SEO audit services that tell you what to do first
An audit score treats a missing alt tag and a crawl block as the same problem. Ours does not produce a score. It produces a ranked queue with impact and effort against each item, starting at number one.
Crawl, log and index analysis, delivered as a prioritised plan rather than a 90-page export.
What are SEO audit services?
SEO audit services diagnose why a site is not getting the search traffic it should. The work covers crawling the site the way a search engine does, reading server logs to see where crawl requests actually go, checking indexation against what you intended to publish, and reviewing content, internal linking and authority. The output is a ranked list of what to change, in order, with the reasoning attached.
The diagnosis is the easy half. Any tool will hand you two hundred issues in an afternoon. The hard half is knowing which three of them are actually costing you money, and that is the part you are paying a person for.
If you want a first look without talking to anyone, our free SEO audit tool will give you the surface-level picture in a couple of minutes.
Why most SEO audits change nothing
The failure almost never happens during the audit. It happens in the fortnight afterwards, when everyone agrees on the findings and nobody knows where to start.
Audit scores weight everything equally. A site can score eighty-five out of a hundred and still be bleeding traffic from a single crawl block or one wrong canonical. The score aggregates a missing alt tag on a dead blog post with a noindex on your highest-revenue category, and presents them as comparable.
A tool export is not an audit. Running a crawler and exporting the issue list takes twenty minutes and gets sold as a deliverable. The crawler cannot tell you which of those issues matters for your business, because it does not know which pages make you money.
Volume gets mistaken for thoroughness. A ninety-page report feels like value and is the least actionable format available. Teams start with whatever is most visible in the tool, spend weeks on it, and the actual blocker sits untouched the whole time.
Nobody owns the fixes. An audit handed over without an owner, an effort estimate and a sequence becomes a document people reference in meetings for a year. We give you the order and the effort so it can be scheduled like any other work.
So we do not deliver a score. We deliver a queue, ranked by what it will cost you to leave it broken, and we are happy to be judged on whether item one moved the number.
What our SEO audit services cover
Every area gets checked. Only what is genuinely costing you traffic makes it into the top of the queue.
Crawl analysis
The site crawled the way a search engine sees it, including what is blocked, what is redirecting and what is only reachable after JavaScript runs.
Server log review
Where crawl requests actually go, rather than where anyone assumes. Logs settle arguments that opinions cannot, and they routinely surprise people.
Indexation audit
What is indexed against what you meant to publish, in both directions. Missing pages cost traffic; unintended ones dilute the site and waste crawling.
Core Web Vitals
Field data rather than lab scores, because what your actual visitors experience on their actual devices is what counts.
Content and intent
Whether pages match what searchers want, where you are competing with yourself, and which pages are close enough to rank to be worth the effort.
Internal linking
How authority moves through the site and which commercial pages are stranded too many clicks from anything that has any.
Structured data
Whether markup is valid, whether it agrees with the page, and whether it is actually earning the richer results it was added for.
Backlink profile
What is genuinely pointing at you, what is worth disavowing and what your competitors have that you do not.
Prioritisation
The part that makes the rest useful. Every finding scored on likely impact and effort, then ordered, so the plan can be scheduled rather than admired.
How our SEO audit services run
Learn what makes you money
Before anything is crawled we find out which pages and terms carry the revenue. Without that, prioritisation is guesswork dressed up as method.
Crawl, log, verify
Automated collection across every area, then manual verification. Tools produce false positives constantly, and shipping those as findings wastes your developers.
Rank by cost of inaction
Each finding scored on what leaving it broken costs against what fixing it takes. That ordering is the deliverable, not the issue list behind it.
Walk it through, then help
A working session rather than an emailed PDF, with specifications your developers can act on. We can implement or brief whoever will.
A tool report and an audit are not the same thing
Both are useful. Only one of them tells you what to do on Monday morning.
| Automated tool report | An audit | |
|---|---|---|
| Output | A score and every issue found | A ranked queue with effort attached |
| Knows your revenue pages | No | Yes, that is where it starts |
| False positives | Included as findings | Verified out before delivery |
| Answers “what first” | No | That is the whole deliverable |
| Cost | Low or free | Real, and usually returns it on item one |
| Best used for | Monitoring between audits | Deciding where to spend the next quarter |
We use the tools too. They are how the data gets collected. They are not the thinking, and selling their export as the deliverable is the thing this page exists to argue against.
What audits usually turn up
These recur often enough to be worth naming. Every one of them is invisible from the front end, which is why they survive for years.
A rule blocking real pages
A disallow or noindex added during a redesign and never removed. It is the single most common finding and usually the fastest thing on the list to fix.
Pages competing with each other
Several pages targeting the same intent, splitting signals so none of them rank. Consolidating them often moves things without any new content.
Crawl budget going nowhere
Parameters, filters and paginated series absorbing the crawling that should reach your commercial pages. Logs make this argument in about ten minutes.
Pages just outside the top ten
Positions eleven to twenty are the cheapest traffic available. They usually need on-page work rather than links, and almost nobody has a list of them.
Migration damage
Redirects pointing at the homepage, chains three deep, or old URLs quietly returning 404 with links still pointing at them.
A gap between lab and field
A green lab score alongside failing field data. Real users on real devices are what Google measures, and the two disagree more often than people expect.
How much do SEO audit services cost?
Priced on site size and complexity rather than as a subscription. It is a fixed piece of work with a fixed deliverable.
The audit
A one-off engagement. Larger catalogues, multiple regions and log access all extend it. You get the findings and the ranked plan regardless of what you do next.
Implementation
Optional and quoted separately, so the audit is never a sales device. Plenty of clients take the plan to their own developers, which is a perfectly good outcome.
Re-audit
Worth doing after a migration, a redesign or a year of drift. Not worth doing quarterly, and we will say so rather than sell you a schedule.
The honest test is whether the top item pays for the audit. On sites with a crawl or indexation problem it usually does within weeks, because you are recovering traffic you had already earned.
Real numbers from real client work
What usually follows an audit
Technical SEO services
Where most audit findings get implemented: indexation, rendering, architecture and the fixes that need a developer.
See technical SEO →On-page SEO services
For the pages sitting just outside the top ten, which is usually the cheapest item on the queue.
See on-page SEO →Free SEO audit tool
A surface-level check in a couple of minutes, no signup. Useful before you decide whether a full audit is worth commissioning.
Run the free check →Common questions about SEO audit services
Yes, and we use those tools ourselves to collect the data. The difference is what happens next: false positives verified out, findings weighed against which of your pages actually make money, and everything ordered by what it costs you to leave broken. A tool cannot do that last part because it does not know your business.
It tells you very little. Scores aggregate every issue equally, so a site can sit in the eighties while one crawl block hides a whole product catalogue. We have seen high-scoring sites with a serious problem and low-scoring sites where nothing on the list was worth fixing. The score is not the diagnosis.
Usually one to three weeks depending on site size and whether we can get server logs. Larger catalogues and multi-region sites take longer. If something critical turns up on day two, you hear about it on day two rather than waiting for the document.
A ranked queue of findings with impact and effort against each one, the evidence behind them, specifications your developers can act on, and a working session to go through it. Not a ninety-page PDF, because that format is the reason most audits change nothing.
No, and the audit is priced so it stands on its own. Plenty of clients take the plan to their own developers, which is often faster because they know the codebase. We are happy to review the result either way.
It makes the audit considerably better. Search Console shows what Google is actually doing with your site, and analytics shows which pages earn. We can work without them, but the prioritisation gets less precise, and prioritisation is the part you are paying for.
After a migration, a redesign, a platform change, or roughly annually if none of those happen. Quarterly audits are usually a retainer looking for a justification. Monitoring between audits is what the automated tools are genuinely good for.
Get an SEO audit that starts with the item costing you most
We will crawl the site, check what is indexed against what you meant to publish, and tell you the single thing to fix first. You get that finding whether or not you commission the full audit. No obligation, no sales pitch.
Get my free audit- Crawl and index check
- Ranked fix queue
- Effort estimates