What is on thirty agency homepages?
On 29 September 2026 we counted the headlines on thirty Dutch agency homepages. For each homepage we copied the page title and the main heading, the H1, word for word, because that is where you start when choosing a branding agency with twenty tabs open. Twenty-one of the thirty have bureau, agency or studio in the headline, often as part of the name. Four use the literal Dutch phrase "branding bureau", the local term for a branding agency. Two put the word strategy in their headline, while twenty-two mention it somewhere else on the same homepage.
The thirty are not a cross-section of the market. By our own classification, twelve of the thirty are not a brand or branding agency at all but specialists in e-commerce, marketplaces, web builds, marketing, advertising or imagery. They came in through our competitor list, and that list dates from the years when we called ourselves an e-commerce agency. So read every number below as "of these thirty", not "of all agencies".
Most headlines tell you which shelf an agency sits on. Why you should pick this particular agency rarely makes it in. This is not a verdict on their work, just a count of what was there on a given date, using a method you can repeat on your own list.
First, a word about our own interest, because it belongs at the top. Since early September our page title calls us a merkbureau, the Dutch word for brand agency. We started this count on 11 September to back that word up, and the first result was that no other agency on the list used it in its headline. That was exactly what we wanted to hear. It turned out to rest on two gaps in our own measurement.
How we counted, and the two gaps in the first count
On 11 September 2026 we fetched thirty-three agency homepages. The selection: agencies from our own competitor list, topped up with some of the names that were at the top of Google that morning for three Dutch search terms, the equivalents of "branding agency" (branding bureau), "have a visual identity designed" and "have a brand identity designed". Not every name from those top results is among the thirty; that was a choice too. Thirty pages returned readable text. For each page we recorded the page title and the H1, and counted whether a word appeared in it, including as part of a compound such as ontwerpbureau (design agency). Company names count as they appear in the headline.
On 29 September we fetched the same list again, this time presenting ourselves as an ordinary browser, and checked each page once more in a real browser. One page did not load in the browser within the time limit; for that one we used the source code. We keep both versions, with timestamps.
The first gap: three sites dropped out on 11 September. Two refused our request because our script did not identify itself as a browser, and the third returned an empty page. With the browser settings of 29 September the two refusers let us in. So the difference lay in our method, not in their sites. One is a food and product photographer. The other uses merkbureau as its own name and puts strategy in its page title. The third domain now redirects to a construction company. Within the thirty, the number of agencies calling themselves merkbureau stays at zero. But a count that misses the only hit because its own script was blocked has no business putting "zero" in a title.
The second gap is in the selection. We built the list from searches for "branding bureau" and two other terms, not for "merkbureau". Agencies using that word had less chance of making the list. The zero therefore tells you something about who ranks for "branding bureau", and little about how many Dutch agencies call themselves merkbureau. According to the keyword data we had pulled in early September, "branding bureau" gets searched more than three times as often as "merkbureau". In that same data, the difficulty score for ranking for "merkbureau" is far higher. So the word is not up for grabs; it is just that nobody on our list uses it in a headline.
The takeaway for anyone counting: a site that blocks your script still exists, and a list built from one search term mostly measures that search term. We apply the same principle, open the source before you count, to other people's figures, as in brand statistics checked at the source.
We measured ourselves with the same ruler. Our homepage's page title starts with our name and then says "merkbureau voor strategie, design en technologie" (brand agency for strategy, design and technology). The H1 opens with "Oase Creative bouwt merken die kloppen" (Oase Creative builds brands that add up) and mentions strategy in its second half. Both are unchanged since 11 September. Why we chose that word is something Louie wrote up in why we are no longer an e-commerce agency. That choice was settled before we started counting; the count was meant to back it up, and it only half did.
What shifted between 11 and 29 September?
Four of the thirty agencies changed the substance of their page title or main heading between 11 and 29 September. Two others now have a main heading that can be pulled from the source code as text, which was not possible on 11 September; whether the wording changed or only our way of fetching it, we cannot tell. On two more pages we now see a second H1 that we did not record on 11 September, because back then we only wrote down the first. The remaining pages differed by a space or a quotation mark at most.
| Type of agency | What changed | On 11 September | On 29 September |
|---|---|---|---|
| E-commerce agency | main heading | a list of channels and client types | calls itself a strategic partner |
| Marketplace specialist | page title | name plus two services | a category word plus a promise about custom work |
| Identity and web studio | title and main heading | a sentence about ambition | a sentence about the client who wants to stand out |
| Creative agency | title and main heading | described itself as strategic | lists its services, no main heading in the source code anymore |
On both dates, two of the thirty mention strategy in their headline, but they are not the same two. The creative agency dropped "strategisch" (strategic) from its title, and the e-commerce agency put "strategische" into its main heading. One studio mentions strategy on both days, in title and heading. With counts of two, that is a shift of one agency, not a trend.
The four headlines carrying the literal term "branding bureau" did not change. On 29 September three of those four were in Google's top six for exactly that search term, according to our own daily ranking scan. The fourth was still in it on 11 September. In second place sat an agency that does not carry the literal term in its headline. So you cannot say that the term earns the position.
For anyone choosing an agency, two things follow. A headline is a work in progress: agencies tinker with it, sometimes within weeks. And a comparison without a date says little. Take a screenshot or note the text with the day next to it, or next month you will be comparing something other than you think.
Two of thirty put strategy in the headline, twenty-two on the page
First, why we count the word strategy at all: we put it in our own headline. The question therefore comes out of our own interest, and you should not read the outcome as "agencies with strategy in the headline are better". What the count does show: twenty-two of the thirty homepages mention strategy, in Dutch or English, somewhere in the page source. That can be the menu, a services block or the footer. Two put it in the title or main heading.
We did not measure an explanation, but we have a hunch. The headline is written for the search box, and buyers search for a type of agency there, not for a way of working. Google builds the title of a search result from sources that include the title element, the main visual title and heading elements such as the H1. An agency that wants to be found for "branding bureau" will probably put that phrase in its title, and strategy slides down to the block below, as the first step in a process.
If that hunch is right, the headline mostly tells you which search term an agency wants to be found for. What it sells sits one layer down. That need not be a problem, as long as you know where to look.
If an agency says on its homepage that every project starts with strategy, ask what that phase delivers. A document, a workshop, or a sentence about your positioning that you then see everywhere? How long does it take and who does it? An agency that can answer that in one conversation means something by it. We explained earlier why a brand is more than its visible part, in branding is not a logo.
Our count cannot tell an agency that sells strategy as a separate service from one that lets the word tag along in a list of seven services. We count words, not meaning. You only find that difference by clicking through.
Four kinds of headline, and the question to ask for each
A homepage headline roughly does one of four things. It sticks a label on the agency, lists services, names a target group or makes a promise. We did not sort the thirty headlines into these four types. The breakdown below is a reading aid, not a measurement.
| Kind of headline | What it tells you | What it looks like | The question to ask |
|---|---|---|---|
| Label | which shelf the agency sits on | a type of agency, sometimes with a city | who do you work for most often? |
| Service list | what they make | three or four services in a row | which of these services is your core? |
| Target group | who they work for | a client group in a few words | do I belong to it, and which case studies go with it? |
| Promise | what you can hold them to | a quality of the work or the price | where can I check that? |
A label is not wrong. It just says little. "Branding bureau" tells you that you are in the right place, and in our count four agencies have that exact term in their headline. A label gets you from a hundred agencies to thirty, not from thirty to three.
A target group in the headline showed up in seven of the thirty in our count. That number is our own coding, not a word count: we checked whether the headline names a client group in so many words. Four of those seven belong to the specialists, in e-commerce, product imagery and web builds, who often name their client in the name of the service itself. Among the agencies on the list that call themselves a brand or branding agency, a target group in the headline is rarer. A headline like that takes a risk, because anyone who does not recognise themselves in it clicks away. And that is why it tells you more.
We did not count promises. Where a promise ends and a slogan begins is a judgement call, and we leave it to you. What you do with a promise is clear enough: set a promise about custom work next to three case studies, and a promise about price next to a quote. A promise you cannot check anywhere carries no weight.
Jakob Nielsen wrote in 2011 that you must clearly communicate your value proposition within 10 seconds if you want to hold someone's attention for several minutes. He was writing about web pages in general, not headlines. Our reading: on a homepage, the headline is the first place those ten seconds get spent.
The swap test: would the sentence fit under another logo?
The simplest test we know: cover the company name and read the headline. Would it also fit on the homepages of three other agencies on your list? Then it says something about the category, not about this agency.
Try it with the four headlines that carry the literal term "branding bureau". Remove the names and three of the four are interchangeable. The fourth also names a client group, and that one addition is enough to set it apart. That is not a criticism of those agencies; a category word in your title is an understandable choice if you want to be found for that word. To you as a buyer, though, it says nothing new. You already knew you were looking for a branding agency.
Headlines that pass the test often describe the client or their situation rather than the agency. You may disagree with such a sentence, but it does not fit under every logo.
A second pattern from the count: seven of the thirty homepages have no H1 with text in the source code. In one of them the H1 holds only a logo; the other six have none. That does not mean no heading is visible. Sometimes the visible main sentence sits in another element, an H2 for example. For a visitor that makes little difference; for a search engine or an AI assistant reading the page, it can mean one fewer clue about what the page is about. MDN, Mozilla's reference for web developers, says that a page should generally have a single H1 element that describes the content of the page. For a homepage, we read that as the sentence you introduce yourself with.
For a business owner making a choice, the swap test has a practical use. Do not cross agencies off because their headline is generic. Use the test to decide which question to ask in the first conversation. If an agency has a label headline, ask who it works for most often. If it has a target-group headline, ask whether you belong to that group.
How to run the count yourself in an hour
You do not need a script. A browser, a spreadsheet and an hour are enough for ten to twenty agencies. If you want thirty, set aside a bit more time.
1. Build your list. Search on the terms you would type yourself, for example "branding agency" plus your city, "brand agency" and "logo and visual identity design". Use more than one search term, or you will mostly be measuring that one term; that was our second gap. Note the agencies from the first ten results and add names you already knew or that were recommended to you. Leave out comparison sites and directories; you are counting agencies, not listicles.
2. Record the page title. It sits in your browser tab, but is often cut off. To see the full text, right-click, choose "View page source" and search for <title>.
3. Record the main heading. In the same page source, search for <h1 and copy the text. If you find nothing, write "no H1" and separately note which sentence a visitor sees as the largest heading. Those are two different things, and anyone who mixes them up can't compare their results with ours.
4. Add the date. Every row gets the day you looked.
5. Count. Make columns for the words you want to track: words for the type of agency, such as agency, studio and bureau; trade words such as branding, design and web; strategy; and a column "names a client group", yes or no. That last column is a judgement. Write down why you fill in yes, so someone else can repeat it.
6. Run the swap test. For each row, cover the name and mark the headlines that would fit under another logo.
A row in your spreadsheet then looks like this. As an example we use ourselves, measured on 29 September:
| Agency | Date | Page title | H1 | Category word | Strategy | Names a client group |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oase Creative | 29-09-2026 | name plus "merkbureau voor strategie, design en technologie" | "Oase Creative bouwt merken die kloppen", with strategy in the second half | yes (merkbureau) | yes | no |
Three traps we ran into ourselves. Some sites refuse a script but show up fine in your browser; count those by hand. Some headlines consist of single words that slide into view one after another; in the source code they then sometimes appear several times in a row. And some pages have several H1s; decide in advance whether you record only the first or all of them, and stick to it.
If you want to know what a headline used to say, the Internet Archive keeps older versions of many homepages. That shows you whether an agency moves its headline often or has used the same sentence for years.
Which question do you ask for which headline when choosing a branding agency?
The headline is a filter, not proof. Use it to turn a long list into a short one, and let what the headline does not say decide which questions you ask in the conversation.
If the headline names no client group, ask which three clients are most like you and ask for those case studies. An agency that claims to work for everyone often does have a centre of gravity; it just is not on the homepage. If the page mentions strategy but the headline does not, ask what the strategy phase delivers and whether you can buy it separately. The answer tells you whether strategy is a product or a word in a list. And if the headline promises something, ask where you can check it.
We used the same principle earlier for a very different market, in how to tell real AI consultants from the rest. There too, the homepage says little and the first conversation says a lot.
Watch for the reverse as well. An agency with a sharp headline of its own is not automatically a good agency. It has only made a choice about how it wants to be found. You see whether the work matches it in the projects and in the people who do them. Why the cheapest or most generic option rarely makes the difference is something we covered in positioning: cheap is not enough.
One last point, and it is a warning about us. We are one of the agencies you are choosing between. So take this article as a method rather than advice on whom to hire, and hold us to the same standard as the rest.
And if you run an agency yourself?
Put your own headline next to those of the agencies you compete with and ask the same questions. Does it say what you are, who you work for, or what you promise? Would it pass the swap test? And is there an H1 with text on your homepage, or does your main sentence sit in an element that was not meant for it?
Look at how crowded your category word is, too. In our count four agencies use exactly the same term, and three of them are in Google's top six. Choose that word as well and your headline will look like theirs. Retreating to a word that nobody on your own list uses is not a solution in itself. As the merkbureau example shows, such a word can get fewer searches and still be hard to rank for.
A headline is not positioning, either. Positioning is a choice your agency also shows in the clients it takes on and in the clients it turns down. The headline is the sentence from that choice that makes it onto the homepage. A new headline without that choice underneath is a new label. How that plays out when AI assistants also summarise your brand is covered in brand positioning for AI agents.
If you change your page title, expect it to show in Google. The title is one of the sources Google uses to build the title of your search result. In rebranding without breaking your SEO we measured what a name change did to search visibility across six domains.
Our own example sits in the table above, measured like the rest. Our title mentions merkbureau and strategy, our H1 mentions strategy. Neither names a client group. By our own standard that is a gap, and we are leaving it here as it was online on 29 September.
What this count does not say
It is a small group we selected ourselves. Thirty agencies from our competitor list and from the top results for three search terms, without a search on "merkbureau". Twelve of them are, by our classification, not a brand agency or branding agency. That is not a cross-section of all Dutch agencies, and agencies that position themselves on strategy may be missing precisely because of that selection.
We count words, not meaning and not quality. An agency without an H1 can do excellent work. An agency with a sharp headline can disappoint. This count only says something about the first sentence an agency introduces itself with.
Two of the numbers are a judgement rather than a word count: which headline names a client group, and which agency we class as a specialist. Someone else might reach slightly different numbers on both.
It is a snapshot. Between 11 and 29 September, four of the thirty changed their headline. A month from now this table will look different again. That is why the method matters more than the outcome.
And we are an agency ourselves. We want to be found on the same search terms, and we chose our own headline before we started counting. That is why we name no names, pass no judgement on taste and put ourselves in the same table. We do not publish the names of the thirty. We do publish the method, so you can repeat it on your own list.
If you want to see what sits under our own headline, look at what we do and how we approach brand positioning and branding. If you have counted your own headline and want to know how your brand would compare in a line-up like this, book a conversation.
