CSS Order Property: How to Keep Your Web Designs Beautiful and SEO-Friendly

When you’re designing a web page, it might be tempting to rearrange heading and content content elements to match the visual layout you want to achieve.

But here’s the thing. This effects the HTML structure of your website, and the order of your HTML matters — a lot.

For SEO and accessibility.

When your content flows logically in the code, it’s easier for search engines to understand what your page is about. Same goes for screen readers: they need to read things in the right order to give users the best experience.

And when you start to mess with it to make the design look “just right,” you risk confusing both Google and your users.

The good news?

You don’t need to sacrifice a clean, semantic HTML structure for great style!

With the CSS order property (used in Flexbox or Grid layouts), you can visually reposition elements on the screen without breaking the HTML structure.

And with that, everyone wins! Google’s happy, screen readers are happy, and your design still looks fab.

Let’s break it down some more.

Create Better HTML Structure (And Why That Matters)

Your HTML is the bones of your website. It’s what search engines read first. It’s how screen readers make sense of your content. And it’s the foundation of good SEO.

So when you’re laying out a page, it’s essential to think structure before style. Here’s what that is meant to look like:

• Headings (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) follow a clear hierarchy.
• Content (which could be paragraphs, images and other elements) is grouped meaningfully and flows in a logical, meaningful order.
• The most important information appears earlier in the source code.

The common mistake? Beginner designers accidentally mess up this structure by manually moving elements around to try and match the visual layout they want to create.

That might look fine on the front end of the website — but to Google? It’s chaos. To a screen reader? It’s confusing. To your SEO? Ouch.

Visually Reorder Elements Without Breaking Structure

Say your awesome design calls for a subheading (like an intro sentence or tagline) to sit above your main <h2> section heading — but from an SEO standpoint, you know the <h2> should come first in the HTML.

Rather than manually dragging the elements around within your page builder to make it display a certain way (and hurting your SEO in the process), you can leave the structure intact and use the magic of CSS to change how it looks!

This is where the CSS order property really shines! It means you can:

• Keep your <h2> before your subheading (potentially a <h3> or <p> in the code),
• Style the subheading to visually appear above it on the screen.

Here’s what you gain from taking this approach:

• Maintain proper heading order for SEO
• Support screen readers and accessibility
• Still hit that perfect visual layout

Everyone wins! Google’s happy, screen readers are happy, and your design still looks fabulous.

Let’s dig in to an example and learn more about how to implement this cool CSS trick.

Step-by-Step: Using CSS Order to Reorganise a Section

Step 1: Create your HTML elements

To get started, you need to add the HTML elements to your page section. In this example, a <h2> element has been added for the main heading and then two <p> elements.

Quick Note: Kadence Blocks are being used as part of this demonstration but the principles used apply to any website setup.

The “Section Tag” paragraph element has then been individually styled (using the CSS settings available in the block) to look different to the body text.

Step 2: Add a CSS Class to the element

Next, a class needs to be assigned to the “Section Tag” paragraph text so it can be targeted using CSS. To keep it simple, this example uses section-tag.

Step 3: Add the CSS custom code to your website

The next step is to add the required CSS code to create the desired design layout. It can be added to the WordPress customiser, a page builder’s Custom CSS area, or the stylesheet.

The code used in this example:

.section-tag {
order: -1
}

Be aware that all HTML elements are given the default value of 0. In this example it is just the single “Section Tag” paragraph element that is to be moved to the top, so the value -1 can be used. You can see the effect below.

Check that out! The section tag looks like it’s above the heading — but the HTML structure stays clean and SEO-friendly.

You can double check that by right clicking and choosing the Inspect option from the drop down menu. We can see below the order in the HTML structure remains as the <h2> heading and then the two <p> elements.

If the arrangement of elements is more complex, you will need to target them individually and assign a unique order value to each one to display in the sequence needed.

Start Mixing Good SEO With Great Design

Design is all about creativity — but great web design blends beauty with brains.

By keeping your HTML logical and letting CSS handle the layout magic, you’re not just creating better-looking pages — you’re building smarter, faster, more SEO-friendly websites.

So the next time your design calls for a quirky content order and you’re tempted to shuffle your elements around and break your HTML structure?

Pause. Breathe. Let CSS do the heavy lifting instead.

Your future self (and your clients’ Google rankings) will thank you.