I offer a free website audit, and the most common question I get back is a fair one: what does that actually mean? Plenty of people have had “a free audit” that turned out to be an automated PDF full of red warnings, generated in four seconds, designed to scare them into a sales call.
So here is exactly what I look at when I audit a local business, in the order I look at it. You can run most of this yourself.
1. Can a customer find you at all
Before anything on the site matters, I search the way a real customer does: the service plus the town, on a phone. Then the two towns next door. Then your business name.
I am looking for whether you appear in the map results, where you rank in the regular results, and who is beating you. Often the finding stops right here. The site is fine. The business is simply not present for the searches that matter, usually because the Google Business Profile is half finished or the site never names the services in the words people type.
2. The Google Business Profile
Primary category, secondary categories, services filled in or empty, service area set correctly, hours current, photos recent or stock, review count and, more importantly, review recency, and whether anybody replies to them. This is where the cheapest wins usually are.
3. Does the site say what you actually sell
I read the site as a stranger. Within five seconds, can I tell what you do, where you do it, and how to get hold of you? Then I check whether the money services have their own pages or are buried in a bulleted list on one Services page. One page cannot rank for eight different things, and a list of eight words tells a customer nothing.
I also check the words. If everyone in town searches “AC repair” and your site says “climate solutions”, there is nothing for Google to match and nothing that sounds familiar to the person reading.
4. Can somebody contact you without effort
Phone number visible at the top of every page, tappable on a phone. A contact form that actually delivers, and I test it. An address or service area. Hours. It sounds basic. I find broken or missing contact forms constantly, and every one of those is leads falling on the floor for months with nobody knowing.
5. Speed and mobile
Most of your visitors are on a phone, often on a patchy signal. I check how long the site takes to become usable, how big the images are, and whether the layout works on a small screen without pinching. Slow is not just annoying, it costs you the visitor before they see anything you offer.
6. The technical basics
- Title tags. The headline in the search results. Frequently left as “Home” or the theme’s default, which throws away the single best chance to say what you do and where.
- Meta descriptions. The two lines under the headline. Blank on most local sites.
- Headings. One clear H1 per page, in plain language.
- Secure and reachable. Valid certificate, no mixed http content, both the www and non-www versions resolving to one place.
- Indexing. Whether Google has actually indexed the pages, and whether anything is accidentally blocking it. I have seen sites left with a “do not index” flag switched on by the developer at launch and never turned off.
7. Signs of a stale business
Copyright year from three years ago. A Facebook link that leads to a page last posted to in 2022. A blog with two entries. A staff page listing people who left. None of these break anything technically. All of them quietly tell a visitor that this business may not be running anymore.
8. Who you are actually up against
I look at the two or three businesses beating you and note what they are doing that you are not. Usually it is boring: more service pages, more recent reviews, a properly categorised listing. Occasionally it is a national chain with a marketing budget, and in that case the honest answer is to stop competing on the head term and go win the specific ones.
What you get back
A short write-up in plain language. Not a 40 page automated printout. What is working, the handful of things actually costing you calls, and which one I would fix first if it were my business. If two or three of the fixes are twenty minute jobs you can do yourself, I say so, because most of the time they are.
If you would rather have help doing the work, I include options in the report. That is the extent of the pitch, and there is no obligation attached to any of it.
Why I do it for free
Because I live here in Lancaster, most of my work comes from people who know somebody I have helped, and the fastest way to show what I am like to work with is to be useful before anyone pays me anything. If you take the report and fix everything yourself, that is a good outcome. Some of those people send me their neighbour a year later.
Message the Facebook page or use the form on this site and I will run yours this week.