How we run an SEO audit

An SEO audit is a structured review of how well a site can be found and understood by search engines, and by the people using them. We run one at the start of most search engagements, because it turns a vague sense that rankings could be better into a specific, ordered list of things to fix.

What an audit covers

We look at four areas. The technical layer comes first: how the site is crawled and indexed, how quickly pages load, whether the mobile experience holds up, and whether anything is quietly blocking search engines from reading the site. These issues tend to cap the results of everything else, so they are worth finding early.

On-page work is next. We review titles, headings, internal links, and the way each page signals what it is about. Small, consistent improvements here often move more than a single dramatic change.

Then content. We map the pages you have against the topics your audience actually searches for, and note where there are gaps, thin pages, or several pages competing for the same term. The goal is a clear picture of what to write, merge, or retire.

Finally, competitors. We look at a handful of sites that rank for the terms you care about, to understand what they cover and where there is room to do better. This is context, not a scoreboard.

What you receive

You receive a written report, not a raw export. It lists the findings in plain language, groups them by area, and orders them by expected impact and effort. Each item says what the issue is, why it matters, and what the fix involves. If something needs a developer, we say so.

How to act on it

An audit is only useful if it leads to work. We recommend starting at the top of the prioritized list: the changes that are high impact and low effort, then the ones that need more time. Some clients take the report and implement it themselves; others ask us to do the technical fixes and on-page work as a project or an ongoing retainer. Either way, the report is yours to keep.

The point of an audit is not to produce a long document. It is to give you a short, honest path from where the site is now to where it could be — and to make the first few steps obvious.