How Architecture Project Pages Can Help Win the Next Project

Key takeaways

• A strong architecture project page does more than show photos. It states the project type, location, client sector, challenge, scope, and services in readable text, so a prospect and a search engine both understand what you did.
• Google understands an image using its alt text, computer vision, and the words on the page, so a gallery with almost no text is much harder for search and AI systems to understand, retrieve, and match to a specific project need.
• For Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, the same SEO foundations apply, and Google says no special AI markup or separate optimization is required. Other AI search tools such as ChatGPT and Perplexity use their own retrieval and source-selection systems, but clear, specific, well-sourced content gives all of them better material to cite.
• You can publish a useful project page without breaking confidentiality by agreeing what may be shown, generalizing the client and location where needed, and getting written permission for anything sensitive.
• Apply one reusable template to every project and give each page a clear way to inquire. If you want a second set of eyes on your portfolio first, book a free Growth Opportunity Review.

Why a beautiful gallery is not winning you the next project

A gallery impresses the people who already found you. It gives a prospective client, a search engine, and an AI assistant almost nothing to read, which is why a portfolio full of photos so rarely produces the next inquiry.

Most architecture project pages we review are built like an exhibition. A project name, sometimes not even that, and a set of large photographs. The work looks the part, and for a visitor who already knows the firm it confirms the quality. The problem is everyone who has not met you yet. A prospect trying to decide whether you handle their kind of project cannot tell from a photo whether you have done a heritage addition, a custom home on a difficult slope, or a mixed-use building through a hard approval. The image shows the result. It does not explain the work.

Search engines have the same problem, for a mechanical reason. Google reads text to understand a picture. In its own words, “Google uses alt text along with computer vision algorithms and the contents of the page to understand the subject matter of the image,” and “the text that's near images can help Google better understand what the image is about and what it means in context to your page” ( Google's image SEO best practices and the Google SEO Starter Guide). A page with beautiful photography and no words gives those systems far less to match against a client's search, so the people it was meant to reach have a much harder time finding it.

A project page is more than an archive of finished work. It is a business-development asset, and it should be built to help win the next project.

What every architecture project page should include

At minimum, every project page should state the project type, the location, the client sector, the challenge, the scope, and the services you delivered. Each of those answers a question a future client is already asking.

Think about what a prospective client needs to know before they trust you with their project, and write it down on the page. The project type tells them whether you do their kind of work. The location tells them you work in their area. The client sector, whether it was a private homeowner, a developer, a municipality, or a business, tells them you understand a situation like theirs. The challenge tells them how you think. The scope and services tell them exactly what working with you includes, from concept design through construction documents, permits, and contract administration.

Say it plainly. “Two-storey addition and full interior renovation of a heritage home in Oakville” tells a client and a search engine far more than “Residence.” Google's guidance on page titles is the same discipline: a good title is “unique to the page, clear and concise, and accurately describes the contents of the page,” and headings exist to “help users navigate your pages” (Google SEO Starter Guide). Write the page for the person deciding whether to call you, and the search value follows.

Tell the design and approval story, because that is your expertise on show

The most persuasive part of a project page is the thinking behind the design and the approvals you worked through to get it built. That is the experience a competitor cannot copy and a stock photo cannot fake.

Clients hire an architect for judgment, not just drawings. So show the judgment. Describe the design response, the key moves, the materials, and the decisions that solved the client's problem. If the project involved sustainability measures, energy performance, or an accessibility challenge, explain what you did and why. This is where a project page earns belief.

The approval story matters just as much, and most portfolios leave it out. A site plan approval, a committee of adjustment or minor variance, a heritage permit, or a demanding building-permit review is exactly the kind of hurdle that worries a prospective client. Showing that you have guided a project through it is powerful proof. Google's guidance on helpful content is built around this idea. It asks whether content “clearly demonstrate[s] first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge,” and says that among experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust, “trust is most important” ( Google on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content). A project page that walks through a real design and a real approval demonstrates all of it at once.

Connect each project to your wider expertise and the words clients use

Every project page should link to your related capability and describe the work in the plain words clients actually search, so a single project also advertises everything else you do.

Three moves turn a standalone project page into part of a system. The first is related expertise. A page about one custom home should say, in a line, that you design custom homes across the region, and link to where a reader can see more. The second is language. Write the words your clients use, custom home, addition, adaptive reuse, tenant fit-out, site plan approval, net-zero, rather than internal jargon, because the natural phrase is what someone types into a search. The third is internal linking. When you link between your own pages, use descriptive text, since that link text “tells users and Google something about the page you're linking to” (Google SEO Starter Guide). “Our approach to website and portfolio design” works. “Click here” tells no one anything.

Make the next step obvious on every project page

A project page should always offer a clear, low-friction way to start a conversation about a similar project. Without it, the page can impress a prospect and still lose the inquiry.

We see this constantly. A firm's best project page holds a visitor's attention, earns their trust, and then just ends, with no next step and nothing to click. The visitor admires the work and leaves. A project page should close the way a good meeting does, with a clear path forward: an invitation to discuss a project like this one, a way to request a consultation, a link to start. The lead generation and follow-up work that supports a firm's growth begins on the page itself, at the moment a prospect is most interested. Give them somewhere to go.

How stronger project pages get you found in Google and AI search

Described project pages give search engines and AI assistants text they can read, match to a client's search, and link to. A gallery with little supporting text gives those systems far less explicit information to match against a client's question, however good the work is.

Start with the biggest misconception, that Google's AI results need a separate strategy. For Google, they do not. Google is direct about it: “the best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI features in Google Search,” and there are “no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.” You do not need special markup or “AI text files”; there is “no special schema.org structured data that you need to add” ( Google on AI features and your website). As Google puts it, “from Google Search's perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO.” The work is the same work: helpful, readable content.

That statement is specifically about Google. The other tools your clients use each retrieve and choose sources their own way. OpenAI says “ChatGPT ranks search results using multiple factors intended to help users find relevant, reliable information” (OpenAI on searching the web with ChatGPT); Perplexity describes itself as “searching the web, identifying trusted sources, and synthesizing information into clear, up-to-date responses” (Perplexity on how it works as an answer engine); and Google's Gemini models can use Google Search grounding and provide citations, while Gemini apps include Google Search as a source in research experiences such as Deep Research (Google AI for Developers on grounding with Google Search, and Gemini Apps Help on Deep Research). None of them promise to feature your page. What they share is that clear, specific, well-sourced text gives every one of them more to understand, trust, and cite, while a page of images alone gives them far less to work with.

What is new is how that content gets surfaced. AI features break one question into several, using a “query fan-out” technique, “issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources,” and then show “prominent, clickable links to relevant web pages that support the information in the response” (Google on AI features and its generative AI optimization guide). The practical result for an architecture firm is that a project page which clearly answers a narrow question, who designs heritage additions in a specific town, what a variance involves for a custom home, can be pulled into an answer and linked, even when it is not the top classic result, and a page with real descriptive text gives it far more to draw on than a gallery does.

Many of your clients also search locally, with queries like “architects in Burlington” or “architects near me.” Google says local results consider how relevant a business is to the search, how far it is from the searcher, and how prominent or well known it is, and that “businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results” and that “more reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking” ( Google Business Profile Help on improving local ranking). Project pages that name real locations and project types feed the relevance side of that, while a complete, accurate Google Business Profile carries the local signal. Kept consistent, both strengthen your local visibility and authority.

Page performance still matters, especially for image-heavy architecture portfolios. Heavy, poorly optimized project photography is a common performance problem on architecture sites, especially on a phone. Google predominantly “uses the mobile version of a site's content, crawled with the smartphone agent, for indexing and ranking” (Google on mobile-first indexing), and its Core Web Vitals thresholds for a good experience are a largest contentful paint of 2.5 seconds or less, an interaction to next paint of 200 milliseconds or less, and a cumulative layout shift of 0.1 or less (web.dev on Core Web Vitals and its note on the interaction to next paint update). Compress and size your project images properly, so the portfolio that shows your work also provides a strong mobile page experience.

How to publish project pages without breaking client confidentiality

You can publish a useful, discoverable project page without revealing anything a client wants kept private. The key is to agree what may be shown before you publish, and to generalize the rest.

Architecture work is often sensitive. Private residences, non-disclosure agreements, unbuilt or competition schemes, and clients who do not want their name or address public are all normal. None of that stops you from writing a project page that helps you get found.

Get written permission before you publish a project, and agree exactly what may appear: the images, the client's name, how precisely you name the location, and whether any figures can be shown. A page can be complete and discoverable while staying at the level of project type, challenge, scope, services, materials, and approach. Where a client needs privacy, generalize. Name the sector rather than the client, the city or region rather than the street address. Never publish a budget or a private figure a client has not cleared, and never imply an endorsement a client did not give. Handled this way, confidentiality and discoverability are not in conflict: search engines and future clients get the words they need, and your client keeps the privacy they were promised.

Treat the table below as a starting point, not legal clearance. Before publishing, check the client agreement, any non-disclosure or publicity restrictions, and the usage rights for photography, renderings, and any other third-party material.

A reusable project-page template you can apply to every project

Use one repeatable structure for every project, so each page is complete, consistent, and discoverable without being reinvented from scratch. Here is the template we recommend to the firms we work with.

The point of a template is that a good project page stops depending on whoever happens to write it. Every project runs through the same ten elements.

First, a project title that names the type and location, unique and descriptive. Second, a one-line summary of what it was and who it was for. Third, the brief or the challenge, including the real constraints of site, program, and approvals. Fourth, the scope of services you delivered. Fifth, the design response, the key moves and materials. Sixth, the approvals and process you handled, at the level the client has cleared. Seventh, the images, each with a real caption and descriptive alt text, placed next to the text they relate to, since Google “extracts information about the subject matter of the image from the content of the page, including captions and image titles” (Google's image SEO best practices). Eighth, a link to your related expertise. Ninth, a clear inquiry path. Tenth, a confidentiality check before anything goes live.

One caution worth keeping in mind. Structured data can help a search engine parse a page, but it is not a shortcut and it is not an AI-visibility trick. Google's own rule is blunt: “Don't add structured data about information that is not visible to the user, even if the information is accurate” (Google's introduction to structured data). The visible, described content on the page is what does the real work.

Turn your portfolio into your best source of new work

A described, well-structured portfolio keeps working long after a project is finished. It gets found for the searches your future clients make, gives an AI assistant something real to cite, and tells the next prospect that you can do their project before they ever pick up the phone. That is the difference between a portfolio that records your work and one that generates it.

We have seen it happen. In our work with Lima Architects, we built search visibility around the firm's priority project types and its Halton Region markets, turned the portfolio into a genuine inquiry pathway, created clearer paths from discovery to real business inquiries, and put a custom project-management system behind the growth. The firm now holds top-three Google results for the architecture searches that matter across its region. That came from a connected system built around described, discoverable project pages, not from any single tactic, and we would never present one firm's outcome as a guarantee of another's.

If you want a second set of eyes on your portfolio before you invest more in it, book a free Growth Opportunity Review and we will show you where your project pages are losing work and what to fix first. If the bigger question is where your next projects come from at all, start with how architecture firms can build a project pipeline beyond referrals.

Frequently asked questions

How many projects should we put on our website?

Fewer projects, described well, beat a large wall of thumbnails. A prospective client does not read forty gallery tiles; they look for two or three projects like theirs and want to understand them. Choose the projects that best represent the work you want more of, and give each one a full page with the story, the scope, and the context.

What if a project was never built, or was a competition entry?

Unbuilt and competition work still make strong project pages, as long as you label them honestly. The design thinking, the response to the brief, and the problem you solved are all real expertise, whether or not the building went up. Mark the page clearly as a concept or competition entry so no one is misled, and write it with the same structure as a built project. For many firms, a competition scheme is some of their most ambitious work, and hiding it wastes a genuine credential.

Do we need professional photography for our project pages?

Good photography helps a project page persuade, and it can also support discovery in visual search. But photography alone rarely explains the project type, location, challenge, scope, or services. Use descriptive page text, captions, and appropriate alt text to give search and AI systems explicit context about the project, whatever photography you use.

Should each project be its own page, or one long portfolio page?

Give each significant project its own page. A dedicated page can carry its own descriptive title, answer one specific kind of search, and be linked to on its own, which a single long portfolio page cannot do well. One page trying to cover every project blurs that signal and makes each project harder to find.

How do our project pages work with our Google Business Profile?

They do different jobs, so keep both. A project page proves you do a particular kind of work, which a profile cannot show in detail. Your Google Business Profile carries the map and local presence a project page cannot, and it is where reviews live. The practical move most firms miss is to keep the two consistent: the same firm name, locations, and project focus on both, so a local search finds you and the described work that convinces someone to call.

Can ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini find and cite an architecture project page?

They can, but none of them guarantees it, and each retrieves and chooses sources its own way, so there is no single trick that places you in all of them. The practical answer is the same for every one: give them something worth citing. A described project page with the type, location, challenge, scope, and outcome in plain text is real evidence an answer engine can quote, while an image-only portfolio gives it very little to go on. Write the page as a clear, trustworthy answer to a real client question, and you have done the work that helps across Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini alike.

References

1. Google Search Central. Image SEO best practices.
2. Google Search Central. SEO Starter Guide: The Basics.
3. Google Search Central. Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content.
4. Google Search Central. AI features and your website, and Google's guide to optimizing for generative AI features on Google Search.
5. Google Search Central. Intro to how structured data markup works; Mobile site and mobile-first indexing best practices.
6. web.dev. Web Vitals: overview of Core Web Vitals, and Interaction to Next Paint is officially a Core Web Vital (March 2024).
7. Google Business Profile Help. Tips to improve your local ranking on Google.
8. OpenAI Help Center. Searching the web with ChatGPT.
9. Perplexity Help Center. What is an answer engine, and how does Perplexity work as one?
10. Google AI for Developers. Grounding with Google Search (Gemini API); Gemini Apps Help. Use Deep Research in Gemini Apps.
11. Lime Advertising. Lima Architects case study.
12. Lime Advertising. Marketing and growth for architecture firms.