SEO for Architects

SEO for architects is the work of connecting what a practice has built up over years, its projects, its press and the trust in its name, to the words a client types while looking for someone to design a building. The hard part is picking out the future client from a crowd of students, applicants and peers.

This guide follows the search decisions a practice makes in order: which queries to target, which page answers which question, how images and press coverage can work for you and how to measure the outcome. We covered building the site itself on our architecture firm website page; here we focus only on search.

01The five query families clients use

Search traffic to an architecture practice falls into five families, and each carries a very different commercial value. The first job in SEO for architects is to sort your own queries into these families and see which ones are empty.

• Building type and place: "barn conversion architect Cotswolds", "hotel architect London", "school architecture practice". The client knows what they want built and is looking for who should design it; this is the most valuable family.
• Service and process: "planning drawings for a rear extension", "listed building consent architect", "measured survey for a renovation". The searcher wants to hand over a task, often against a deadline.
• Questions: "do I need planning permission for a side extension", "RIBA stages explained". Research before a decision, won with guides.
• Names: the practice, a partner or a single project. Referred clients and readers of an article land here.
• Professional traffic: "architecture internship", "house plan examples", "facade detail drawing". It brings students and peers, not clients, and it muddies your reports.

To see your own split, export the last sixteen months of queries from Search Console and label each row with a family. In most practices professional traffic tops the list; report it separately. The real question is whether the building type and service families show any impressions at all.

02Building a keyword map from low volume searches

For an architecture practice, a keyword map is ranked by the size of the commission behind a query, not by search volume. A phrase that tools show as almost never searched can bring the most important project of the year, so low volume queries stay on the list.

1. With the partners, list recent commissions and note the words each client used on the first call; client language differs from practice language.
2. Add the building types and areas you want to win in a second column. The gap between past work and target work tells you which pages to create.
3. Collect the synonyms clients use for each building type: "new build home", "custom home" and "self build house" are often variants of one page.
4. Open the results for every query. Are practice sites, directories or news articles on page one? The type of result tells you the format the page needs.
5. Assign each query family to exactly one target page and check that no two pages chase the same search.

One word queries such as "architect" stay at the edge of this map. They are contested and their intent is unclear. Add variants such as "architecture firm" to the map without giving each its own page. Once the map is done, SEO for architects starts with the family that brings the most valuable work and has no page yet.

03How service, building type and project pages share the work

Three page types answer three different questions, and when one tries to do another's job they compete for the same query. A service page answers "who does this kind of work", a building type page answers "have they done this before", and a project page answers "how did they do it".

• Service page: work with a process, such as extensions, listed building projects, planning applications or measured surveys; scope, stages, the documents you need from the client and common questions.
• Building type page: housing, hospitality, education, healthcare or industrial buildings; the design problems specific to that type, your approach and a filtered project list.
• Project page: the credits and story of one building, linked from its text to the relevant service and building type.
• Area page: only where you have many projects and something specific to say, such as conservation area work with one local authority.

Cannibalization, two pages competing for one query, happens most often between a building type page and the single strongest project of that type. If Search Console shows two URLs alternating for the same query, focus the project title on the project name, focus the type page title on the type and add a clear link from the project to the type page. Interior studios face different searches; we cover them on our interior design SEO page.

04Title, URL and opening paragraph on project pages

Whether a project page is found depends less on its gallery than on three small fields: the title tag, the URL and the paragraph read before the images.

• Title tag: nobody searches a project name alone. Instead of "Hollow House", combine the project name, building type and place, with the practice name at the end.
• URL: short, permanent and independent of categories; a project shown in two lists still has one address, and the category name stays out of it.
• Opening paragraph: two or three sentences on what, where, for whom, at what scale and with which design decision.
• Credit fields: year, floor area, status, client type, team and photographer as plain text; credits baked into an image cannot be read.
• Internal links: a natural link inside the text to the service and building type, not a list dumped at the bottom.

The meta description does not affect ranking directly, but it affects clicks. Replace phrases like "award winning project" with a sentence that says why the building is different, such as how the courtyard works on a sloping site. Competition reports, design and access statements and presentation texts are good raw material; the work is translating jury language into client language.

05Crawlability behind galleries, filters and scroll effects

The most common technical problem on image heavy architecture sites is that Google never reaches the projects. Project tiles are often not real links but scripts that run on click, while Google only follows links in anchor tags that carry an href attribute.

Test your own site with five questions:

• Does every tile in the project list offer "open link in new tab" when you right click it.
• If the list uses infinite scroll or a load more button, can older projects also be reached through paginated URLs.
• Does every combination of building type and year filters create its own URL, and if so, should those URLs be indexed at all.
• Is the project text part of the initial page load, or does it only appear after scrolling or clicking.
• Is the hero image lazy loaded; the large image on the first screen should never be delayed.

For filters the rule is simple. A single building type list such as "residential projects" deserves to be a page with its own introduction; combinations like "residential, 2019, completed" should stay out of the index. If you keep those combinations out with noindex, do not also block them in robots.txt, because Google cannot read a noindex on a page it is not allowed to crawl. For large hero images, aim for an LCP (the time until the largest visible element loads) of 2.5 seconds or less.

06Showing image search that you are the source

In architecture, image search is a separate front door: clients collect ideas by browsing images and click through to the source of the ones they like. For that click to reach you, the image has to be published on your site first, with the right details attached.

• File name: the building, the place and the space shown, such as the courtyard of a stone house, instead of a camera number.
• Alt text: one sentence describing what the image shows, not a string of keywords.
• Render or photo: say in the caption when an image is a visualization, so clients are not misled and built work stays distinct from proposals.
• Rights details: creator, credit line, copyright notice and license page, either as ImageObject structured data or as IPTC fields embedded in the file.
• Format and size: WebP or AVIF, with several widths for different screens.

Settle web use and credit wording with your photographer before filling in license fields; a wrong credit is harder to fix than a missing one. Upload images to your site before sending them to platforms or social media. To convert an existing archive to modern formats you can use our image converter. In the Search Console performance report, set the search type to Image to see impressions and clicks from this front door on their own.

07Google Business Profile and client reviews

For local work such as new homes, extensions and renovations, map results shape the shortlist, and the practice profile is often seen before the website.

• Category: choose the narrowest primary category that describes the real work, and add secondary categories only for services you actually offer.
• Name: the name on your letterhead and door; additions such as "extensions and loft conversions" break Google's guidelines and can lead to suspension.
• Photos: only your own projects and images you have the right to use; studio and team photos show clients who they will work with.
• Services: list your services with the same words your service pages use, so the profile and the site match.

Architects naturally collect few reviews, because a practice completes a limited number of projects each year. Build the review request into project close: after handover or completion, at a moment when the client remembers the process but is not exhausted by it. Offering a discount or gift for a review breaks Google's review policies.

Reply to every review briefly and personally, without revealing the client's identity or project details. With a negative review, explain the process in a sentence and move the conversation offline.

08Earning links from press, competitions and awards

The most valuable links for a practice are not bought; they sit in places where the work has already been published. Link work in SEO for architects usually starts by repairing existing coverage before looking for anything new.

1. Search for the practice name, the partners' names and project names in quotation marks and log every article you find.
2. For each article, note whether it links, where the link points and how the practice name is spelled.
3. Separate broken links and links to old URLs; add 301 redirects for pages lost in a previous redesign.
4. Where an article has no link or points only to the home page, send the editor a short correction request that includes the project page URL.
5. For new coverage, put the project page URL, the exact practice name and the photo credit into the press pack from the start.

Competition result pages, university crit and lecture listings, RIBA or AIA chapter event pages and exhibition catalogs are natural sources too. To find broken links left by older coverage, try our broken link checker. Directories stuffed with the word architect and bought link packages, on the other hand, weaken trust in the whole site.

09Guides on planning, consents and project stages

A private client's first search is often a question rather than a request for an architect: do I need planning permission, what is permitted development, who prepares the drawings. Guides that answer these questions put the practice in front of clients at the very start of their decision.

• Project stages: the RIBA Plan of Work stages in plain words, and what the client decides and supplies at each one.
• Altering an existing home: which changes may need permission, framed as questions to ask the local planning authority.
• Historic buildings: the difference between a measured survey, a heritage statement and listed building consent, and what each means for the owner.
• Before buying a plot: the planning history, constraints and site questions an architect would check first.

These topics touch people's safety and large spending decisions, and Google's quality rater guidelines give more weight to the expertise and trustworthiness of the author on such subjects. Every guide should therefore show the name and title of the architect who wrote or reviewed it and a last updated date. Rules differ by council and country, so tell readers which authority to ask rather than giving fixed timescales. One clear link at the end of each guide to the matching service page is enough.

10Partner pages, protected titles and verifiable claims

Clients choose an architect largely on trust in people, so a separate, substantial page for each founding architect also supports every search for the practice name.

• Profile page: education, career, projects led, publications, competition results and registration; links to publication and professional profiles.
• Name spelling: each partner's name written the same way on the site, in articles, in competition records and on social profiles.
• Titles: in the UK only people on the ARB register may use the title architect in business; in the US the title is regulated state by state. Write the correct title for designers, technologists and assistants on the team.
• Claims: verifiable facts such as years, building types, publications and award names instead of phrases like "leading practice".
• Awards: the award name, year and awarding body, with a link to the results page where possible.

The ARB Architects Code asks architects to promote their services responsibly and accurately, and we write within that frame; the final judgement on how the practice presents itself stays with you. In structured data, partners are marked up as Person and the practice as ProfessionalService, and awards can be added with the award property; test the markup before launch with our structured data tool.

11How AI assistants describe your practice

Clients now also ask AI assistants questions like "which practices in Bristol work on listed buildings". For your name to appear in those answers, the assistant needs to recognize the practice from clear sources that do not contradict each other.

• About page: the first paragraph states what the practice does, which building types it works on and where, in sentences that leave no room for guessing.
• Service pages: questions a client might ask become subheadings, each followed directly by a short, plain answer.
• Project pages: verifiable facts such as scale, year and place in plain text, not only inside images.
• Consistency: practice name, address and partners identical on every platform; conflicting details can lead an assistant to leave you out.

Nobody can say for certain which sources an assistant will pick; what you can do is multiply the sources that describe the practice correctly. A simple tracking habit: ask five or six questions about your practice name and target building types in different assistants and record the answers every quarter. We explain the method in detail on our AI visibility page.

12Measuring inquiries and setting honest expectations

Success in SEO for architects is measured by qualified project inquiries, not by visitor numbers. That means setting up measurement from day one so that client traffic and professional traffic are kept apart.

• Key events: in GA4, inquiry form submissions, phone, e-mail and WhatsApp clicks tracked separately.
• Separate content group: careers, internship and student facing pages on their own line in the report.
• Branded and unbranded: in Search Console, queries containing the practice name apart from those that do not; on the unbranded side, the impression trend for building type and service families.
• Inquiry source: a "how did you find us" field on the form, and the value of each inquiry in the practice's own tracking sheet.

A monthly report holds these four lines and the work done, not a wall of charts. On timing, honesty matters: technical fixes, project text and profile work often show effect in the first months, while climbing for competitive building type searches and building up press links can take a year. Because clients take a long time to choose an architect, someone who found you through search may call months later; looking at quarters gives a truer picture. Nobody can promise a specific ranking.

13Common SEO mistakes in architecture practices

These mistakes quietly wear down visibility even on beautifully designed sites; each comes with the alternative.

• Offering the portfolio only as a PDF: a large PDF appears in search as one document and individual projects cannot be found; give each project its own page and keep the PDF as a download.
• Forgetting old URLs in a redesign: when project addresses change, years of press links fall into 404 errors; map old to new URLs before launch and set up 301 redirects.
• Removing unplaced competition entries: an entry that did not win still shows how the practice thinks and earns links from competition pages; keep the page and state its status clearly.
• Publishing on social media first: if an image appears elsewhere first, the source signal moves there; upload to your site, then share.
• Writing the practice name several ways: abbreviations, legal suffixes and mixed spellings split the practice in search; pick one official form and use it everywhere.
• Counting total visits as success: a widely shared project or an internship post lifts the chart but not the inquiries; report client inquiries on their own.

The first two are the most costly. If a redesign is planned, make the redirect plan part of SEO for architects from the first design meeting.

14Questions for an SEO partner and your next step

A few questions quickly show whether an agency offering SEO for architects understands the field. If the answers stay generic, the method will too.

• How will you write project text; will you work from our reports and presentations or produce generic copy.
• Where will links come from; bought packages, or our list of publications and competitions.
• In whose name will Search Console, GA4 and the Business Profile be set up, and who keeps access when the work ends.
• How will the report separate student and careers traffic from client inquiries.
• Who approves text that contains titles, awards or claims before it goes live.

With us, Talha Aslan sets strategy and priorities and the team carries out the work; accounts are opened in the practice's name and no text goes live without your approval. You can read how we work on our SEO consulting page and see work in other fields on our references page. We do not yet have an SEO project for an architecture practice that we can show, so we offer a method and a timeline rather than results.

To start, send your website, the building types you want to win and a list of where your projects have been published through our contact form; we will reply with a first review and written priorities. Fixed scope packages are listed in our SEO pricing section.