Find out what’s wrong
Find out what’s wrong before you pay to fix the wrong thing.
One person going through your website, your listing and the businesses beating you, then writing down what is wrong and what to do about it. You keep the list either way.
In short
What is an SEO audit?
A proper look at why your website is not bringing work in, written up as a list of what is wrong and what to fix first. You keep the findings whether or not you ever hire me to act on any of them.
The problem
Everyone sells you a cure before anyone has looked at you.
Ring three agencies about a quiet phone and you will get three quotes for three different things, none of which followed a look at your business. The one who sells websites will say you need a website. The one who sells ads will say you need ads.
They might even be right. The trouble is that nobody knows yet, including them, and you are the one paying to find out the expensive way.
No plumber replaces a hot water cylinder without looking at the cylinder first. This is the looking, sold on its own, so the answer is not decided by whoever wants the job.
What gets looked at
Six questions, asked properly.
- Can Google read the site at all
- Pages missing from the index, links that go nowhere, a site that takes eight seconds to open on a phone. This is where the dull problems hide, and it is the first thing I look at because nothing else counts while it is broken.
- Is there a page for the work you want
- Not the work you can do. The work you want more of. I count what you are actually competing for, and usually find you are competing for very little.
- Your listing and the map
- Categories, services, opening hours, service area, photos, reviews and whether anybody has replied to them. For a local business this is often where the biggest gap between you and the firm above you sits.
- Who is beating you, and on what
- I look at the two or three businesses currently taking the searches you want, and work out what they have that you do not. Sometimes it is a lot. Sometimes it is one page and a decade of reviews.
- Who links to you, and whether it helps
- Other sites vouching for you is still one of the things Google leans on hardest, and it is the part almost no trade business has ever looked at. I go through what points at you, what points at the firms above you, and whether anything aimed at your site is doing harm rather than good.
- Whether anyone who lands would ring
- Traffic that never calls is a different problem to no traffic, and the fixes have nothing in common. I go through the site as a customer would and tell you which of the two you have got.
What you get
A list you could hand to somebody else.
Written for you to act on, not to impress you into signing something.
- A written document, in plain English, that you keep
- Every problem found, ordered by what it is costing you rather than by how bad it looks
- What to fix first, second and third, with a rough idea of effort for each
- The things you can do yourself without paying anybody
- The things genuinely not worth fixing, so you stop being sold them
- A straight answer on whether paying somebody monthly makes sense for you at all
What you will not get is a tool export with two hundred warnings in it, most of which do not matter and none of which are ranked. Anyone can run that in four seconds and plenty of people charge for it.
Absolute legend to deal with! Makes things super easy, is honest, efficient and has helped us achieve everything he ever said he could! Don't look past Stu!!!
What it costs
Priced on the size of the job.
The same figures as the agency side of what I do, because it is the same work. Agreed in writing before I start, and it does not move afterwards.
New Zealand dollars, GST added on top.
The audit
From $1,200
One-off + GST
Covers up to 10 pages, which is most trade and small business sites. After that it is $40 a page, so a site with fifteen pages costs $1,400 rather than double.
Past 50 pages I stop counting and quote it properly, because at that size the sensible thing is to work through a representative sample rather than charge you for every page.
What it is not
It is not a deposit and it does not sign you up to anything. You can take the list to whoever you like, including the person who built your site, or work through it yourself on a wet afternoon.
Whatever the total comes to, you see it in writing before I start and it does not move afterwards.
The honest bit
Not every audit finds something broken.
Sometimes the figures say the site is already doing its job. People are finding it, they are landing on the right pages, and plenty of them are reaching your phone number. What happens to an enquiry after that is not visible from the outside, and I will not pretend to have measured it.
A clean bill of health is not the same as nothing left to do. There is almost always ground still to take: jobs you are not chasing yet that deserve their own page, questions your customers ask that nobody has answered, reviews you have never got round to asking for, and sites that ought to be linking to you and are not.
When that is what I find, the document changes shape rather than stopping. It goes from what to fix to what to build, still in the order I would do it, and it still tells you which parts you could handle yourself.
Questions
What people ask before booking one.
What do I actually get at the end?
A written document you keep, listing what is wrong, ordered by what it is costing you, with what to fix first and what to leave alone. Plain English, not a tool export with two hundred red warnings in it.
Do I have to use you for the fixes?
No, and that is the point of selling it separately. Take the list to whoever you like, hand it to whoever built your site, or work through it yourself. Plenty of people do exactly that and I would rather they had the list than nothing.
How long does it take?
Usually about a week from getting access to what I need. Longer if the site is big or if I am waiting on a login. It is one person going through it properly, not a report that generates itself in four seconds.
Is this the same as the free audits I keep getting offered?
Most of what lands in your inbox is a tool run against your address and sent automatically, which is a sales call with a PDF attached. This is a person going through your site, your market and the businesses above you. If you want a quick free look before paying for anything, ask, and I will tell you whether a full one is worth it.
Will it just tell me I need everything?
It routinely does the opposite. A fair number of audits end with two or three things worth doing and a long list of things to ignore. If I found nothing worth fixing I would say so, because the alternative is selling you work that does nothing.
Do I need one if I already know I want a new website?
Probably not. Auditing a site you have already decided to replace is paying to be told about problems that are about to be deleted. Save the money and put it into the build.
Let’s talk
Send me the address and I’ll tell you if it’s worth it.
Some businesses do not need one of these, and I will say so before you pay for anything. Tell me what is not happening that should be and you will get a straight answer, usually within one business day.