Grow your practice with SEO for architects.

    What we do / See how you rank / Your SEO ROI / Who we are / FAQs

    What we do

    See how you're ranking

    You know which architecture firms are winning the big commissions in your area. But do you know how your website measures up to their in terms of SEO? Search for your practice below and see exactly how you stack up on traffic, rankings, backlinks and site speed with real data.
    We gather data on architecture firms from a combination of sources: Ahrefs and DataForSEO for keyword rankings, domain authority and backlink profiles, a direct crawl of each firm’s website, and PageSpeed Insights for load time and technical performance. Traffic figures are modelled from keyword rankings and estimated click-through rates, so they represent a snapshot of organic search visibility rather than verified Analytics data. That said, they’re a very reliable indicator of how a firm is performing in search relative to its competitors.
    It may be that we haven’t indexed your firm yet, particularly if you’re part of a smaller or newer architectural practice. Get in touch and we’ll add you to the database, or run you a free SEO audit that covers your site and your closest competitors in detail. Similarly, if there’s a competitor missing, let us know who you’d like to compare against and we’ll add them. Or you could get in touch for a free SEO audit that will give you an even more detailed picture of where you stand relative to any firm you ask us to compare yours with.
    The tool works best when you’re comparing like for like. An eight-person commercial architectural practice and a two-person residential studio serve very different markets, so benchmarking them against each other won’t tell you much. Try to choose firms that compete with you for similar project types, targeting similar locations with local SEO, or at a similar scale. If you’re not sure where to start, the “compare to average” toggle gives you a useful sense of where you sit relative to the broader market rather than specific rivals.
    Domain rating is a score out of 100, calculated by Ahrefs, that reflects the strength of a website’s backlink profile: essentially, how many other sites link to it and how credible those sites are. In practical terms, a firm with a higher domain rating is better positioned to rank for competitive search terms like “architect in Leeds” or “heritage architect Manchester.” It’s one of several SEO ranking factors, but it’s one of the most meaningful ones, and it’s very hard to build quickly.
    Architecture websites are often image-heavy by necessity; you’re showcasing your work, and that work needs to look good. But large image files and bloated page builders can wreck your load times, and slow sites are penalised by Google regardless of how good the content is. A beautiful website that takes four seconds to load will consistently underperform a plainer one that’s better optimised. Site speed sits alongside traffic and authority in this tool because sometimes the SEO gap between you and a competitor has nothing to do with content or links, it’s a technical issue that’s entirely fixable.

    SEO ROI calculator

    Architecture firms spend years building a reputation through word of mouth and referrals. SEO builds the same kind of trust online. Put your numbers in below and see what a steady increase in organic traffic could realistically mean for your architectural practice.
    Search for your architectural practice in the box at the top to pull in your estimated monthly organic traffic. Then add your average monthly enquiries from the website, your typical project value, and the traffic increase you want to target. The calculator works out how long it would take for the additional revenue to cover the cost of an SEO campaign.
    The calculator uses your own inputs alongside projected growth figures based on how SEO typically performs for architectural practices. It models that growth across twelve months, reflecting the reality that early months involve a lot of groundwork before rankings start to shift. The projections are structured estimates rather than guarantees, but the assumptions are consistent and the model reflects what we actually see with clients.
    Estimated organic traffic figures come from Ahrefs and Semrush, which model organic search visibility using keyword rankings and click-through rates. If you have access to Google Analytics or Google Search Console for your practice website, entering your verified monthly traffic figure will give you a more precise calculation than the estimate.
    SEO for architects tends to have a long runway, partly because project values are high and search volumes are lower, and partly because the work an agency or consultant has to do to help you rank for terms like “residential architect in York” or “heritage conversion specialist” requires building authority over time. The calculator shows the month where cumulative revenue from additional traffic overtakes the cumulative cost of the campaign. For most practices that point falls somewhere between months six and ten.
    A modest traffic uplift might involve technical fixes and optimising your existing project pages. A more ambitious target means sustained content production around your specialisms, link building through architecture press and industry directories, and ongoing authority work. The bigger the goal, the more the work involved. We make pricing for our SEO services straightforward, so you can get a clear sense of it when you run your numbers above. Or get in touch for an answer instead!

    Who we are

    Rooted in Manchester

    Maybe you’ve tried doing SEO yourself instead of focusing on what you do best. Maybe you’ve invested in SEO and been given the runaround by an agency that knows how to send invoices and not much else. Or maybe you’re just not seeing the kind of return you want to see from your website. We speak to business owners just like you every day.

    We’re based in North Manchester, between Prestwich, Blackley and Cheetham Hill, right next to Heaton Park. From here, our team works with businesses just like yours across the city and beyond, putting clear plans in place, doing the work properly, and reporting on progress in a way that makes sense. 

    Your local SEO partner

    From Salford to Stockport, Oldham to Wigan, businesses across Greater Manchester trust us to make them more visible online. So whether you run a dental practice in Denton, an estate agent in Eccles, or some other business that starts with the same letter as where it is, our local SEO strategies can help you get found.

    We optimise Google Business Profiles, create location-focused content, build the right local backlinks, and structure websites to perform wherever you operate across Greater Manchester. 

    Click the interactive map to find out more about SEO where you’re based.

    Jamie Fallon

    My name's Jamie, I've been in SEO since 2016. Since then I've worked freelance, at agencies, and in-house as well as on my own websites - and now at Pollinate!

    Emily Shepherd

    Hi, I'm Emily! 👋🏻 I'm a passionate SEO content manager and writer with 6 years' agency and in-house experience. I'm in charge of content here at Pollinate.

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    Architect SEO FAQs

    Can SEO generate enquiries for an architecture firm?
    Yes, SEO is a great match for architecture. Most people spend a long time researching before they contact a firm, looking at portfolios, reading about different approaches, trying to understand costs and timelines. SEO puts you in front of those people during that research phase, on the searches that indicate genuine intent. A homeowner searching “architects for house extension in Leeds” is not browsing casually. Ranking for searches like that, consistently, generates real enquiries from people who are already partway through their decision.
    The honest answer is that trying to rank everywhere with a single page rarely works. Google wants to see that your content really is relevant to a specific location, not just that you’ve mentioned a few place names. The most effective approach is building dedicated pages for each area you work in, each one written with real local relevance rather than a find-and-replace job. Done properly, those pages become some of your highest-performing assets and compound in value over time. The exact same applies to your services, which are better separated too.
    Yes! Large national firms optimise for broad, high-competition terms and can neglect local search or more niche service offerings almost entirely. That’s where smaller regional firms can win. Someone searching for keywords like “architects in Sheffield” or “listed building specialist in York” wants a local firm with local knowledge, and Google knows that. A focused local SEO strategy targets the searches where you already have a natural advantage, rather than trying to out-muscle firms with ten times your budget.
    The main reason an architecture firm might not have many reviews is if they never ask. Most happy clients would leave one, they just need a prompt and a direct link that makes it as easy as possible. Timing matters too. Asking at the right moment, when a project has just completed and the client is pleased with the result, makes a significant difference to how many people actually follow through. A steady stream of recent genuine reviews also carries more weight with Google than a batch of old ones, so building reputation management into your overall SEO process is worth the small effort it takes.
    The most valuable content answers questions your potential clients are already searching for, things like planning permission, build costs, what the design process actually looks like, and how to choose the right architect for a particular type of project. As part of our SEO services, we identify these questions and keywords and build content around them. Case studies of completed work are also powerful, especially when they’re written to rank for the type of project rather than just to look good in a portfolio. The goal is to be genuinely useful to someone who is still making up their mind, so that by the time they contact you, they already feel like they know and trust your architectural practice.
    Those star ratings used to come from something called review schema, a small piece of structured code added to your website that tells Google your review data is there and how to display it. Today, Google will find the most relevant source of reviews and apply the stars itself. Once in place they make a noticeable difference to how your listing looks compared to competitors, and a better-looking listing gets more clicks even when the ranking position is the same.
    Rankings are a useful indicator but they’re not the whole story. What you really want to see is whether the right kind of traffic is arriving at your site and whether that traffic is turning into enquiries. A good SEO report will show you which searches are bringing people to your site, how that has changed month on month, and most importantly, whether those visits are resulting in contact form submissions, calls, or other meaningful actions. If your reporting doesn’t connect SEO activity to real business outcomes, it’s not telling you enough.