Web design and search engine optimization go hand in hand, you must have a website that both is optimized for the search engines, yet offers ease of use and simplicity to the user. Copywriting is essential to search engine optimization; this covers both facets of the "perfect" tactics to getting quality traffic to your website.
Think of web design and search engine optimization, as the "super trooper", effective and relevant content combined with the well thought out web design, should yield top search engine results when potential clients are looking for your products or services.
Web design is vital, to the success of this tactic, search engines "read" your website when looking for relevant content, so the use of images, scripting and animations do not help your battle with the competition. While relevant content, or copy, will be very valuable to the successful implementation of search engine optimization.
When designing your website keep in mind that there are two very separate users that you need to design for, search engines and the human user; search engines only read, they do not look at the colors, images other non-textual items. While you want the website to be visually appealing, do not over do it. On the other side, while the human user may not completely read all the content, you can be assured that the search engines will. This is what they use to rank your website in comparison to your competition.
Successful implementation of the combine issues will yield the best results and earn targeted traffic. While these two areas of web development can be hired out separately, it is best if you use a company that understands both very well. While some companies only specialize in web design and others in search engine optimization usually, the two do not see eye-to-eye, very different in purpose. There are a growing number of companies that are targeting both aspects of a successful website.