We rebuilt czaban.dev from scratch with SEO as the primary constraint. Before writing a line, we audited five small software agency websites to understand what they were getting wrong. The findings were consistent across all five.
Most small dev agencies are invisible to the searches that should find them.
What the audit looked at
The five agencies in this teardown all fit the same profile: two to eight person teams, custom software as the core offering, founder-led, no dedicated marketing. Names are anonymised. The patterns are real.
Audit criteria:
- Meta title and description quality
- H1 targeting. Does it match any real search query?
- JSON-LD structured data presence and validity
- Core page content depth
- Internal linking and sitemap completeness
- Mobile rendering at 375px
Finding 1: The H1 is almost always a tagline
Agency A's H1: "We Build. You Lead."
Agency B's H1: "Crafting Digital Futures."
Agency C's H1: "Code That Works."
None of these match a search query a founder would type. When someone is looking for a dev shop to replace their Airtable setup, they do not type "crafting digital futures." They type "custom internal tool builder" or "replace airtable with custom software" or "small dev agency CRM."
The H1 is the most indexed text on the page. Using it for a tagline instead of a search target is a self-inflicted penalty.
Finding 2: No structured data at all
Three of the five sites had zero JSON-LD. No Organization schema. No FAQPage. No BreadcrumbList.
The two that had structured data had invalid JSON-LD: mismatched @type declarations, missing required fields, and in one case a schema.org URL that returned a 404.
Google's Rich Results Test scored all five as ineligible for rich snippets. The two with structured data scored worse than the three with none, because invalid schema is read as noise.
For a service page targeting "custom software for founders," a valid FAQPage schema with five specific questions and answers is the difference between a blue link and a rich result with expanded FAQ below the title.
Finding 3: The "Services" page is a list of bullets
Agency D's services page had: Web Development. Mobile Apps. API Integrations. Cloud Deployment.
Agency E's services page had: Custom Software. Dashboards. Automation. DevOps.
Both pages were under 300 words. Neither page answered a single question a founder would have before booking a call: How long does it take? What does it cost? Who is it for? What happens after the first version?
A services page that cannot answer those questions is not a sales page. It is a placeholder.
Finding 4: No case study pages
Four of the five agencies had a portfolio section. All four showed screenshots and project names. None had a page that explained the problem, the decision tree, the result, and the measurable outcome.
Screenshots of UIs do not explain what the tool replaced, why the client needed custom software instead of an off-the-shelf solution, or what the impact was. A founder looking for evidence that an agency can solve their specific problem cannot find that evidence in a screenshot.
A case study page that includes the breaking point, the build timeline, and the receipt ("month-end reconciliation went from a full day to minutes") is the kind of content that converts. None of the five agencies had this.
Finding 5: Mobile rendering breaks on the services page
All five sites had mobile rendering issues. The most common: a services page that looked clean on desktop and had a horizontal overflow at 375px. Text was partially clipped. A CTA button was half off screen.
Mobile accounts for over half of search traffic in most markets. A page that breaks at 375px loses half its audience before a word is read.
What the correct setup looks like
After rebuilding czaban.dev with these problems in mind:
- H1 on every service page targets a real founder search query
- FAQPage JSON-LD on every service page with specific, answerable questions
- Case study pages for each project with breaking point, build timeline, and measurable result
- Sitemap includes all service and portfolio URLs
- No horizontal overflow at any breakpoint
The SEO substrate is not a growth hack. It is the minimum legible surface area for a search engine to understand what you build and who you build it for.
If a founder types "custom software for founders" and you are not on the first page, the agency that is will get the call.
The five agencies in this teardown are real. Names and identifying details are anonymised.