SEO for marketing, design and web agencies on WordPress
SEO for agencies is about proving the work: detailed case studies, specific service pages and a clear niche give prospects and search engines a reason to pick you out of thousands of agencies that describe themselves the same way. "Web design agency" plus a city is competitive, but "Shopify agency for food brands" or "WordPress agency for universities" is winnable.
Agencies also create a problem that clients inherit: "Website by" footer links on every client site. How you handle those links, and how you run SEO on client sites, matters as much as your own rankings.
Pages every agencies site needs
- Case studies. One page per project with the problem, what you did, and results with numbers the client approved. A logo wall is not a case study.
- Service pages. A page for each service you sell (web design, SEO, paid search, branding), with process, deliverables and typical timelines.
- Industry pages. Pages for the sectors you know best, linking to the relevant case studies. They match niche searches.
- Location page. For agencies with a real office, a page with the address and the local clients you work with.
- Team pages. The people doing the work, with their experience and specialisms.
Case studies are your best pages
Most agency sites say "we craft digital experiences" and show a grid of logos. Buyers and search engines both need more. Write each case study around a searchable problem ("migrating a 4,000-product store to WooCommerce without losing traffic"), explain the constraints, show the work and give results the client agreed to publish.
Link case studies from the matching service and industry pages, and use the client's name if you have permission; people search for agencies that worked with brands they recognize. Avoid unverifiable claims such as "#1 agency in Chicago". Hydrogen SEO's AI titles and descriptions, with a free account, can draft metadata for a batch of case studies that you then edit.
Footer credit links on client sites
A "Website by Agency" link in the footer of every client site creates hundreds of site-wide links with the same anchor. Google's spam policies list widely distributed links in footers and templates as a link scheme, especially with keyword-rich anchors such as "best Denver web design".
Use your brand name as the anchor, add rel="nofollow" if the link is a credit rather than an editorial choice, or skip it and ask for a mention on the client's about or partners page instead. A detailed case study that the client links to from their own news page is worth far more than the footer.
Schema and running client sites
ProfessionalService is a LocalBusiness subtype that schema.org now describes as a deprecated general type, though it remains valid and widely used. A remote agency without a public office can use Organization. Add knowsAbout for your services and sameAs for your profiles.
For client work, Hydrogen SEO's free plugin works without an account, and its migration import can bring titles, descriptions and redirects over from Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO, SEOPress and other SEO plugins when you take over a site. For AI features, the recommendation is one license key per site; credits pool at the account level. Keep staging sites noindexed and password-protected so they never compete with the live client site.
ProfessionalService schema example
A starting point for your site. Replace every value with your own, and only mark up what is visible on the page.
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "ProfessionalService",
"@id": "https://example.com/#agency",
"name": "Northbeam Digital",
"url": "https://example.com/",
"logo": "https://example.com/images/logo.png",
"telephone": "+1-303-555-0176",
"address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "1550 Wynkoop St, Suite 500",
"addressLocality": "Denver",
"addressRegion": "CO",
"postalCode": "80202",
"addressCountry": "US"
},
"knowsAbout": [
"WooCommerce development",
"Technical SEO",
"Site migrations"
],
"areaServed": {
"@type": "Country",
"name": "United States"
},
"sameAs": [
"https://www.linkedin.com/company/northbeam-digital",
"https://github.com/northbeam-digital"
]
}
Checklist
- Write a case study for every project you are allowed to show
- Include approved, specific results in case studies
- Choose a niche and build industry pages around it
- Link service pages to their matching case studies
- Use brand-name anchors and nofollow on client footer credits
- Remove "#1 agency" and other unverifiable claims
- Use ProfessionalService or Organization schema with knowsAbout
- Noindex and password-protect client staging sites
- Use one Hydrogen SEO license key per client site
Common questions
Are footer credit links bad for SEO?
They are risky when they are site-wide, keyword-rich and followed. A brand-name link with nofollow, or a mention on the client's about page, avoids the problem.
Should an agency without an office have a Business Profile?
Only if you meet clients at a real address or serve a defined area as a service-area business. Do not use a virtual office address.
Should we niche down for SEO?
It usually helps. Niche service and industry pages face far less competition than generic agency terms and convert better because they speak to a specific buyer.