Each of your users is different, so why should they all see the same website?
With advances in AI segmentation, personalised user experiences are on the rise, allowing for increasingly targeted content and messaging for each audience member.
As with any technological change, this comes with risks. Most notably for marketing teams, intelligent web design requires a rethink of wider SEO strategy, ensuring that improvements to your conversion pipeline don’t come at the cost of lower traffic.
What is intelligent web design?
Intelligent web design allows a website to serve different versions of a page based on specific conditions such as user behaviour, location, or campaign origin. Unlike traditional responsive design, intelligent design can deliver distinct templates or content variants based on preset rules (or can even generate personalised content from scratch!).
To give an example, a user arriving via LinkedIn may see a different version of a landing page than someone arriving via Google Ads. Others might receive tailored home-page messaging based on their region or previous activity. The result is greater relevance and reduced friction, with each user receiving a precisely targeted experience.
If you want a full explanation of intelligent design, I’d recommend Elena Rimeikaite’s in-depth blog on the subject.
Faster editing, topical content, and improved SEO
Intelligent design allows for the delivery of highly topical experiences, a crucial factor in a successful SEO campaign. Specific user groups can be immediately segmented and targeted with fresh content based on industry trends, allowing for more relevant keywords and imagery, and an improved SEO performance. Given the importance of long-tail keywords, the ability to quickly produce content on niche trends can be absolutely transformative, and intelligent design allows your content team to do this in a targeted and focused manner.
Ideally, this ability to feature niche content is further reinforced by a user-friendly CMS that minimises friction, and allows your team to focus their time on producing content rather than publishing it. When combined, these two factors deliver a content platform that is responsive, dynamic, and laser-focused on each individual user.
Back to backend
That’s not to say there are no downsides to intelligent design. The dynamic creation of multiple personalised experiences for different user groups introduces complexity for SEO. After all, search engines need clarity. If multiple page variants exist, it becomes essential to ensure the canonical or “default” version of the page is properly structured and indexed.
Search engines typically index only one version of a page. This makes the backend configuration of metadata, canonical tags, and structured data critical. The default page must include all essential content and remain fully accessible to crawlers. If not, indexing gaps and SEO dilution may occur.
Alternative URLs for search engine context
One way of avoiding this reliance on a “default page” is the creation of multiple URLs based on each user segment. This approach can support your SEO by allowing search engines to assess each version independently, especially when you’re targeting different regions or languages.
These URLs must be deliberately and logically constructed. Avoid duplication by ensuring each version offers differentiated value. Use internal links to clarify their relationship, and apply canonical tags where needed to establish hierarchy. This approach can improve contextual relevance and ranking signals for segmented campaigns, and give search engine crawlers a clear understanding of your wider content environment.
Intelligent design and SEO: Pros and cons
Intelligent design can be a pandora’s box when it comes to SEO. However, when structured properly, it improves engagement, strengthens campaign performance, and enables deeper personalisation.
Benefits:
- Targeted landing pages allow for high-rankings on valuable long-tail keywords
- Faster testing supports SEO and content optimisation
- Adaptive layouts can better match user intent
Risks:
- Poor indexing can create crawl issues or dilute authority
- Duplicate content risks if variants are not clearly differentiated
- Publishing of topical content may also require a flexible CMS to accelerate content uploads
Intelligent design reflects a broader shift toward responsive, personalised, data-informed websites. For marketing teams focused on performance, it offers a way to move faster, speak more directly to users, and integrate SEO into every campaign touchpoint. If implemented correctly, this will improve, not damage, your search rankings amongst your target audience.
To see all the benefits intelligent design can deliver for your marketing campaigns, just get in touch with our expert team. We’d love to talk!
