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Your agency knows how to make its clients visible. For itself, it's harder. On Google, “communication agency” followed by a town leads first to directories, agency rankings and matchmaking platforms. I'll be blunt: those websites hold the first page. Below them, agency websites nearly all look alike, with the same words and the same promises. A business owner who opens five can't remember which one they just read. I work on your website so it says what you do, for whom, and what your clients got out of it.
15 years in SEO
4 books on SEO and GEO
200+ sites tracked every day
1M / month visits to my e-commerce site
They trusted me with their visibility
Darty
Eurofins
Cegid
EBP
CNP Assurances
Ingram MicroYour result, read by a business owner comparing five agencies
A business buyer is looking for an agency to redo his logo and website in Angoulême. Your website comes up third, below an agency ranking and a matchmaking platform. Its title says “Creative agency” and its description talks about meaning and boldness. Nothing sets you apart from the agencies that follow. Rewrite both.
Fig. 1. Three results for an agency. The first two are lists. (The buyer wanted to know who would design his logo. Your description told him about your world.)
What this means for you. I rewrite the title and description of each page so they show your services, your typical clients and your town, instead of the stock phrases every agency uses.
SEO for a communication agency is the work that makes the agency visible on Google when a business owner or communications manager looks for a provider for a specific need. It relies on clearly named specialities, one page per service and per type of client, detailed client case studies and a team that's introduced. It's judged by appointment requests from advertisers who match your target, not by visits or internship applications.
The problem
For “communication agency” and a town, the top results are lists: directories, rankings, platforms selling introductions. Your agency may appear there, with three lines and a rating. On this broad search, your website won't take their place, and the Google map takes up the rest of the screen.
A big image, a sentence about creativity, six icons, a mosaic of logos. The business owner sees this page at every agency they consult. So does Google: it finds no text that sets your agency apart from another, and so no reason to show it for a specific search.
The agency's own website is the last job on the list. The case studies are dated, the team shown has changed, the blog has stopped. It's understandable: your days are sold to your clients. Prospects, though, judge your work on a website that's no longer up to date.
An audit, for real
The site below doesn't exist, but its flaws do: they're the five I spot most often. Hover over a number.
We give meaning to your ideas
A 360-degree creative agency, we imagine bold, tailor-made brand experiences.
Discover the agencyFig. 2. Fictional site, reconstructed. Any resemblance to yours would be a good reason to call me.
What your customers type
Here are six plausible searches around a communication agency. Take them as examples. Your real list depends on your specialities and will be drawn up by the audit.
What works
I ask you to choose two or three specialities: a type of service, a sector, a client size. They go at the top of the home page and in the titles. An agency that claims to do everything doesn't show up for any specific search.
Each service you sell has its own page: who it's for, how the project runs, who works on it, what's delivered, examples. A list of words under icons isn't a page as far as Google is concerned.
A logo proves you had that client. It doesn't say what you did. Each case becomes a page: the starting point, what you proposed, what was produced, what the client says about it. It's content your competitors can't copy.
When three of your clients work in the same trade, you have enough to write a page for that trade. It brings together the case studies, the sector's specific constraints and the services those clients order. A prospect from the same sector recognises themselves from the title.
A business owner is buying a working relationship with people. I introduce the team by name, role and work. I also set up the Google Business Profile, with reviews requested at the end of each project. It answers searches that include a town name.
What costs dearly
“360-degree brand strategy” or “community activation” don't match any search an SME owner makes. They type “redo my logo” or “brochure for my business”.
The portfolio is beautiful, and Google can't read any of it. Prospects don't know what you were asked to do or which part was your work. Three paragraphs per project change that.
An agency website wants to impress. If the text only appears after an animated scroll or a long load, some visitors leave first, and Google reads the page poorly. The animation should come after the content.
Articles on this year's design trends interest your peers and students. Your client is more likely wondering how long a visual identity takes or how to prepare a brief.
The method
Four steps. I treat you the way you treat your clients: with a schedule and a named person in charge on your side.
One-minute test
Five frank questions to find out whether support makes sense in your situation. Sometimes the answer is no, and I'll tell you.
What it brings in
A ranking doesn't pay a salary. What counts is what it brings: enquiries, customers, revenue. Move your page up and see what it could bring in.
Example assumptions, open to challenge: 300 searches a month for a communication agency in your town, 3% of visitors make an enquiry, one enquiry in three is signed (this varies a lot from one trade to another), €6,000 per client. Click-through rates by position are rough estimates, and they've been shifting since Google started showing AI answers above the results. Redo the calculation with your numbers
Possible revenue€0
Close to home
In Charente, communication relies on well-defined sectors. Angoulême brings together schools, studios and workshops around images and print. Cognac keeps brand, label and packaging trades going, geared towards export. In between, in the villages, people search for an agency with the name of the nearest town. I live between Cognac and Paris, I know this département, and that's the scale I work your pages at.
The town's studios, schools and events make images a familiar subject in Angoulême. An agency based here can show its work in detail. It also needs to explain simply what it sells to the owner of a nearby SME, who doesn't come from that world.
Around Cognac, needs revolve around brand identity, bottle design, a multilingual website. If you already work for producers or their suppliers, one page per type of need shows it. Check with each client what you're allowed to publish.
In small towns such as Jarnac, Barbezieux, Ruffec or Confolens, people look for an agency for a concrete need: a logo, a website, a shop sign, a council newsletter. Write the towns you travel to and the starting budgets you accept.
Beyond Google
A business owner now explains their situation to an AI such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Mistral before consulting anyone. For example: “I'm taking over a joinery business near Angoulême, I need to redo the name, the logo and the website. Which agency can help me?”. The AI describes the steps of such a project, then sometimes puts forward a few names.
To choose those names, it reads agency websites, their Google Business Profiles, directories and the local press. If your website says the same thing as all the others, it has no reason to pick you. “Agency in Angoulême, brand identities and websites for building trades and SMEs, five detailed case studies” gives it a reason. “360-degree creative agency” doesn't.
Question asked to an AII'm taking over a joinery business near Angoulême. I need to redo the name, the logo and the website. Which communication agency should I contact?
Three possible answers for this business takeover:
Fig. 3. Reconstruction, names hidden. This is the spot we aim for: on the list, with the most precise description.
Three typical cases
The three agencies below are fictional. They show where I put the effort first. Your plan will depend on what the audit reveals.
They work through recommendations and their website is an image portfolio.
It offers everything, from video to websites, and gets enquiries with no budget.
It's well known among winegrowers in its region and unknown elsewhere.
In practice
Pricing
The fee depends on four things. I give you a precise amount after a free first thirty-minute conversation.
Fancy a game?
A giant takes up the whole first page of your market. It has five weak spots. Take the coin and slide it into the machine.
INSERT COINSLIDE THE COIN INTO THE SLOT
Fig. 4. Sixteen seconds. No towns were harmed in the making of this game.
Together, let's devour your competitors.
One by one, and in order. Every spot gained makes the next one easier to take: that's why it keeps growing. See the method
Who you're talking to
My name is Kévin Papot. More than fifteen years in the job, four co-written books, and the Newp agency, co-founded in Charente. I also run my own online shops, in France and internationally: one of them went from zero to a million visits a month.
Before we talk tags, we talk margin, average basket and profitability. When you book a call, I'm the one who picks up.
FAQ
For “communication agency” and the name of a big city, it's unlikely, and I won't claim otherwise. For a service, a sector or a mid-sized town, an agency's page can appear among them. These searches bring fewer people, and better-informed prospects.
First check the listings that already exist under your name. They should be accurate and say the same thing as your website. For paid promotion, I advise testing it for a short period and counting the real enquiries.
Because it's hard to judge your own website. I bring an outside view and a method. If your team knows how to apply my recommendations, it does so itself, and I check the result.
You don't have to turn clients away. I only ask you to choose what the website puts forward. An agency can stay generalist in its business and specific in its pages. Without that choice, I have no searches to target.
You can tell the story of a project without naming the company: the sector, the size, the brief, what was produced. A named case is more convincing, but an anonymous case is still far more useful than a logo. Get written agreement for each named case and each visual.
A starting budget per service filters out enquiries that don't suit you. If you'd rather not put a figure on anything, at least describe how a quote is built. You alone decide what you publish.
No. I don't touch your art direction. I ask for the text to be present in the page, readable without waiting for an animation, and for each page to have a clear title. Your creatives then find the form.
Your team has the material and knows how to write. I provide the structure, the searches to target and the questions each page must answer. I then proofread to check that Google and a busy business owner find the same thing there.
The Google Business Profile and the rewritten home page can work within a few weeks. Service and sector pages generally take several months to settle in. I don't set any timeframe in advance, and I show you every month what came in.
Yes, I co-founded one, Newp, alongside my work as an independent consultant. I've been doing SEO for fifteen years and have followed more than 200 websites. What I don't know is your clients and the way you work, and you'll explain those to me.
See also
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