The IPQ Field Guide

SEO for architects

Run ads and you get clients now, which is why every smart firm runs them. SEO is the other half: the channel that keeps handing you projects off a page you wrote a year ago, while you sleep, with the clicks costing nothing. It pays slower, then it pays forever. Most firms never build it, which is exactly why the ones that do pull ahead.

Arseniy VolosevichFounder, IPQmedia·Updated Jul 14, 2026·8 min read

Here's the part that should change your mind. The top organic result on Google takes about 27.6% of the clicks, roughly as many as the next two results combined (Backlinko's study of four million searches). Around 96% of all clicks happen in the top ten. Page two of Google is where links go when they want some privacy.

So "ranking" is not a vanity metric for a firm. It is the difference between being the obvious answer to a question your future client is typing right now, and not existing to them at all.

Why firms skip the one channel that compounds

Because it is slow, unglamorous, and it doesn't light up a dashboard this week. Running Meta ads gets you leads the moment you switch them on, which is exactly why you should be running them. SEO is the part that compounds underneath: it feels like nothing for months, then quietly becomes the cheapest pipeline you own.

Think of it the way you think about a building. Ads are the work that gets the place open and earning now. SEO is the foundation that keeps it standing for decades. You want both, and you, of all people, already know you don't skip the foundation.

Ads buy you demand today while search builds demand that keeps arriving. The page you're reading is an example of the second kind, which is a little on the nose, but it is also how you found us. Where this sits in the bigger picture is laid out in architecture marketing, and how it plugs into a full pipeline is in lead generation for architects. (And when you want the top of the results page before the rankings arrive, you can rent it, which is Google Ads for architects.)

Your two buyers don't search the same way

Most SEO advice treats every searcher as one generic person. Architecture has two, and they type very different things into the box.

If you do residential work, your client is usually a homeowner doing this once in their life, and they search emotionally and early. They Google "how much does it cost to design a house," "do I even need an architect for an extension," "best architect in [their city]." They are researching for months before they speak to anyone.

Rank for those questions and you become the firm they already trust by the time they fill out a form. They didn't shop you against three others. You were just the one who answered.

If you do commercial work, your client is a developer or business owner with a shortlist already half-formed. They search with intent, not feelings: "[city] commercial architect," "office building architect firm," "[their sector] architects." They are comparing, fast, on page one. If you are not on that page, you are not on the shortlist they build from it, and you will never know the project existed.

We split these out properly in marketing for residential architects and marketing for commercial architects, because the keywords, the pages, and the proof each one wants are not interchangeable.

The local layer almost everyone gets for free and ignores

Both buyers search local. "Architect near me," "[city] architect," "architecture firm in [neighborhood]." That intent is as warm as search gets: the majority of local searches like this end in a call or a visit within a day. Yet most firms have a half-empty Google Business Profile, no reviews to speak of, and a name that shows up nowhere on the map pack.

Claiming that profile, filling it out, adding real project photos, and asking happy clients for a review is a few hours of work that quietly outranks a year of guesswork. It is the closest thing to free money in this whole field, and it sits there untouched. The full playbook is Google Business Profile for architects.

The three levers that actually move rankings

Strip away the noise and SEO is three things working together. Skip any one and the other two underperform.

1. Pages that answer real searches

Google ranks pages, not firms, and it ranks the page that best answers the thing someone searched. A portfolio answers nothing. "Look at our work" is not a query anyone types. The firms that win build pages around the questions their buyers actually ask, what an architect costs, how the process works, what a particular building type involves, and they answer the question better than the page currently ranking.

That is the entire game, and it is mostly patience plus knowing things your competitors are too busy to write down. What those pages look like, and what to publish first, is content marketing for architects.

2. A site Google can actually read

Architecture sites are gorgeous and frequently invisible. Heavy image galleries that take eight seconds to load, text baked into pictures so search engines can't read it, builders that render the whole site in JavaScript that crawlers struggle with. Beautiful to a visitor, a blank wall to Google.

The technical floor is unsexy and load-bearing: a site that loads fast, that a crawler can read without running code, with clear titles and clean structure. Get this wrong and the best content in your market still loses.

3. Authority, which mostly means other people vouching for you

Google trusts pages that other trusted sites and people point to. For a firm that means real links and mentions: press on a finished project, a directory listing that isn't spam, a partner or supplier who features you, genuine reviews. You don't need thousands. You need a handful of credible signals that say this firm is real and respected, which, conveniently, is also true.

What about AI answers eating the clicks?

Fair worry. Google now answers some questions itself in an AI box above the results, and that box does take clicks. One 2026 analysis found it can cut clicks to the top result by more than half when it appears. But the defense is not some new dark art.

These AI answers are built from the pages already ranking well, so the firm that ranks #1 is the firm the AI quotes and links. Google's own Danny Sullivan put it plainly: good SEO is good GEO. You don't chase the robot. You become the source it reads.

How long this honestly takes

Longer than you want, shorter than the excuse for never starting. Google's own guidance, from Maile Ohye, has long been that SEO takes four months to a year: you implement the changes first, then see the benefit. So no, this is not a faucet you turn on Friday. The upside is the part nobody mentions: once a page ranks, it keeps bringing projects for years without you topping up a budget.

A firm that started two years ago is harvesting now. A firm that starts today is two years from the same. The best time to plant the tree was last season. The second best is today.

The traps that look like SEO

• Stuffing your city and "architect" into every sentence until the page reads like a hostage note. Google has punished that for a decade, and it lowers rankings, it does not raise them.
• Buying cheap links by the hundred. That is how sites get penalized, not promoted.
• Spinning up fifty near-identical "[city] architect" pages with the town name swapped in. It is thin, it is templated, and it is exactly the pattern Google's spam policies target.
• Ranking for words no buyer searches. "Award-winning bespoke architectural solutions" wins you nothing because nobody types it.
• Treating the technical floor as someone else's problem, then wondering why beautiful content never moves.

A few honest answers

Is SEO worth it for architects?

Referrals are the best clients you'll ever get, and a pipeline you don't control. SEO catches the buyers your referral network never touches, the ones searching right now who have never heard your name. It doesn't replace word of mouth. It stops your growth from being capped by it.

Do people really Google for an architect?

The serious ones do, constantly, just usually before they reach out, while they're still deciding whether they need a firm at all. By the time they call, the deciding is done. SEO is how you get to be in the room for that part.

Should architects do SEO or paid ads?

They do different jobs, and you want both. Ads get you in front of buyers immediately and bring leads the moment they're live, which is why they're the fastest way to fill your calendar. SEO is slower to start but builds an asset you own, pulling in clients off pages that keep ranking long after. Smart firms run ads for speed and SEO for compounding, side by side.

Is SEO dead now that AI answers questions?

No, it moved. The AI box takes some clicks, but it assembles its answers from the pages already ranking, so the winners changed shape instead of disappearing. The firm that ranks is the firm the AI quotes. What died is lazy SEO, thin pages and keyword stuffing, which was dying anyway.

Start building the asset, or keep renting

Search demand for what you do is already there. The only question is whether your firm is the answer people find, or the one they never see because someone worse ranked first. If you'd rather have the content, the technical fixes, and the local presence built and run for you than reverse engineer it between deadlines, that's the part we handle for architecture firms.