SEO Audit London

The basics

What is an SEO audit?

An SEO audit is a health check for a website's visibility in search engines. It looks at the site the way Google does, page by page, and records everything that helps or hinders ranking. The result is a report that explains where the website stands, what is wrong and what to do about it.

A good audit does three things. It finds faults, such as pages that cannot be indexed. It finds missed opportunities, such as searches your customers make that no page on your site answers. And it sets priorities, because a list of two hundred issues with no order is of no use to a business owner.

Automated tools can produce a list of warnings in minutes, and we use several of them. But a tool cannot tell you which warnings matter for your business, or why a competitor with a worse score outranks you. That judgement is the part you are paying for.

When you need an SEO audit

• Your website has never ranked, and you do not know why.
• Your traffic or enquiries have dropped and you want to find the cause.
• You are about to redesign or move your website and want to protect the rankings you have.
• You have paid for SEO before and want an independent view of what was done.
• You are about to start SEO or advertising and want the foundations right first.
• A competitor has overtaken you and you want to know what changed.

What we examine in an SEO audit

Crawling and indexing

Before a page can rank it has to be found and stored by Google. We check how many of your pages are indexed, which are excluded and why, whether your sitemap is correct, and whether anything is blocking search engines by mistake. It is common to find that important pages have never been indexed at all.

Site speed and mobile experience

Google assesses websites mainly by their mobile version. We measure loading speed and Core Web Vitals on your key pages, and check how the site displays and behaves on a phone: text size, tap targets, menus and forms. Where a site needs deeper technical work, a technical SEO audit goes further into this area.

Site structure and internal links

The way your pages are organised and linked tells Google which ones matter. We look at your menus, your page hierarchy and your internal links, and find orphan pages that nothing links to, important pages buried too deep and broken links.

Titles, descriptions and headings

These are the strongest on-page signals and the easiest to fix. We review the title, meta description and heading structure of each key page and note where they are missing, duplicated, too long or simply not about the search you want to win.

Content quality and gaps

We read your pages as a customer would. Is each service explained properly? Is there enough substance to deserve a ranking? Do several pages say the same thing? We also list the pages that are missing: services with no page of their own, areas you serve but never mention, and common questions that nobody has answered.

Keywords and rankings

We record the searches you appear for now and your position for each, then compare that with the searches your customers actually make. The gap between the two is your opportunity. Detailed planning of new pages is covered by our keyword research service.

Local SEO

For a business that serves a local area, the map results matter as much as the website. We review your Google Business Profile, your categories, your reviews, and whether your name, address and phone number are consistent across directories. See local SEO for how these are improved.

Backlinks

Links from other websites remain one of Google's main measures of trust. We look at who links to you, how many of those links are worth having, and how your link profile compares with the sites that outrank you. We also flag links that look harmful.

Competitor comparison

Rankings are relative. We pick the competitors who appear above you for your most important searches and compare their content, structure, speed and links with yours. This shows what it will realistically take to overtake them.

Tracking

Finally, we check that Google Analytics and Search Console are set up and recording properly. Without them, nobody can tell whether later work has succeeded.

What you receive

You receive a written report in plain English, with no unexplained jargon. It opens with a one-page summary: the overall state of the site and the five or six actions that will make the most difference. The body of the report covers each area in turn, with examples from your own pages.

Every finding is given a priority. High priority means it is stopping pages from ranking and should be fixed now. Medium means it is costing you positions. Low means it is worth tidying when time allows. Each finding also notes who would normally fix it: you, a content writer or a developer.

We then go through the report with you on a call, so you can ask questions. What you do next is your choice. You can carry out the fixes yourself, pass the report to your own developer, or ask us to do the work.

After the audit

An audit is a starting point, not a result. The value comes from acting on it. Many of the fixes are one-off jobs: correcting titles, repairing links, compressing images, adding missing pages. Others, such as building content and earning links, are continuous. If you would like us to carry the plan out, our monthly SEO service starts from £89.99 a month, and its first month is built around the audit findings.

Why choose Website Designer 1 for an SEO audit in London

We tell you what we find, including when the answer is not what you hoped. If your website is sound and the real problem is a crowded market, we will say so. If the site needs rebuilding before SEO can work, we will explain why and what it would cost. And we do not promise positions, because no honest SEO company can.

Because we build websites as well as optimise them, our recommendations are specific. You will not be told to "improve page speed". You will be told which images, scripts or settings are slowing which pages, and what to change.

In detail

How we decide what holds a website back most

An audit of even a small website produces a long list of observations. The skill lies in sorting them. We weigh each finding on two scales: how much it holds the site back, and how much effort it takes to fix.

Findings that are serious and quick to fix come first. A page set to "noindex" by mistake, a missing title on the home page or a broken contact form can be corrected in minutes and may change results within days. Next come findings that are serious but take longer, such as writing a proper page for each service or rebuilding a slow template. Minor tidying goes last, and some items we mark as safe to ignore, so that nobody spends money on changes that will make no difference.

The tools behind the audit

We combine several sources. Crawling software visits every page of your site and records its title, headings, links, response and size. Google Search Console shows what Google itself has indexed, the searches you appear for and any problems it has reported. Google's speed tests measure real loading performance on phones. Keyword and backlink databases show your rankings, your competitors' rankings and the links pointing to each of you. None of these tools gives the answer on its own; the audit is our reading of all of them together, checked against the live pages.

An audit before you spend on advertising

If you are about to pay for Google Ads or social media adverts, an audit first is money well spent. Adverts send visitors to your pages, and faults that hurt your search rankings usually hurt your advertising too: slow pages cost more per click and convert fewer visitors, unclear pages waste the visit, and broken tracking hides which adverts work. Fixing those points before the campaign starts means more of your budget turns into enquiries.

What an audit will not do

It is fair to be clear about the limits. An audit does not change your website; it tells you what to change. It cannot make a new website outrank long-established competitors overnight, and it cannot promise a position. What it gives you is certainty about where you stand and a plan in a sensible order, which is the thing most businesses with a quiet website are missing.