SEO For Architects: How Architects can use SEO to Gain Exposure for their Practice and Projects

A supremely insightful article on the importance of SEO for Architect’s websites originally published as “Architect’s Guide to SEO — Part 1.” by Monograph – a technology company founded by architects with the mission to help every architect build a beautiful website.

The article highlights the SEO basics and best practices that every architect needs to know to help gain exposure for their practice and get more prospective clients seeing their projects. Read and Adopt.

ARCHITECT’S GUIDE TO SEO (PART 1)

More than likely you’ve heard the term SEO, but, for the uninitiated, SEO literally means Search Engine Optimization— technical jargon for a set of methods used to boost your website’s rank in Google’s search results.

Now, why should you care? Well, according to this article put out by the SEO gurus at MOZ, the top 3 positions in Google’s search results account for a whopping 55% of organic clicks, with the number one spot alone netting over 30%. Think about that, over one third of visitors click on the first result they see. Naturally, everyone wants to be number one, so we’ve outlined below 5 steps you can take to help boost your website’s ranking.

TAKE STOCK

The first step is to make sure your website satisfies the most basic SEO criteria. These are things often forgotten when new content is uploaded but play a critical role in getting your site to rank well. For example:

META TITLE TAGS

Make sure you have defined a meta title for each page. These are very important, as they contribute keywords and will be displayed in Google’s search results.

META DESCRIPTION TAGS

Make sure you have a meta description on every page. These have no keyword value, but are important for humans as they show up below your web page’s title in Google.

PAGE HEADINGS

Make sure you have headings on each of your website’s pages. These are typically headers, sub-headers and page titles (i.e. your project’s title).

PUBLISH OFTEN

Google rewards websites that stay up-to-date and frequently post new content. Now, this doesn’t mean you should just post for the sake of posting, as with most things quality trumps quantity. However, consistently
updating your website is far better than mega updates once or twice a year. This will not only help your ranking
but will make your site feel alive and provide a more engaging experience for your visitors.

UPDATE PROJECTS

Develop a content strategy that involves adding new projects periodically, set deadlines and stick to them.

KEEP THE BLOG FRESH

Set yourself a goal, if you have a blog or news section, this could be one post per month or bi-weekly.

INCLUDE KEYWORDS

Keywords help Google determine how relevant your content is to a particular search term. For example, if you’re a residential architect and your project descriptions include words like “residence”, “home”, “single-family”, and so on, you’ll likely rank higher for those search terms than say, “museum” or “library”.

MIX THEM IN

Sprinkle 4–5 key words or phrases into your project descriptions and website copy, making sure they emphasize your expertise or address your clientele.

USE IT IN A SENTENCE

Keep the keywords contextual by using them in sentences, and repeat the same concept using different wordings.

STAY LOCAL

In addition, be sure to include project locations (city, region, country) as these can help boost your rank for geographic specific searches.

BUILD BACKLINKS

Backlinks are when another website links back to your site. Here again, quality is better than quantity. Google determines a website’s rank in part by how often that site is referenced by others, essentially quality by association. While this happens organically, there are a number of ways you can generate new links on your own.

SOCIAL PROFILES

Create profiles on sites like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to promote and share your work.

ARCHITECTURE PROFILES

Check that your website URL is up-to-date in your profile on sites like LinkedIn and others.

ARCHITECTURE AWARDS

Whenever you recieve an award make sure the awarding body adds a link to your home page or project page on their website.

BLOG SUBMISSIONS

Submit your work to architecture and design sites like Livin Spaces and be sure to include a link to your website in the body text.

EMPLOY METRICS

There are any number of free and/or paid tools out there to track and manage your SEO progress. We
recommend a couple free ones below that you can start using today. Note, for both you’ll need a Google account
(fancy that).

ANALYTICS

Google Analytics. Track how many visitors your website receives, what they look at and where they come from.

KEYWORDS

Google Webmaster Tools. See what keywords your website ranks for and where in Google’s results you show up.

Hopefully that’s enough to get you started. Stay tuned for part 2, where we’ll take a more in-depth look at a couple of the sections outlined above.

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