Business owners ask me this all the time. The answer depends on whether your site loses visitors or never gets any.
At a glance
Redesign your website first if it is costing you customers today: broken on mobile, confusing, or no clear way to call. Fix your SEO first if the site works but nobody finds it. If you're starting from near zero on both, build them together.
Based on weighing this decision for local service businesses, including my own.Picture a homeowner on a phone. The menu covers the page, the number isn't tappable, and the services list still shows work you stopped doing in 2019. More traffic just sends more people to that page. Contractors feel this most, so I wrote up what good contractor website design needs to get calls.
A site that takes five seconds to load or never says what city you serve has the same problem. If you're pricing a new one, here's how much a website should cost for a small business.
If the site loads fast, says what you do and where, and has a tap-to-call button, a redesign won't help if nobody sees it. Search "plumber near me" or your own trade and city. If you're not on the first page or in the map pack, the work is getting found on Google, and more and more inside ChatGPT and Gemini answers. Before you hire anyone for that, read what to ask an SEO company before hiring. For the budget side, here's how much you should pay for SEO services.
Plenty of businesses start with a Facebook page and no website at all. Then the order matters less than building both together, instead of hiring two vendors who never talk. A site built without SEO usually needs rework later, which costs more. Here's how to choose a web designer for small business work, and why to pick one who builds for search from the start.
I bill websites and SEO as one. See how I approach both together, or read how generative engine optimization works for the AI-search side.
Get a free Website + AI Audit. I review your site, then ask ChatGPT and Gemini the questions your customers would and note who they recommend. You get a plain answer on which problem costs you more.