The short answer: For most architecture firms, ongoing SEO or Local SEO runs $1,500 to $3,500 per month. Firms competing in a crowded metro, or running more than one office, usually land in the $3,500 to $7,500 per month range. A custom website is a separate one-time cost of $3,500 to $12,000+, and most firms bundle the build with the monthly work. Everything at Kelly Webmasters and Marketers is month to month with no long-term contract, and you own the site, the content, and the accounts.
There is no single price because there is no single architecture firm. A two-person residential practice in a small city and a fifteen-person office bidding commercial work in a metro are different businesses in different markets, and the work is priced against the market. Four things move the number most.
How crowded the market is. If six firms in your city chase the same searches, the work is straightforward. If sixty do, and half have published for a decade, every page you put up has to beat something that already ranks. More hours per month, and the biggest single reason quotes differ.
Whether you sell residential, commercial, or both. Commercial and residential are two different markets that happen to share an office. A homeowner planning an addition and a developer's project manager use different words, read different pages, and need different proof. Covering both means two sets of content instead of one.
How long the decision takes and how many people touch it. Architecture work is not bought on a first visit. A couple reads your site for weeks and argues about it. A committee reviews three firms and forwards links around. That long, reviewed cycle means the site has to carry portfolio depth, project pages, and real answers, not a contact form and a hero image. More surface, more cost.
One office or several. Two locations is two Map Pack fights, two profiles, and two sets of service-area pages. It is not one job split in half, which is why multi-office firms sit in the upper band.
The version of this argument that applies to every business is in our guide to what SEO costs. If you need the build price rather than the monthly, that belongs to what a website costs for an architecture firm.
$1,500 to $3,500 per month is where most single-office firms sit. That covers one market properly: the Google Business Profile, the service and project pages that carry residential or commercial intent, technical upkeep, review work, steady publishing, and a monthly report on what came in. Enough to compete for Map Pack position in a normal city and keep content moving.
$3,500 to $7,500 per month is for competitive metros and multi-location firms. The extra money does not buy a fancier version of the same thing. It buys more of it: more markets to hold, more pages per month, harder keyword sets where established practices already own page one, and a second or third profile to keep clean. Wide service areas land here too: work across five counties needs pages for five counties.
AI search sits inside both tiers rather than beside them: our AIO work means structuring the site so an assistant can quote it accurately. Whether it deserves real attention for a firm like yours is answered at does AI search matter for architecture firms.
Paid search sits outside these numbers. We publish no ads management fee, because the models in this industry vary: a flat monthly fee at some shops, a percentage of ad spend at others. We quote flat after a free consult, and you can read how we handle Google Ads first.
One thing to demand at either tier: proof of where the work landed. First-party lead dashboards run on more than 20 of the sites we manage, so the monthly conversation is about calls and form fills, not rankings in isolation.
It climbs when you ask for more markets, when you go after commercial work in a metro where large practices already rank, and when the current site buries the portfolio behind slow pages. That last one matters more in architecture than in most trades: your work is the argument, and if the images load badly we are rebuilding trust and rankings at once.
It drops when the target is narrow and honest. A residential firm that wants remodel and addition work in two counties is a smaller job than a firm chasing every project type within a hundred miles. Newer firms are often cheaper to work on, because there are no years of someone else's shortcuts to undo first.
As a worked example, say a firm runs at $2,500 a month for a year. That is $30,000. Whether that is a fair trade depends on your average fee and how many projects you need to add, numbers you know and we do not until we ask. The larger decision, whether the exercise is worth doing at all, is covered at is SEO worth it for architecture firms.
One optional line item for design firms: a calculator or scope checklist that gives a prospect a rough range before they call. Calculators start at $600, most workhorse custom tools run $1,500 to $4,000, and Tool Care is $75 per month per tool. Small money next to the monthly, and it gives a long sales cycle something to do in week one.
Referrals and a portfolio win architecture work. They always have. The trouble is that they arrive on their own schedule, and a slow quarter of introductions shows up in your billing months later, when the drawings that should be in progress are not. Search fills the part of the pipeline referrals leave empty: the person looking for an architect in your city tonight is planning something real, and nobody sent them.
Before you sign with anyone, do three things. Get a number for your specific market, not a package price off a pricing page. Get a written opinion on whether your current site is worth keeping or replacing. And insist the ongoing work is month to month, with the site, content, domain, and analytics accounts in your name.
You can sanity-check a quote with our what should you pay tool, see how we approach the trade on the architecture websites and SEO page, or ask for a free mockup and see a real concept before spending anything. We are Orlando-based and have worked with local service businesses nationwide since 2008. Or call or text (407) 694-2055 and we will give you a fixed-scope number for your market and your project mix.
Usually, though not always into the next tier. The two buyers search with different words and need different proof, so serving both means two sets of content. A single-office firm doing both often still sits in the $1,500 to $3,500 per month range. It is when both markets are also crowded that you move toward $3,500 to $7,500.
Adding a location adds work: another Google Business Profile, another set of service-area and project pages, another local field to compete in. That is what moves a firm into the $3,500 to $7,500 range. Because everything is month to month, we scope the second market when you are ready for it, not a year ahead.
The build is a one-time line and it comes first, because the monthly work needs somewhere to send people. What sets that number is its own question, answered on our page about what a website costs for an architecture firm. The SEO is the recurring line: $1,500 to $3,500 a month, or $3,500 to $7,500 in a competitive metro. Most firms scope the two together, month to month.
Architecture websites and SEO · How much does a website cost for an architecture firm? · Is SEO worth it for architecture firms? · What should you pay? Free pricing tool · Local SEO and the Map Pack · What SEO costs: the full guide · The plain-English glossary
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Book a free consultation → Or call/text directly: (407) 694-2055Tell us a little about the business and we will come back with an honest read: what we would fix first, what it costs, and whether you need us at all. Prefer to see work before you talk numbers? Get a free homepage mockup, built for your business, yours to keep either way.
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