What an SEO audit finds, and which findings actually matter
An SEO audit finds problems in six areas, and they are not equally important: a page Google cannot index will never rank, while a warning about text-to-HTML ratio changes nothing. At JP Studio the audit sits inside the SEO foundation, EUR 450-750 one-off, which covers Search Console, analytics, indexation, technical hygiene, titles, internal links and a 3-6 month plan.
The useful part of an audit is the order: what stops you ranking, what limits it, and what can wait.
The six areas, ranked by what they block
| Area | Example finding | What it blocks | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indexation and crawling | A noindex tag carried over from the test site | The page cannot appear in results at all | Fix first |
| Page targeting | Every service squeezed onto one services page | No page can rank for a service by name | Fix first |
| Internal links | Service pages reachable only from the menu | Fewer signals that those pages matter | Fix soon |
| Tracking | Form submissions not recorded in analytics | Nothing directly, but you cannot tell what works | Fix soon |
| Speed and mobile | Content jumping as the page loads on a phone | Enquiries more than rankings | Depends on real-visitor data |
| Outside the site | No links from other websites, an unclaimed Google Business Profile | Authority and local results | A plan, not a quick fix |
Findings that stop a page ranking at all
Nothing else matters until these are fixed. The audit checks whether the pages you care about are in Google's index, using the Pages report in Search Console, and for every missing page it finds out why.
- A noindex tag that survived launch. Test sites are hidden from Google on purpose. If that setting travels to the live site, the live page is hidden too.
- A robots.txt rule blocking a folder that holds real pages.
- Canonical tags pointing elsewhere, telling Google another address is the real version of the page.
- Old addresses with no redirects. After a relaunch, pages other sites linked to return a 404 instead of forwarding, and the value of those links is lost.
- The same page under several addresses: with and without www, on http and https, splitting signals between the copies.
Findings that decide what you can rank for
Once pages are indexed, the question is what each one is about. This is where a small business site loses searches it should win.
- Titles that say "Home" or repeat the company name, instead of naming the service and, where it matters, the place.
- No page for a service people search for. If bathroom renovations and kitchen fitting share one services page, neither has a page of its own that can rank.
- Two pages chasing the same search, such as a service page and a blog post with near-identical titles.
- Location pages where only the town name changes. Google's spam policies call these doorway pages.
An automated tool misses these: it can read a title, but it cannot know which of your services earns the money.
Findings that shape how Google moves through the site
Internal links tell Google which pages you consider important and help it find new ones. The audit looks for pages nothing links to, blog posts that never link to the service they discuss, broken links, and redirect chains that pass through several addresses before arriving.
Findings that cost enquiries more than rankings
Speed and mobile problems belong here. Google uses page experience as a signal, but relevance comes first, so a slow page is not the first reason a relevant page is missing from results. What a slow or jumpy page does is make a visitor give up before the form.
Tracking belongs here too. If analytics does not record a form submission or a tap on the phone number, you cannot tell whether any change worked.
Findings that sit outside the site
A site with no links from other websites, and for a local business no completed Google Business Profile, has a ceiling that on-site work cannot lift. More blog posts do not fix it. Being listed, mentioned and linked by real organisations in your field and area does, and that belongs in the 3-6 month plan.
Warnings you can safely ignore
Automated tools flag everything they can measure, whether or not it affects rankings:
- A missing meta keywords tag, which Google does not use.
- A low text-to-HTML ratio.
- A page marked too short when it answers its question in a short space.
- More than one H1 heading, which Google has said is not a problem.
- An overall site score out of 100, which belongs to the tool, not to Google.
If an audit you have been sent is mostly this kind of warning, it has told you very little.
How the work runs
- Access. You add us as a user to Search Console and analytics, or they are set up if they do not exist yet.
- Audit the six areas against your actual services and the places you serve, not a generic checklist.
- Put right what the foundation covers: indexation, technical hygiene, titles and internal links.
- Hand over a 3-6 month plan ranking the remaining work: new service or location pages, links from outside, anything that needs a developer.
- Decide what happens next. Carry out the plan yourself, or take SEO growth at EUR 500-800/mo for ongoing technical and on-page work, service and location pages, and reporting. If the site itself is the obstacle, a rebuild is quoted at the matching step: step 02 is EUR 900-1.500 over 2-3 weeks, step 03 is EUR 1.500-3.500 over 3-6 weeks.
A fixed quote always follows scoping. Every step is priced on the packages page, and a rebuild is planned through design engineering, so the new structure has a page for each service from the first wireframe.
When to spend less
- Your site is not live yet. Do not audit a site you are about to replace. Build the new one with a page per service and clear titles, and set up Search Console at launch.
- Your site has a handful of pages. Search Google for site: followed by your domain and read your titles. If every page is there and each title names its service, a paid audit adds little.
- Enquiries come from referrals and repeat customers. If search is not how people find you, and you do not need it to be, spend nothing on SEO. That includes us.
- You already have an audit. Sort its findings into the six areas above and strike out the ignorable warnings. What is left in the first two areas may already tell you what to do.
Questions buyers ask
Is a free audit tool enough?
For broken links, missing titles and redirect chains, a free tool does the job. It cannot tell you which services deserve their own page, whether two of your pages compete for the same search, or which warnings to ignore. That part needs someone who understands your business as well as Google.
Will the audit explain why a competitor ranks above me?
It compares what their pages target with what yours target, and shows the pages they have that you do not. It cannot see their Search Console data, so any claim about their traffic is a guess. The gap in pages and titles is the part you control.
What if the audit says the site needs rebuilding?
Then the plan says so plainly, and the rebuild gets its own quote at the step that fits, after scoping. Old addresses are redirected to the new pages so what the old site earned carries over, and you own the code, the repository and the database of the new site. The Next.js development page explains how a rebuild is engineered.
How soon will fixes show up in Google?
Indexation fixes show up once Google recrawls the affected pages, and you can request that from Search Console. New titles, new service pages and internal links take longer to settle, depending on the searches and the competition for them. That is why the foundation ends with a 3-6 month plan rather than a promise of dates.
If you want to know which of the six areas is holding your site back, send us the address.
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