Service / S-03

A fixed-scope SEO audit

A one-off review of where your site stands and what to do next, written so you can act on it yourself, hand it to your developer or ask us to do the work.

An audit is the right place to start if you are not sure whether SEO is worth investing in, if a previous agency left you with reports you did not understand, or if you want a second opinion before signing a long contract with anyone.

The four areas we review

1. Technical health. Crawling, indexing, speed, mobile usability and structured data, as described on our technical SEO page, at the depth your site needs.

2. Content and intent. We take the searches your customers actually use, check which page on your site is meant to answer each one, and see whether it does. Often two pages compete for the same phrase while another important service has no page at all.

3. Local presence. Google Business Profile, citations and location pages, if local customers matter to you.

4. Authority. The sites linking to you, how they compare with the businesses that outrank you, and whether anything in your link profile looks risky.

What the report looks like

The first page lists the five to ten changes that matter most, in the order we would make them. Everything after that is supporting evidence. Each recommendation has an effort estimate and a plain description of the likely benefit. We avoid putting invented percentages on outcomes, because nobody can promise those honestly.

Whiteboard covered in a hand-drawn website structure plan with sticky notes

After the audit

You keep the report. Some clients implement it themselves, some pass it to their web developer, and some ask us to carry on with the work monthly. All three are fine. The walkthrough call is there so that whoever picks it up understands why each item is on the list.

Who an audit suits

Businesses new to SEO that want to know where they stand before committing to monthly spend.
Firms unhappy with a previous agency that want an independent view of what was done and what was missed.
Companies planning a redesign or platform change, so they know what to protect.
Owners whose traffic or enquiries have dropped and who want a diagnosis rather than guesses.

We audit sites for businesses of all sizes across Derby and Derbyshire, from a single-page joiner's site in Ashbourne to a supplier with thousands of part pages.

How the audit runs, step by step

Short call. We ask about your customers, your services, where your enquiries come from and what you are worried about.
Access. Search Console, Analytics and website admin, plus a list of competitors you know about.
Data gathering. A full crawl, twelve to sixteen months of Search Console data, ranking checks, a review of your Google Business Profile and a look at your link profile.
Analysis. We work through the four areas described above and note every issue with evidence.
Prioritisation. We cut the list down to what matters most and order it.
Report and walkthrough. A written report and a recorded call explaining it, with time for questions.

Sample of what goes in the report

Section	Typical finding	What we recommend
Technical	Old product pages from a previous platform still indexed	Redirect to current equivalents, remove from sitemap
Content	Two service pages competing for the same search	Merge into one stronger page, redirect the other
Local	Profile category too broad	Change primary category, add services
Authority	Few links from local or industry sites	List of organisations to approach first

How long it takes and what affects the price

Most audits take two to three weeks from receiving access. The price is fixed in advance and depends on:

The size of the site, in pages and templates.
Whether local search is in scope.
Whether the site has a history of migrations or penalties to untangle.
Whether you want an implementation estimate as part of the report.

Common mistakes with audits

Running an automated tool and treating the output as an audit. Tools flag hundreds of items without knowing which ones affect your business.
Commissioning an audit and filing it. The value is in acting on the first five to ten items.
Fixing the easiest items first instead of the most important. The report orders items by value for this reason.
Auditing without Search Console data. It is the only first-hand source on how Google sees your site.

How we measure an audit's value

An audit has done its job if, a few months later, the top recommendations are implemented and the specific problems it identified are resolved. We are happy to run a short follow-up check after you have made changes, so you can see what moved.

After an audit, most of the work falls into technical SEO, content or local SEO. If you are comparing agencies, our guide to choosing an SEO company in Derby lists the questions we would ask.

Questions we are often asked

What access do you need for an audit?

Read access to Google Search Console and Google Analytics, and ideally a login to your website's admin area. If you do not have Search Console set up, we will help you set it up first; it needs a few weeks of data to be most useful.

Is an audit useful if we are about to redesign?

Yes. It tells your web designer which pages and content are carrying your search visibility, so the new site keeps them. We can tailor the audit towards the redesign.

Can our own team act on the report?

That is how we write it. Each recommendation says what to change and why, in language a business owner or a general web developer can follow.

Will you try to sell us a monthly contract afterwards?

We will tell you whether ongoing help would be worthwhile. Many audits end with the client doing the work themselves, and that is a good outcome.

Next step

Tell us what you are trying to rank for

Send a few lines about your business and the searches that matter. We reply by email within two working days with an honest view of what is worth doing.

Send an enquiry