Search · SEO Audits
The hand-built teardown, not a scanner export.
A real audit answers three things: what you could rank for, what that traffic is worth in jobs, plus what is currently stopping you. A score out of 100 answers none of them.
The short answer
What an SEO audit actually is: 3 questions answered in order.
An SEO audit is a written diagnosis of why your site is not getting the search traffic it should. It answers what you could realistically rank for, what that traffic is worth in booked work, plus what is currently standing in the way of getting it.
Most of what gets sold as an audit is a crawler export with a cover page on it. A number out of 100, four hundred warnings sorted by severity, no opinion about which three actually matter. That is a report. It is not a diagnosis.
The keyword half is where the money hides, which is why the research comes first. There is no point fixing 40 technical warnings on pages nobody searches for. What people type, what each term is worth, which ones you can realistically win: that comes before anything else.
The limit worth stating up front: an audit does not fix anything. It is a plan with evidence behind it, and it only earns its price if somebody works the list afterwards, whether that somebody is us or your own team.
It also has to be readable by you. A document that needs a specialist to interpret cannot be used to make a decision, and deciding what to do next is the entire reason to buy one.
A real page one, captured this month. Ads first, then the three-spot map pack, and the first true blue link most of a screen down. Each block is won differently, and that's the job.
What arrives
What is in it: 6 parts, in the order they are worked.
- 01
Keyword and opportunity research
What your market actually searches for, scored on volume, on difficulty, plus on whether the searcher is ready to hire. This is the part agencies sell separately, and it belongs at the front of the audit rather than in its own invoice.
- 02
The gap against real competitors
The three or four businesses beating you in your towns, term by term: what they rank for that you do not, where their pages are simply better, what is worth copying outright. Named competitors, not a category average.
- 03
Technical blockers, ranked
Everything stopping pages being crawled, indexed or loaded fast enough, sorted by what it costs you rather than by what colour the tool painted it. Usually 3 items matter and the remaining 397 are noise.
- 04
Page-by-page content read
Every page that matters read against the search it should win, with what is missing named specifically. Not a word-count target. An actual list of the questions each page fails to answer for the person reading it.
- 05
Google Business Profile teardown
Categories, services, service area, photos, questions, review handling, checked against what genuinely moves map-pack position. For a local business this section is often worth more than the technical one.
- 06
A ranked list of what to do
The findings turned into a sequence: what to fix first, what it should move, roughly what it costs in effort. A finding with no next action attached is trivia, and trivia is what fills most audit documents.
Fit
Who this fits: 4 signs it is you.
A paid audit earns its money when there is a real site with real history behind it, plus a decision to make about where the next money goes.
This is you if:
- You have traffic already and no clear picture of why it stalled.
- You are about to spend on search and want to know what you are buying.
- You have an in-house person or a developer who can work a list.
- You inherited a site from an agency and cannot tell what they actually did.
This is not you if:
- You have a brand new site with no history. There is nothing to diagnose yet, and the free Snapshot covers it.
- Nobody will do the work afterwards. An unread audit is the most expensive PDF you will ever buy.
- You want a score out of 100. Free tools produce one in seconds and the number means very little.
- You want a competitor audited so you can copy their site wholesale.
How the work runs
How it runs: 4 steps, and it starts free.
- 01
Start with the free one
Send the site plus the Google Business Profile. The free Snapshot comes back in a few business days: the top findings, scored, yours whether or not you hire us. Sometimes the answer stops right there.
- 02
Research the market
A full keyword pull for your services across your towns, scored on volume, on difficulty, plus on buyer intent, so the rest of the audit aims at terms worth winning.
- 03
Crawl, then read
The site crawled properly, then the pages that matter read by a person against the search each should win. The crawler finds the errors. The person finds the reasons.
- 04
Hand over the sequence
A ranked list with the reasoning attached, walked through live so you can ask why. Hand it to your own team, or we work it. Both are fine.
Proof, not a pitch
Built by people who ran the truck first.
We ran a service business ourselves and managed real ad spend across the major platforms before writing an audit for anybody else. That is why this one is written to be worked by an operator rather than admired by a marketing department.
- 300+
- Points in the Deep Audit, worked by hand
- 36
- Hyperlocal pages shipped in one build
- 14
- Categories in the Deep Audit, worked by hand
- 49
- Checkpoints in a live map-pack grid scan
Every point listed in the report appendix
6 service areas × 6 services, same engagement
300+ points, $1,500
Rank measured where the customer stands, not from the office chair
Search
What it costs: published, not quoted.
The Deep Audit is $1,500 one-time, credited in full to your first month if you hire us within 60 days. For most operators that exactly covers the first month of the Local Engine, also $1,500 a month, so the audit costs one month and hiring us costs nothing. What moves the research effort is how many services plus how many towns need covering.
Start on the Local Engine. Move up to the Market Engine when you are ready to own more than one town, and to the In-House Engine when you want a marketing department without the hire.
Every retainer tier, with what is in it| Tier | Price | What moves the number |
|---|---|---|
| Local Engine Get found where you already work: the map pack and the searches that ring the phone. | $1,500 per month | The price is flat. What changes is where the effort points: a harder town, or more services, means the same monthly hours aimed at fewer targets, and we say which before you sign. Page counts and posting frequency are agreed in writing per engagement, so scope cannot quietly drift. Not included. Multi-market page coverage, expanded listings and the AI-search program at full strength are the Market Engine. We would rather tell you when you are ready for it than sell it to you early. |
| Market Engine Own every town you serve: coverage pages, AI-search visibility, listings everywhere that counts. | $3,000 per month | How many markets and how many services. The price is flat, and the page program inside it is agreed up front, in writing, so the scope cannot quietly drift. Not included. Placements on other platforms, PR-grade link campaigns, social management, video creative and conversion testing are the In-House Engine, and it is capacity-capped. |
| In-House Engine Everything, run for you: search, content, placements, PR-grade links, social presence, video creative, conversion work, quarterly strategy. | $6,000 per month | Capacity, not scope creep. We run a small number of these engagements at a time so the work stays deep rather than spread thin across too many accounts. Not included. We still do not sell paid ad management, and we still will not commit to a monthly number of editorial links. Both get the same answer at every tier. This tier is also capacity-capped: a few seats, run deep, and we will say plainly if one is not open yet. |
Objections and questions
Questions we get asked: 6 answers.
These are the questions that come up before anyone pays for an audit, including the two where the honest answer is do not buy one.
Ask us something else How much does an SEO audit cost?
The free Snapshot costs nothing: a short, sharp look at the top handful of findings, worked by hand and back in a few business days. The full 300+ point teardown across 14 categories, with the keyword research, the competitor gap and the page-by-page read, is the Deep Audit at $1,500 one-time. It's yours either way, hand it to your own developer or your own AI and it still pays for itself, and it's credited in full toward your first month if you hire us within 60 days. Most operators start with the Snapshot, then decide whether the Deep Audit is worth it.
What is the difference between the free audit and the paid one?
The free Snapshot is a short, sharp look: the top handful of findings, scored, sent back in a few business days. Not the 300+ point, 14-category punch list and not a step-by-step plan, that is what the Deep Audit adds. The Deep Audit covers technical crawl, speed, mobile behaviour, tracking, the Google Business Profile, reviews, local visibility, on-page and structured data, citations, backlinks, AI citation gap and a competitor comparison, plus the full keyword and opportunity research, the term-by-term competitor gap, a page-by-page content read, and the ranked sequence of what to do first. It is $1,500 one-time, credited in full to month one if you hire us within 60 days. Start with the Snapshot. Most people should.
Do you include keyword research in the audit?
Yes, and it is the first thing done rather than an upsell afterwards. Keyword and opportunity research is what tells you which pages are worth fixing at all, so separating it from the audit produces a document full of technical corrections on pages nobody was ever going to search for. You get the term list, the volume and difficulty behind each one, the buyer intent read, plus which terms you can realistically win from where you stand today.
How long does an SEO audit take?
The free Snapshot comes back in a few business days, and that is the one turnaround we put in writing anywhere on this site. The Deep Audit is scheduled when it is scoped, because the honest length depends on how many towns, services and competitors are in play, plus how fast a crawl of your site completes. We will give you a date when we quote it rather than publish a number here that we would then have to defend on every project.
Can I just run a free SEO checker myself?
You can, and for a small site you probably should first. Free tools are genuinely good at finding broken links, missing tags, slow pages, and they cost nothing. What they cannot do is tell you which of those 400 findings is costing you jobs, what your market actually searches for, or why a specific competitor outranks you in one town and not the next. If a free checker answers your question, keep the money.
What if the audit says I do not need SEO?
Then it says so and we do not take the retainer. That happens more often than agencies admit. Sometimes the real problem is that the phone is not answered, or that the pricing is wrong, or that the site converts badly and the traffic is already sufficient. Selling a search retainer into any of those is taking money for the wrong fix. You would get the finding written plainly, with what we would do instead if we were you.
Related services
What this pairs with: the rest of the stack.
Every one of these is sold on its own, and none of them needs the others to work. SEO Audits sits inside SEO Services, which is where the whole line is laid out side by side.
- 01 SEO Services The half that decides whether anyone sees the site: Google, Maps, plus the AI answers your buyers are already reading. Read more
- 02 Local SEO Ranking in the map pack for the towns you actually serve. Read more
- 03 Technical SEO Crawl, index, speed, schema. The plumbing under the rankings. Read more
- 04 On-Page SEO Titles, structure, copy. All of it answering the query outright. Read more
- 05 Tracking & Analytics Setup You cannot prove any of this works without measurement. Read more
- 06 Website Redesign Rebuilt on modern architecture without losing what already ranks. Read more
Trades
Who we do this for: named by trade.
What an audit finds shifts by trade. A roofer's problem is usually thin service-area coverage after a storm season, while a remodeler's is that the gallery carries all the proof and none of the search terms.
- 01 SEO for Roofers Storm-season demand is won in the map pack, not the phone book. Read more
- 02 HVAC Marketing Emergency calls, maintenance plans, and the seasons that pay for the year. Read more
- 03 Plumber Marketing Emergency intent converts in seconds. Most plumbing sites lose it. Read more
- 04 Remodeling Marketing Long consideration cycles need proof published, not promised. Read more
- 05 Contractor Website Design A site that reads like a firm homeowners trust with a six-figure job. Read more
- 06 Marketing for Electricians Panel upgrades and EV chargers are the pages almost nobody has built. Read more
Free snapshot · paid teardown
Send us your site: 300+ points, worked by hand.
A short, sharp look: the top handful of findings, scored, delivered by email. What's broken, in plain English.
Want the full punch list? The Deep Audit is $1,500: the same crawler and link indexes the top-tier agencies run, plus live map-pack checks town by town and AI-assistant citation checks almost nobody local does. 300+ points across all 14 categories, plus a prioritized 90-day plan. Credited in full toward your first month if you hire us within 60 days.
Snapshot delivered in a few business days
It's yours either way. Hand it to your own developer, or your own AI, and it still pays for itself. If you hire us, it costs you nothing.
Site & search audit · what we check
300+ points
- Crawl, indexation and site security 30 pts
- Duplicate signals, structure and internal links 39 pts
- Speed and Core Web Vitals 28 pts
- The experience on a phone 14 pts
- Money pages: content, depth and freshness 24 pts
- Structured data and the trust surface 20 pts
- Search demand and the keyword map 20 pts
- Google Business Profile 20 pts
- Reviews and reputation 16 pts
- Local presence: map results and directories 20 pts
- AI search and assistant citation 22 pts
- Link profile and authority 20 pts
- The operators beating you 22 pts
- Turning visits into calls, and counting them 24 pts
The Snapshot is the top handful of these, free. The Deep Audit is all 14 categories, 300+ points, scored, with a 90-day plan and the full point-by-point appendix. No account, no card either way.
Ready to stop losing customers to the guy with a better site?
Fifteen minutes, no discovery deck. We'll tell you what we'd build, what we'd rank, and what it costs. And if we're not the right fit, we'll say that too.