SEO for Architects
Enquiries for the projects you actually want
SEO for architects should bring in the projects you want to draw, not a stream of people asking whether they need planning permission for a shed. Someone is searching for an architect for exactly your kind of project right now. The question is whether your practice or another one comes up. We do SEO & AI for architecture practices: project type pages that rank, a portfolio Google can read, and a route from search to a first conversation.
From £499 per month on a fixed-price SEO & AI package.
- Which project types and places Google can see you for
- What we would fix first, and why
- No hard sell. A straight read on where enquiries are being lost.
Four quick answers and we will tell you what we would fix first.
What SEO for architects gets you
Nearly every private client starts with a search, and it is rarely just ‘architect’. It is ‘architect for house extension Henley’, ‘barn conversion architect Oxfordshire’, ‘loft conversion architect near me’ or ‘do I need an architect for a rear extension’. They look at portfolios, check RIBA or ARB registration, read the reviews and contact two or three practices whose work looks like the project in their head.
That makes SEO & AI for a practice different from generic SEO. A portfolio site built to look beautiful usually has almost no text Google can read, no page per project type and no page per area you work in. The practice ranks for its own name and nothing else. The job is to give each type of work you want, in each place you want it, a page that can rank, without turning the site into a brochure for a builder.
The point is not visits from students and people researching planning rules. It is enquiries from clients with a site, a budget and a project you would be pleased to put in the portfolio.
Where architecture practice websites leak enquiries
A portfolio Google cannot read. The site is a grid of images with a project name and a location. Beautiful, and invisible. Google ranks text, and a project page with two hundred words on the brief, the constraints, the planning route and the outcome ranks for ‘barn conversion architect’ in a way a photo gallery never will. The images stay. The words go underneath them.
One services page for everything you do. Extensions, new builds, listed building work, commercial fit-outs and planning applications are different searches from different clients. A single services page listing them all as bullet points cannot rank for any of them. Each type of work you want more of needs its own page, written around what that client asks.
No page for the places you work. A practice in Marlow works across Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire, and the site says so in the footer. Clients search ‘architect in Beaconsfield’. There is no page for Beaconsfield, so the practice with a weaker portfolio and a page for Beaconsfield gets the enquiry. Two or three proper area pages, with the projects you have done there, is usually enough. We built our own area pages the same way, so we know what makes one rank and one get ignored.
The homepage doing all the ranking. When the only page with any authority is the homepage, Google ranks it for everything, badly. Project type and area searches want project type and area pages. Fixing the internal linking so authority reaches those pages is often the single biggest jump a practice sees.
Nothing for the question that comes before ‘architect’. ‘Do I need an architect for an extension’, ‘how much does an architect cost for a house extension’, ‘architect vs architectural technologist’. These are the searches your future client makes a month before they search for you. A short, honest page answering each one, with your fee structure explained, ranks well, gets cited by AI tools and brings the right people to the door earlier.
Where a practice wins locally, our local SEO service supports the website and Google Business Profile as one search journey.
AI search and GEO for architects
Prospective clients now ask AI tools how to choose an architect, what an architect costs for an extension, whether they need one at all and which practices near them do the kind of work they want. The answers draw on practices whose sites explain their work in words, whose fee structure is published, whose ARB or RIBA registration is easy to verify and whose reviews and business details are consistent.
For a practice to be legible to those tools, the things a good architect explains in a first meeting need to be on the site. Project pages with the brief, the constraints and the planning outcome in text. A fees page that explains percentage, fixed fee and stage-based pricing plainly. Structured data for the business and its people. The same name, address and details across the site, the Google Business Profile and the RIBA and ARB directories. Portfolio images with alt text that says what the project is.
We treat this as part of the same job, not a separate invoice. AI SEO for architects is what good architect SEO & AI looks like now. Nobody can promise your practice will be cited in an AI answer. What we can do is make sure the tools do not have to guess what you design, where you work and what it costs.
Rather diagnose it yourself first?
Our guide to why an architecture practice is not getting enquiries walks through the same checks we run on a practice website, in the order we run them. Read it, fix what you can, and come back for the rest.
Read the guideThree services, done properly
Most practices start with SEO & AI and add paid search only for a specific push, such as a new studio or a new type of work.
SEO & AI
Project type pages, area pages, a portfolio with words under the pictures, fees content and the structured data that makes it legible.
PPC
Paid search for high-value project types when you want enquiries sooner, tightly targeted so you are not paying for students and shed queries.
Social Media
Showing the work and the people behind it, for clients who take months to decide and want to feel they know you first.
No mystery. Here’s the order.
We look at the project types you want more of against the ones you rank for, the portfolio, Search Console, the Business Profile and how an enquiry currently reaches you.
Project type pages first, then areas, then the questions clients ask before they search for you. Biggest gap first.
We write the pages that are missing, put words under the portfolio, fix internal links and structured data and sort the Business Profile.
We watch enquiries by project type, not just visits, and keep going where the right clients are still not finding you.
Fixed SEO packages, no mystery retainers and no padding. Practices with several studios may need a custom plan, and you will know why before you commit.
See the packagesWe’d rather show you than tell you
No testimonials wall. Here’s what you actually get.
We know what a portfolio page needs
We built ranking area pages for our own business, so we know exactly why a photo grid does not rank and what to put beneath it. Your images stay the point of the page. We add the words that let Google and clients find them.
A free look first
The Website Leak Review shows you where search is leaking before you spend anything with us.
No long-term lock-in
We recommend giving SEO time to work, but you can cancel with 30 days’ notice.
Straight talking
If something is not likely to move the commercial outcome, we will tell you. A bigger traffic number on its own is not the goal.
SEO for architects FAQs
Will SEO bring the right kind of project, or just more enquiries?
It depends entirely on which pages you build. A page for extension architecture brings extensions. A page for listed building work in Oxfordshire brings listed building work in Oxfordshire. We build pages for the work you want more of and leave the rest, so the enquiries follow the pages.
Our portfolio is the whole site. Do we have to fill it with text?
No. The images stay front and centre. Each project page gets a few hundred words beneath them on the brief, the constraints, the planning route and the outcome, which is what a prospective client wants to read anyway. That is enough for Google to understand what the project is.
Should an architecture practice publish its fees?
Yes, at least how they work. Percentage of build cost, fixed fee or stage-based, with a typical range. How much an architect costs is one of the most common searches before someone contacts a practice, and a straight answer gets you found earlier and filters out the wrong enquiries.
What does the Website Leak Review look at for an architecture practice?
Which project types and areas you appear for now and which you do not, whether the portfolio has anything Google can read, whether there is a page for each type of work you want, the state of the Business Profile and directory listings, and where the enquiry journey loses people. Plain-English findings, whether or not we work together.
Not an architect?
Architects are part of our professional services SEO work. See that page for the wider sector, or every industry we support through our small business SEO services hub.
Professional services SEO Every industry we coverReady for enquiries for the projects you want?
Tell us which types of work and which places you want more of and we will take a proper look at the site. Clear next steps and honest feedback, whether or not we end up working together.
Free review · No lock-in · No sales waffle
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