SEO · Audit
An audit is the cheapest way to find out whether SEO makes sense for you and where to start. Sometimes it ends with a recommendation for ongoing work, but sometimes the website first needs its technical errors fixed. Either way, you get the same thing: a document with priorities and a plan that you can carry out without me as well.
Scope of work
Visibility on Google depends on several things at once, and fixing one while the others stay neglected rarely changes anything. The audit always covers all four areas, because each of them affects your visibility.
I start with whether Google sees your website at all: what is in the index, what has been excluded and why, and what robots.txt, the sitemap, redirects and canonical addresses look like. The check also covers Core Web Vitals from real visits, the mobile version and how the server responds to requests.
I check which pages answer real searches and which exist only because someone once created them. Along the way, I look for pages that compete with each other for the same searches, weak or outdated content, duplicate descriptions and topics missing from the website even though customers ask Google about them.
I check who links to you, how many of those links have value and whether the profile still carries traces of old SEO work with directories and link exchanges. Internal links get a check too, because they are the simplest way to strengthen pages and are regularly neglected on older websites.
I look at three or four businesses that rank above you for your keywords, and at their pages, content and backlinks. From this comparison comes the most important figure in the audit, the size of the gap you need to close and how long that realistically takes with your budget.
What you get
An audit is only worth as much as you can put into practice, so I hand over two things together: a description of the current state with priorities, and the order of work for the next few months. One rarely works without the other.
You get a document in English, without unnecessary jargon or uncommented screenshots from tools. Each finding has a description of the problem, its effect on visibility and a priority. I split the fixes into three groups, urgent, important and minor, so that you can start even with a small budget.
Together with the report, you get the order of work in stages, from what to fix in the first and second month to which content to write and which keywords to focus on. The plan also works without me. If you have your own developer or agency, you get a ready list of tasks.
The difference
I offer two services with “audit” in the name, and clients often mix them up. They answer different questions, use different tools and end with a different document.
Question: why is my website not visible on Google?
The reference point is the search engine and your competitors. I analyse indexing, content, keywords, links and the distance to the businesses ranking above you. The result is a plan for regaining visibility, spread over months. It works for WordPress, static websites and other systems alike.
Question: is my website secure and working properly?
Here the reference point is the installation itself: the versions of WordPress and its plugins, overdue updates, backups, account permissions, signs of infection, and the performance of the server and database. The result is a list of technical fixes. SEO appears there only at a basic level, as one of the checkpoints.
A slow WordPress website that breaks or has not been updated for a long time needs the WordPress website audit. If the symptom is a drop in visitors from Google, or no results even though the website works properly, stay here. Some clients order both, and then I carry them out together and you get one joint plan of fixes instead of two separate documents.
Process
Four steps, each with its own purpose. The discussion of the report brings the most value, because that is where you decide with me which recommendations to implement first and how the plan fits what your company can do.
First I find out what the audit is for: a decision about ongoing SEO, a planned redesign, a drop in traffic or taking over a website from another provider. The goal shifts the emphasis. Then I collect access to Search Console, Analytics and the website’s admin panel.
I crawl the whole website and go through the Search Console data from recent months, speed measurements, the content page by page and a comparison with your competitors. Part of the work comes from tools and part from reading. No tool will tell you that a service description answers a different question from the one the customer asks.
You receive the document, and then I go through it with you by phone or in a video call. This matters more than it seems. The discussion shows which fixes you can make straight away and which need a decision or a budget you did not know about.
You can implement the recommendations yourself, pass them to your developer or leave them to me. In that case the audit becomes the first stage of ongoing work, and the plan from the report turns into a monthly schedule. The choice is yours, and you receive the full report either way.
Starting the audit
I need six things to start, and one of them matters most: access to Search Console. It is the only source that shows the searches for which Google displays your website today. Without it, the audit still makes sense, but it relies only on outside data and loses its most interesting part.
If Search Console is not connected, I set it up at the start. It collects data only from the moment it is connected and cannot recover earlier history, so it is worth connecting even if you plan the audit in six months’ time.
Visibility in your town and the surrounding area: Google Business Profile, reviews, consistent business details in directories and pages for searches with place names.
For companies from the UK and the EU that want customers in Poland: a Polish version of the website, SEO and Google Ads in Poland, copy written by a native Polish speaker.
Expanding into new markets: content written from scratch in the language of the audience, hreflang for every language version, the choice of domain and the keywords people actually search for there.
Adverts in Google Search and Google Shopping: account and conversion tracking set-up, campaign management and a report every 30 days. From €300 net per month; you pay the advertising budget directly to Google.
After the audit, the most common next step is one of the monthly plans, with the scope and prices on the SEO page. If the report shows that speed or the code is holding the website back, I deal with that under WordPress speed optimisation. When the problem turns out to be neglected maintenance rather than visibility, WordPress maintenance is the right route.
FAQ
What clients ask before ordering: the price, the timeline, how it differs from free tools and what happens after the report.
I quote each audit individually, because the work depends mainly on the size of the website. A company website with twelve pages is a different job from a shop with a thousand products, where analysing filters and pagination alone takes several hours. Once I have the address and know what the audit is for, you get a specific amount and a date before the work starts, with no items left “to be agreed later”. All prices are net, excluding VAT. The offer is for businesses only.
For a company website, usually 5 to 10 working days from receiving access. A shop or a large multilingual website takes longer, because there are more addresses to check and more variants to analyse. I give you the date together with the quote and stick to it. If it turns out along the way that the website has a problem that needs a separate investigation, I tell you instead of quietly moving the deadline.
Free tools produce a list of hundreds of issues with no weighting and no context, such as missing alt text next to a whole category blocked from indexing, all on one list. An audit picks out of that noise the things that really affect your visibility, puts them in order of importance and says what to do in which order. The tools provide the raw material, and the conclusions come from reading the website and the data.
I can, but you do not have to ask me to. Any competent specialist can carry out the recommendations, because each one has a description, a priority and the place on the website where it applies. Some clients handle the simpler things themselves and leave me the fixes that need changes to the code or work on the content. It also happens that after the audit I advise holding off on SEO until the website is technically sound.
If it was done in the last two months and done carefully, usually not. I can review it and tell you whether the recommendations make sense and what I would change. A new audit makes sense if the document is older than a few months, because Google changes its algorithm several times in that period, if it was made before a redesign, or if it is a generated list of errors without priorities. Send me what you have before you order anything. That is the quickest way to find out whether you need a new audit at all.
Yes. I work remotely with companies in the UK and the EU, among them a chain of tattoo and piercing studios in the UK and education organisations in Belgium. You deal with me directly, in English. The audit needs no visit, because I work with access to Search Console, Analytics and your admin panel, and I go through the report with you by phone or in a video call. I am available Monday to Friday, 9:00–17:00 Central European Time (8:00–16:00 UK time).
