations should also be built into the design process. Clear contrast between the words and the background, appropriate heading structures, keyboard navigation, descriptive links, and correctly labelled forms make websites usable and useful for more people.
These improvements often complement SEO, although no single technical adjustment guarantees better rankings.
At Digital Tea, our designers, developers, and SEO specialists can address these considerations together rather than treating them as unrelated tasks.
What About AI Search Optimization?
People aren’t finding businesses exclusively through traditional Google search results anymore.
AI-powered search experiences, including Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, are changing how information is presented. Some people also ask conversational AI tools for business recommendations or help comparing services.
You’ll hear terms such as Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) used to describe efforts to improve visibility in these experiences.
The terminology is relatively new. Much of the underlying work isn’t.
Google’s guidance remains clear: established SEO fundamentals, useful original content, and accessible website information are still important for visibility in its AI search features.
There’s no magic piece of code that guarantees your business will appear in an AI-generated recommendation.
Give Search Engines and AI Systems Something Useful to Work With
Consider an Edmonton accounting firm offering bookkeeping services.
A generic page stating “We provide professional bookkeeping solutions for businesses of all sizes” doesn’t tell visitors very much.
A better page might explain which businesses the firm serves, what its monthly bookkeeping services include, which accounting platforms it supports, and how onboarding works.
It could answer specific questions such as:
- What’s included in monthly bookkeeping?
- Can you work with our existing QuickBooks account?
- Do you provide bookkeeping for incorporated Alberta businesses?
Those are questions real customers might ask, whether they’re using Google or an AI assistant.
Clear, factual answers give search systems useful information to retrieve and help customers decide whether your business is appropriate for them.
Where relevant, structured data such as LocalBusiness schema can also help describe your organization in a machine-readable format.
One thing to keep in mind is that structured data is not necessarily a shortcut to guaranteed AI recommendations. It supports the information already on your website; it doesn’t replace it.
Local SEO: Make Edmonton Work for You
For businesses serving Edmonton and surrounding communities, local visibility deserves its own strategy.
Start with your Google Business Profile. Keep your business name, contact information, hours, categories, and services accurate.
Customer reviews and relevant local business listings can also contribute to your online presence.
Your website should clearly explain where you operate. If you’re an electrical contractor serving Edmonton, St. Albert, and Sherwood Park, make that information easy to find.
But don’t create dozens of nearly identical location pages with nothing more than the community name changed.
That’s not particularly useful to customers, and search engines aren’t easily impressed by repetitive content.
Instead, develop genuinely relevant local material. Project galleries, service-area information, frequently asked questions, and examples of work performed in specific communities can demonstrate local experience.
A detailed case study (or blog post) of a completed commercial renovation in downtown Edmonton is far more informative than repeatedly inserting “Edmonton commercial renovations” into unrelated paragraphs.
Local photographs and project descriptions with appropriate and descriptive alt text can reinforce that connection.
Connect Your Content, Design, and Marketing
Your website shouldn’t operate independently from the rest of your marketing.
Blog articles can answer customer questions and link to related services. Project galleries can demonstrate your capabilities. Well-designed landing pages can support Google Ads campaigns.
Even social media can play a useful role by bringing interested visitors back to relevant website content, although social shares themselves aren’t a direct Google ranking factor.
Internal linking deserves some attention here as well.
For example, if you publish an article explaining commercial roof maintenance, include a natural link in the content to your commercial roofing services page. Visitors get a useful next step, and search engines get a leg up in understanding how your content is organized.
There’s no need to turn every paragraph into a collection of links. Use them where they genuinely help.
Measure What’s Actually Working
A successful website needs more than good intentions.
Google Search Console can show which searches bring people to your website and identify indexing problems. Google Analytics 4 can help track traffic, interactions, and important conversions.
For a local service business, meaningful results might include estimate requests, phone calls, appointment bookings, or completed purchases.
If a page attracts considerable traffic but generates very few inquiries, investigate why.
Perhaps the content doesn’t answer the visitor’s question. Maybe the contact form is unnecessarily complicated.
Or perhaps the page is attracting the wrong audience altogether.
The point is to make improvements based on evidence rather than assumptions.
Frequently Asked Questions About SEO and Website Design
Should SEO be included when you start designing a new website?
Absolutely, it should. Keyword research, site architecture, content planning, site navigation, technical performance, and internal linking should all be considered during development. Addressing these early can avoid expensive changes later.
Can website images improve SEO?
Most definitely. Using descriptive filenames (before the images are uploaded to your site), relevant alt text, appropriate image formats, and useful surrounding content all help search engines interpret images. Proper file size optimization can also improve page performance and accessibility.
How do I optimize my website for AI search?
We are getting this question A LOT.
Start with strong SEO fundamentals. Publish useful, accurate content that clearly explains your services, expertise, and business information. Make important content accessible to search engines and maintain relevant structured data where appropriate. No technique guarantees inclusion in AI-generated answers.
Is local SEO important for Edmonton businesses?
Local SEO is very important for businesses serving customers in specific geographic areas. An accurate Google Business Profile, relevant local content, reviews, and clearly defined service areas can help improve visibility in local searches.
A Better Website Starts With a Better Plan
Website design, SEO, and AI search visibility shouldn’t be separate conversations happening at different stages of a project.
They influence one another from the beginning.
At Digital Tea, we’ve spent more than 25 years helping businesses and organizations build websites that look great, function properly, and support their marketing goals.
Our Edmonton team combines professional website design and development with SEO, digital marketing, custom programming, and ongoing website support.
Whether you’re planning an entirely new website or wondering why your current one isn’t producing the results you expected, we’d be happy to take a look.
Contact Digital Tea at 780-473-4600 or [email protected] to discuss your website and SEO goals.
We’ll help you build something worth finding.
