The 2026 Architect SEO Checklist for Evidence-Led Audits

Check: Portfolio image delivery and page weight Evidence required: A representative sample of project pages, mobile and desktop performance traces, rendered image dimensions, transfer size, and the actual image formats served.

Pass/fail condition: Pass when critical project imagery is appropriately sized for its rendered use, deferred when it is not immediately needed, and does not prevent primary page content or navigation from becoming usable.

Fail when oversized originals, duplicate variants, or unnecessary media requests repeatedly delay real page interaction. Severity: High when the problem affects core project, service, or enquiry pages; otherwise prioritize by traffic and business importance.

Owner: Web engineering or the team that controls the image pipeline, with design review so compression does not destroy presentation quality. Corrective action: Generate modern, right-sized derivatives, set responsive image behavior, define dimensions, and load non-critical media after essential content.

The source previously cited a 30-50 percent file-size reduction as a tooling example, but no supporting source URL is present, so do not treat that range as a guaranteed result. Validation: Re-test the same templates and device conditions, confirm the intended image is served, and compare field and lab diagnostics where available.

Check: Business and organization entity markup Evidence required: Visible office information, business identity, supported structured data already present, and the rendered page content that the markup describes.

Pass/fail condition: Pass when structured data is syntactically valid, uses an appropriate supported type, and matches information visible to users. Fail when markup invents services, locations, ratings, people, or attributes not supported by the page.

Severity: Medium unless invalid markup is tied to a documented search feature the page is actually eligible for. Owner: SEO or technical lead with whoever owns firm identity and office data. Corrective action: Remove unsupported properties, align the markup with visible content, and prefer clear HTML content over markup-only claims.

Do not treat structured data as a ranking guarantee. Validation: Inspect the rendered source, test the markup with available validation tools, and confirm that changes are deployed on the intended templates.

Check: Core Web Vitals and interaction stability on project pages Evidence required: Field data when available, lab traces for representative templates, and a record of the elements responsible for slow loading or layout shifts.

Pass/fail condition: Pass when the portfolio can be read and navigated without recurring, material performance blockers. Fail when the same template-level issue is reproducible and affects important user tasks such as opening a project, reading scope details, or reaching contact information.

Severity: High for sitewide template problems; otherwise based on affected page importance. Owner: Front-end engineering with design and content operations. Corrective action: Prioritize the actual bottleneck, such as media sizing, rendering order, fonts, script execution, or layout reservation, rather than optimizing a score in isolation.

Validation: Reproduce the original test, verify the bottleneck is reduced, and monitor field data after release when enough traffic exists.

Check: Broken internal and external references in the portfolio Evidence required: Crawl output, internal link reports, and a sample of project pages with press, consultant, supplier, or award references.

Pass/fail condition: Pass when important internal destinations resolve as intended and external references are either current or intentionally removed. Fail when broken links strand users, orphan important pages, or repeatedly send crawlers to retired destinations.

Severity: High for broken internal paths to services, projects, offices, or enquiries; lower for non-critical external references. Owner: SEO or web operations with project-content owners. Corrective action: Repair the destination, update the link, remove obsolete references, or redirect a genuinely moved internal page to its closest relevant successor. Validation: Re-crawl the affected section and manually test the most important repaired paths from the rendered page.

Check: Service-specific landing pages Evidence required: Current service architecture, Search Console query patterns, enquiry themes, and examples of work that substantiate each claimed service. Pass/fail condition: Pass when each strategically important service has a distinct page with enough evidence to explain scope, fit, and relevant project experience.

Fail when unrelated services are collapsed into a generic page or when near-duplicate pages exist only to target keyword variants. Severity: High where the missing page blocks discovery for a core commission type.

Owner: Practice marketing or business development with service principals and SEO. Corrective action: Build or consolidate pages around genuine service differences, using terminology the practice can support with completed work and professional expertise.

Validation: Confirm the page is internally linked, indexable, aligned with relevant queries, and connected to supporting projects and people.

Check: Project portfolio descriptions Evidence required: A sample of priority project pages, project records, approved credits, scope notes, location context, client permissions, and Search Console data for those URLs.

Pass/fail condition: Pass when the page explains enough of the commission for a prospective client to understand project type, role, constraints, design response, and relevant outcomes without relying on images alone.

Fail when the page is effectively a silent gallery. Severity: High for flagship or strategically important project types. Owner: Project marketing with the responsible architect or principal and SEO review.

Corrective action: Add concise, accurate project context based on approved facts. The source used 500 words as an operating target; treat that as a historical writing example, not a minimum quality threshold.

Write only as much as is needed to make the project useful and verifiable. Validation: Check the rendered page, confirm project facts and credits, then monitor whether the page earns relevant impressions and supports internal paths to related services.

Check: Search intent mapped to genuine design specialties Evidence required: Search queries, service-line priorities, completed project evidence, and the firm's own terminology for sectors, building types, methods, and design approaches.

Pass/fail condition: Pass when target topics correspond to work the practice actually performs and the destination page answers the implied client question. Fail when keywords are chosen mainly for volume, prestige, or trend value without a credible service or project match.

Severity: High when irrelevant targeting consumes editorial or development effort. Owner: SEO with principals, business development, and sector leads. Corrective action: Map each priority query family to one best-fit destination and close content gaps with evidence-based pages rather than synonym duplicates.

Validation: Review query-to-page alignment, internal linking, and enquiry quality over time; revise when search demand or service priorities change.

Check: Internal links between educational content, services, and proof Evidence required: Crawl graph, rendered navigation, contextual links from articles and project pages, and the architect SEO service overview.

Pass/fail condition: Pass when a reader can move naturally from a question or planning topic to the relevant service, project evidence, professional profile, and enquiry path. Fail when important service pages are orphaned or reachable only through global navigation.

Severity: High for core commercial pages; medium for supporting resources. Owner: SEO and content operations. Corrective action: Add descriptive contextual links where the relationship is genuinely useful, remove forced keyword anchors, and keep one clear destination for each intent.

Validation: Re-crawl the site, inspect orphan reports, and manually follow the intended journey from supporting content to service evidence.

Check: Google Business Profile accuracy for real offices Evidence required: The firm's genuine office locations, published contact details, primary business category, hours where applicable, and the corresponding website pages.

Pass/fail condition: Pass when the profile represents a real eligible office and matches current first-party information. Fail when a profile is created for a nominal service area, temporary presence, or location that cannot be supported by the business's real operations.

Severity: High for inaccurate location facts; medium for incomplete descriptive fields. Owner: Local marketing or practice operations with SEO oversight. Corrective action: Correct the business information, choose the most accurate available category, and keep website location details synchronized.

Do not treat profile activity or posting frequency as a guaranteed ranking factor. Validation: Compare the live profile against the firm's website and internal location records, then verify that the correct office page is linked.

Check: Name, address, and phone consistency Evidence required: The website, major professional directories already used by the firm, and a maintained record of current office contact details. Pass/fail condition: Pass when essential office identity is consistent enough that users can recognize the same practice and location.

Fail when old addresses, disconnected phone numbers, duplicate office names, or contradictory contact details remain publicly visible. Severity: High when users could contact or visit the wrong location; otherwise medium.

Owner: Operations or marketing data owner. Corrective action: Update controllable listings, merge or close obsolete records where the platform allows, and document any unavoidable legacy references. Validation: Re-check the highest-visibility records and the corresponding location page after updates.

Check: Location pages for genuine offices and useful local context Evidence required: Proof of a real office, relevant local project experience, office-specific contact information, and meaningful content that differs from other location pages.

Pass/fail condition: Pass when each page serves a genuine location and provides useful location-specific information. Fail when city pages exist only to swap place names while repeating the same service copy.

Severity: High when thin location pages create duplication or misrepresent the firm's footprint. Owner: Local marketing with office principals, content, and SEO. Corrective action: Keep dedicated pages for genuine locations, enrich them with accurate office and project context, and consolidate nominal market pages that do not provide distinct value.

Validation: Confirm the page is unique, internally linked from relevant site areas, and consistent with public office information.

Check: Homepage image triage - High - 30 mins Evidence required: A rendered homepage, image-request list, and identification of the assets loaded before the main page becomes usable. Pass/fail condition: Pass when the heaviest avoidable assets are identified and assigned; fail when no one can explain which media files dominate initial load.

Owner: Web team. Corrective action: Resize or defer the most obvious offenders without degrading important visual proof. Validation: Re-run the same page trace after the change.

Check: Business Profile project-photo review - Medium - 10 new project photos - 45 mins Evidence required: Current profile imagery and a set of rights-cleared, accurate project images that represent the real practice.

Pass/fail condition: Pass when imagery is current, representative, and approved; fail when outdated or misleading images dominate. Owner: Marketing or communications. Corrective action: Publish only accurate, rights-cleared images and remove obsolete assets where appropriate.

Validation: Confirm the live profile reflects the intended set. This is an operational content task, not a guaranteed ranking tactic.

Check: Alternative text audit for top 20 portfolio images - Medium - 2 hours Evidence required: Priority project pages, rendered images, existing alternative text, and the surrounding captions or project descriptions.

Pass/fail condition: Pass when informative images have concise alternative text that conveys their relevant purpose and decorative images are handled appropriately. Fail when alternative text is missing where needed, duplicated mechanically, or stuffed with keywords.

Owner: Content team with accessibility review. Corrective action: Write useful alternative text based on what the image communicates in context. Validation: Inspect the rendered HTML and test a sample with assistive technology or an accessibility review workflow.

• Check: Search access through visual interfaces. Evidence required: rendered navigation, project sliders, galleries, and crawl output. Pass when important project and service links remain discoverable in standard HTML and usable without fragile interaction patterns; fail when essential content exists only behind scripts that do not reliably expose it. Severity: high for sitewide navigation failures. Owner: front-end engineering. Corrective action: use robust links and progressive enhancement for essential navigation. Validation: crawl and manually test representative templates.
• Check: Principal, team, and authorship evidence. Evidence required: named professionals, role descriptions, project credits, credentials the firm is permitted to publish, and the About or team pages. Pass when expertise claims can be traced to real people and relevant work; fail when the site relies on anonymous authority language or unsupported credentials. Severity: high for practices competing on specialist expertise. Owner: marketing with principals and compliance review. Corrective action: add accurate attribution and link people to the projects or services they genuinely support. Validation: verify names, roles, credits, and internal links against approved firm records.
• Check: Project imagery linked to project context. Evidence required: portfolio indexes, image links, captions, and project-detail destinations. Pass when prominent project imagery leads to a useful page or clearly communicates its role; fail when images act as dead ends or obscure the underlying project evidence. Severity: medium to high depending on portfolio reliance. Owner: design and web teams. Corrective action: connect visual discovery to complete project information. Validation: follow representative image paths on mobile and desktop.
• Check: Known recurring failure patterns. Evidence required: issue logs, crawl and index data, and the architect SEO mistakes guide. Pass when repeated problems such as thin project galleries, orphaned pages, unsupported markup, or stale office data have a named owner and validation step; fail when the same defect returns after redesigns or content launches. Severity: based on affected business pages. Owner: SEO program owner. Corrective action: document the root cause and add release checks that prevent recurrence. Validation: confirm the defect remains resolved after the next relevant deployment.