00Approach
Search architecture decided before design begins.
Most studios design a site and bolt search on afterwards. We decide the structure from how your buyers search, then build the design to fit it. That is search-led design, and it is how every engagement here runs.
What “search-led” means.
Search-led design moves keyword and intent research into the discovery phase, so a site's information architecture, URL structure and schema reflect real search demand and conversion goals before visual design begins.
Discovery and architecture come first, so the site is set up to grow through organic search from the start. It earns relevant visits steadily as buyers search for what you do.
Why the order matters.
When search is an afterthought, the damage is structural. Navigation that maps to internal opinions instead of how buyers search. URLs that have to be migrated and redirected later. Pages that exist but answer nothing anyone asked. None of that is fixed with a meta-description pass.
Deciding the architecture first is cheaper. The structure is right the first time, the design is built to a brief that already accounts for demand, and there is no expensive retrofit, or quiet acceptance that the site will simply never be found.
The method, in the order we run it.
Five phases, in order: discovery, architecture, design, build, measure.
- 01
Discovery: demand and intent first
Before anything is designed, we map how your buyers search: the exact phrases, the questions, the buyer-intent terms and the gaps competitors leave open. That research is an input to the architecture, used before anything is designed.
- 02
Architecture: structure that reflects demand
URL structure, navigation, internal-linking and schema are designed around what the research found and the conversions you need. Performance and accessibility budgets are set here too, as acceptance criteria the build is held to.
- 03
Design: to the architecture, in the browser
Screens are designed to a structure that already earns its keep. You steer real, responsive pages early, while they are still cheap to change. Never a slide deck that has to be rebuilt as a website later.
- 04
Build: production code held to the gates
Typed, server-rendered, accessible code from the first commit. Every build is held to current Core Web Vitals and WCAG 2.2 AA before hand-over. The same standard this site is built to.
- 05
Measure: instrumented from launch
Analytics and conversion tracking are wired in before go-live, so organic behaviour informs decisions from day one rather than being reconstructed months later from a gap in the data.
Search is no longer one box.
Your buyers still use Google, but they also ask an AI assistant, scan a marketplace listing and read a community thread before they reach your site. The discipline that makes a page rank — clear structure, accurate content, real semantics — is the same discipline that makes it usable by an AI answer engine. We build it once, for people first; the machines follow.
When that extends to page systems at scale, it has its own scoped engagement — AI programmatic SEO.
Built into every engagement.
Search-led design is how the work is done here, whichever engagement you start with.
- Starter websites
structured around demand from the first wireframe
- Site migrations
the move is used to correct the architecture
- SaaS & AI prototypes
built so the product can be found once it works
- Digital marketing
growth on a structure that can rank
Tell us what you're building.
We'll tell you what search-led design changes for it, and give you a fixed scope before anything starts.
Start a project