An SEO audit versus an SEO checker
Free SEO checkers are useful. Paste in a URL and within a minute you have a list of missing meta descriptions, oversized images and broken links. The trouble is what the list leaves out. A checker cannot tell you that your most profitable service has no page of its own, that two near-identical pages are splitting your rankings, or that your competitors win because their content answers questions yours ignores.
It also cannot tell you what matters. A report with 240 warnings, most of them trivial, can easily send a team in the wrong direction for months. An SEO audit is a judgement, not a scan: it uses crawling tools, Search Console data and analytics, then applies experience to decide which findings change outcomes.
| Automated SEO checker | Professional SEO audit | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Single pages or a quick crawl | The whole site, its data and its competitors |
| Context | None: same rules for every site | Your business, buyers, market and goals |
| Content | Word counts and tags | Whether pages answer the searches that bring revenue |
| Priorities | Long list sorted by severity labels | Short list ranked by impact and effort |
| False alarms | Many | Filtered out and explained |
| Next steps | Generic advice | Specific actions, owners and order |
What we examine: technical, on-page, content and off-page
Technical SEO
This is where we dig deepest, because technical problems quietly cap everything else. We look at crawling and indexing in Search Console, robots.txt and sitemaps, redirect chains, canonical tags, duplicate and thin pages, faceted navigation on shops, JavaScript rendering, structured data, internal linking depth, Core Web Vitals and mobile behaviour. Where a site has been migrated, we check whether old URLs and their links were carried across properly.
On-page SEO
Titles, headings, descriptions and internal links, judged not by whether they exist but by whether they match the search each page should win.
Content
We map your pages against real UK search demand. Which services, products and buyer questions have a strong page, which have a weak one, and which have none? Where do two pages compete for the same search? This content analysis usually produces the largest opportunities.
Off-page
Who links to you and who links to your competitors, which links carry weight, and whether any patterns would worry Google. We also check how consistently your business is described across profiles and directories.
Scored against our 10-point website score
Every audit uses the same framework: technical foundation and indexing; speed and Core Web Vitals; mobile experience; keyword and content coverage; local and international visibility; authority and backlinks; trust and E-E-A-T; conversion and user flow; brand and positioning; and AI visibility. The same ten points underpin all our SEO agency work, so an audit flows straight into a plan.
Each point receives a score and a short explanation. The scores are a working tool, not a verdict. A site can score poorly on a point that barely matters for its business, and we say so rather than inflating the to-do list.
What you receive
- A score per point, with the reasoning behind it.
- A prioritised action list, each item rated for impact and effort, with a suggested owner: developer, content, marketing or us.
- A keyword-to-page map showing which pages should target which searches, and where new pages are needed.
- Technical tickets written so a developer can act on them without a translator.
- A walkthrough call to go through the findings and answer questions.
We write for the people who will act on it. A managing director should understand the summary in five minutes; a developer should find exact URLs and examples.
When an SEO audit makes sense
- Before a redesign or migration. Most traffic losses after a new website are avoidable. An audit beforehand records what must survive. See website redesign.
- After an unexplained drop. When traffic or enquiries fall, guessing is expensive. An audit separates technical causes, algorithm updates and competitor gains.
- Before hiring or replacing an agency. An independent view of what has and has not been done gives you a basis for any brief. Our SEO consultant service can also review an existing agency's work.
- Before investing in AI search. AI SEO only works on a sound foundation, so the audit comes first.
- When growth has stalled. The site works, but nothing has moved in a year.
Audits for law firms, clinics and other regulated sectors
For solicitors, accountants, dental practices and private clinics, an audit also looks at trust and compliance signals that affect both buyers and search engines: clear identification of who is responsible, regulatory information, author and reviewer details on advice content, and claims that could conflict with professional guidance such as SRA rules for solicitors or the CAP Code on advertising claims. We flag concerns for you or your compliance lead to confirm; we do not give legal advice.
A law firm audit, for example, often finds practice-area pages that are too thin to rank, people pages without credentials, and old blog posts that contradict current law. Read more on law firm SEO.
Common mistakes after an audit
- Fixing the easy items first. Compressing images feels productive, but if your key service has no proper page, that is where the time should go.
- Treating the list as a one-off. Sites change every week. Without checks, new problems arrive as fast as old ones are fixed.
- Deleting pages without redirects. Pruning thin content is often right, but removing pages that have links or traffic without a plan loses value.
- Chasing a perfect tool score. A score of 100 in a checker is not the goal. Enquiries and revenue are.
For a broader view of what moves rankings, see how to rank higher on Google.
What drives the cost of an SEO audit
The main factors are the size of the site (a 30-page firm site and a 20,000-URL shop are different jobs), its technical complexity, the number of markets and languages, how much data is available in Search Console and analytics, and whether you want implementation support afterwards. We do not publish audit prices. After a paid strategy session at £225 excluding VAT, you receive a fixed price for a fixed scope if we take the project on.