We only do SEO for architects.
Not "architects and dentists and contractors." Architecture and design firms, full stop — because the way a practice wins work is specific enough that generalist SEO consistently misses it.
Most SEO agencies treat an architecture firm like any other local business: add a service page, chase a few keywords, build some links, send a report. It rarely works, and the reason is structural rather than tactical.
Architecture firms win work through portfolio, reputation, and relationships — and they do it on sites that are image-heavy by necessity, over sales cycles measured in months, from a client who is often comparing three shortlisted practices rather than searching a category cold. An SEO program that ignores all of that produces traffic that never becomes an inquiry.
SEOPals exists to work on that specific problem. We build architect SEO programs around how practices actually get hired: making the portfolio findable and fast, making the firm visible in the markets it wants to work in, and earning authority in the places the design world actually pays attention to.
Why architecture SEO is its own discipline
These are the problems we run into on nearly every architecture site we audit. None of them are exotic — but a generalist rarely goes looking for them.
- 01
The portfolio is the problem
Large, beautiful project imagery is the whole point of an architecture site — and the single biggest cause of poor Core Web Vitals. Fixing that without degrading the work is a genuine craft, not a plugin.
- 02
Projects aren't pages
Most firms publish projects as a gallery with a caption. Each one is a potential landing page for a building type, a material, a market, or a client sector — and it's usually indexed as neither.
- 03
Geography is the market
A practice licensed in three states competes differently in each. Service-area structure and local signals decide whether you show up in the metros you actually want work in.
- 04
The searcher is often qualified
Someone searching "architect for adaptive reuse" is much further along than a generic category browser. Long-tail specificity converts far better than head terms — and costs far less to win.
- 05
Authority lives in design media
Links that count in this space come from design publications, industry bodies, awards, and project features — not from generic directories or bought placements.
- 06
The sales cycle is long
A lead may take months to become a signed agreement. Judging a program on this month's form fills misreads it. We measure accordingly.
How we work
Every engagement runs the same sequence. It isn't complicated, and we'd rather you understand it than be impressed by it.
- STEP 01
Audit before anything else
We start with a full SEO audit — technical health, indexation, content coverage, local footprint, and backlink profile. You get the findings whether or not you hire us.
- STEP 02
Fix the foundation
Technical SEO comes first: crawlability, site speed on image-heavy pages, schema, and mobile performance. Content on a broken foundation is wasted spend.
- STEP 03
Build the map
On-page SEO and content strategy — turning services, building types, and projects into pages that can actually rank and actually convert.
- STEP 04
Claim the geography
Local SEO for each market you serve: Business Profile, citations, service-area architecture, and review strategy.
- STEP 05
Earn authority
Link building through design publications, industry associations, and genuine editorial placement — under the standards we publish openly.
- STEP 06
Report in plain language
Rankings, traffic, and inquiries — with what changed and what's next. No vanity dashboards, no metrics chosen because they look good this month.
The standards we hold ourselves to
SEO is an industry where the client usually can't verify the work. That asymmetry is exactly why our standards are published rather than described.
One client per market, per discipline
We won't take two competing firms in the same metro and the same specialty. If we're working with a healthcare architecture practice in a city, we're not simultaneously selling against them next door. It costs us revenue and it's the only version of this that's honest.
Published editorial link standards
We publish exactly how we acquire links, and what we refuse to do, in our editorial link standards. If an agency won't tell you where links come from, that's the answer.
No guaranteed rankings
Nobody controls Google's results. Any agency guaranteeing a position is either misunderstanding the mechanism or counting on you not to notice when the goalposts move. Our results disclaimer states plainly what we can and can't promise.
Transparent engagement terms
Our commercial terms are published in full, not revealed at signature:
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Monthly, in advance | Retainers are billed monthly, net 15. No annual prepayment required. |
| 30-day cancellation | Written notice, any time, no exit penalty. We'd rather earn the next month than trap you in it. |
| Market exclusivity | One client per metro per discipline, for the life of the engagement. |
| Deliverables in writing | Scope, cadence, and reporting defined in the agreement before work begins. |
| Your assets stay yours | Accounts, content, and data are yours. If we part ways, nothing is held hostage. |
Full terms live in our terms of service.
What we don't do
Shorter list, and probably more useful than the first one.
- Private blog networks or paid link schemes. They work until they catastrophically don't, and recovery costs more than the original program.
- Guaranteed rankings or traffic promises. See above.
- Long lock-in contracts. Thirty days' notice, always.
- Mass-produced AI content. Architecture is a field where expertise is visible in the writing. Generic content signals a generic practice.
- Working for two competitors in one market. Ever.
- Reporting designed to obscure. If a month was slow, the report says the month was slow.
On the numbers you'll see elsewhere. We describe results in aggregate across our portfolio rather than as headline figures pulled from a single best case. If you'd like the methodology behind any performance claim we make — what was measured, over what period, against what baseline — ask and we'll send it. That offer is the point: a number nobody will explain isn't a result, it's decoration.
Who we're a good fit for
- Established practices with a real portfolio — the work exists, it just isn't findable.
- Firms expanding into new markets where nobody knows the name yet.
- Specialists — healthcare, education, hospitality, residential, adaptive reuse — where long-tail intent is strong and competition is thin.
- Firms that have been burned before by a generalist agency and want to see the method before the invoice.
And who we're not
If you need leads next week, SEO is the wrong instrument — paid search will serve you better, and we'll say so. If you want someone to publish forty AI-written posts a month, we're not that either. And if your site has no completed work to show yet, the honest advice is to build the portfolio first; we'll still run the audit, but we'll tell you to come back.
Start with the audit
A free technical and content audit of your firm's site — findings, priorities, and what we'd do first. Yours to keep, whether you work with us or not.
Common questions
Do you really only work with architects?
How long before we see results?
Do you work with firms outside the US?
What does it cost?
What if we already have an in-house marketer?
Who owns the content and accounts?
Get in touch
The fastest way to start is the free audit — it tells us both whether there's a real opportunity before anyone commits to anything.
Email: info@seopals.com
Enquiries: Contact form
More on how we work: resource center · editorial link standards · results disclaimer · privacy policy