Technical audit and SEO roadmap
SEO audits.
What is wrong, and how to fix it.
An SEO audit is an in-depth review of the technical, on-page and off-page factors holding a website back in search, delivered as a written report with a prioritised plan to fix them.
- Covers
- Technical, on-page and off-page SEO
- You get
- A custom report of around 30 pages, plus a 90-minute consultation
- Best for
- Stalled or falling traffic, or before a redesign or migration
- Pricing
- Scoped and priced before work starts
Is this for you?
Do You Need an SEO Audit?
An audit is the right first step whenever you do not know why a site is underperforming.
- Traffic has dropped and you do not know why
- The site was redesigned or migrated and rankings fell
- You are planning a redesign and want to protect what already works
- You are about to invest in SEO and want the work aimed at the right problems
- The site has never had an independent technical review
Sound familiar? Request an audit quote
What Is an SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is a detailed investigation into the factors that affect how well a website ranks, carried out to find the issues holding it back.
Perfect websites rarely exist. Most have technical problems, thin or overlapping content, or weak signals of trust that quietly limit their performance.
A good audit does more than list those problems. It tells you how to fix each one, and in what order.
What we do
What Is Included in an SEO Audit?
Our audits look at every factor that might be affecting your rankings: technical, on-page and off-page.
- 01
Crawling and indexing
Whether search engines can find, crawl and index the pages that matter, and are not wasting time on the ones that do not.
- 02
Site structure and internal links
How pages are organised and linked, and whether your most important pages receive the support they need.
- 03
Speed and Core Web Vitals
How quickly pages load and respond on real devices, and what is slowing them down.
- 04
On-page and content quality
Titles, headings, copy and intent match for your key pages, plus thin, duplicate or competing content.
- 05
Backlinks and authority
The quality and relevance of the sites linking to you, compared with the competitors outranking you.
- 06
Trust signals
An E-E-A-T review: the evidence of experience, expertise, authority and trust that your site shows, or fails to show.
What you get
What Will You Receive?
You receive a bespoke written report that explains each issue, why it matters and how to fix it, in priority order.
Custom written report
Around 30 pages, written for your site by a specialist, not exported from a tool.
A fix for every issue
Each finding comes with the specific change needed to resolve it.
Priority order
Issues ranked by likely impact and effort, so the first fixes count most.
Evidence
The data and examples behind each finding, so your developers can verify it.
SEO roadmap
A practical plan your own team, or ours, can implement.
90-minute consultation
We go through the report with you, and your agency if you have one, until everything is clear.
How it works
How Does Our SEO Audit Service Work?
We scope the audit with you, investigate the site, write up the findings and then talk you through them.
- 1
Scope
We agree what the audit needs to answer, get access to your analytics and Search Console, and fix the price.
- 2
Investigate
We crawl the site and review it by hand. Tools find the symptoms; people find the causes.
- 3
Report
You receive a bespoke written report: each issue, why it matters, and how to fix it, in priority order.
- 4
Consultation
A 90-minute session to go through the report with you, so nothing is left unexplained.
In depth
What Does an Audit Finding Look Like?
Every finding in the report states the issue, why it matters, the evidence, the fix and its priority.
A list of problems is not much use to a business owner or a developer. Each needs to know what to do, how urgent it is and how to check it has worked.
So every finding follows the same structure, and the report opens with a summary a non-specialist can read in five minutes.
- 1SummaryThe headline findings, in plain English.
- 2The issueWhat is wrong, and where on the site.
- 3Why it mattersThe effect on rankings, users or both.
- 4EvidenceData and examples your developers can verify.
- 5The fixThe specific change needed to resolve it.
- 6PriorityRanked by likely impact and effort.
In depth
How Is an Audit Different From an Automated Site Checker?
An automated checker lists symptoms. An audit finds the causes, decides what matters for your business and tells you what to do first.
Automated tools are useful, and we use them to gather data. But a tool will report four hundred ‘errors’ without knowing that three of them are costing you most of your traffic and the rest can wait.
| Automated checker | Our SEO audit | |
|---|---|---|
| Finds | Technical symptoms | Technical, content and authority issues, and their causes |
| Prioritises | By generic severity | By likely impact on your business |
| Explains | What the error is | Why it matters and exactly how to fix it |
| Looks at competitors | No | Yes, including their backlinks |
| Talks you through it | No | Yes, in a 90-minute consultation |
Reporting
What Do We Measure and Report?
We report on outcomes you can check for yourself, not activity.
Issues resolved
How many findings have been fixed.
Indexed pages
Whether the right pages are in the index.
Site speed
Load and response times on real devices.
Rankings and traffic
The effect once the fixes are live.
Why Choose Utterly Digital for an SEO Audit?
Because every recommendation in our audits is written to be acted on.
There is little point in an audit that lists every fault with a website and offers no achievable way to fix them. Ours are built around a roadmap you can implement, whether the work is done by your developers, your marketing team or ours.
If you want to know how AI engines see your brand as well, pair it with an AI visibility audit. If you want us to carry out the fixes, that becomes part of an organic SEO campaign.
“I’m always impressed by Chris’s depth of knowledge on search engine marketing. He really is an SEO nerd and a pleasure to work with.”
Why Utterly Digital
No guesswork, just great results.
Specialists since 2018
Utterly Digital has focused on search since 2018, from our base in Cheltenham.
Tested, not guessed
Changes are measured. What works is kept and rolled out. What does not is dropped.
Sector depth
Deep experience in energy, insurance, debt, tech and SaaS, where trust is hardest to earn.
Clear scope and price
You know what you are getting, and what it costs, before any work starts.
Proof
The work, and what it achieved.
- Real estate (USA)
Yvette Sellyn
A full SEO and technical audit for a real estate professional in Sarasota, Florida, launching under her own name.
Read the case study - Software
Hoge100
An SEO audit for a software company with 32 years behind it, delivered alongside its agency, Rather Inventive.
Read the case study - Manufacturing
Selmach Machinery
An SEO audit for a machinery supplier. When the client asked for a re-audit later, it found very few concerns.
Read the case study
FAQs
SEO Audits: your questions answered
How much does an SEO audit cost?
It depends on the size and complexity of the site. We scope the audit with you and agree a fixed price before any work starts.
Do you just run a tool and send the output?
No. We use crawling tools to gather data, but the findings, priorities and recommendations are written by a specialist who has reviewed the site by hand.
Will you fix the issues you find?
If you want us to. The report is written so your own team can act on it, and we are happy to carry out the work as part of an SEO campaign.
When should I get an SEO audit?
When traffic has stalled or dropped, before a redesign or migration, or when you are about to invest in SEO and want the work aimed at the right problems.
What access do you need?
Read access to Google Search Console and your analytics is the most useful. We can still audit a site without them, with less certainty about some findings.
SEO audit
Request an SEO audit quote
Tell us about the site and what prompted the audit. We will confirm the scope and a fixed price.
We reply
A specialist reads your enquiry and comes back to you, not a sales script.
We agree the scope
A short call to confirm what you need, what is included and the price.
Work starts
Only once you are happy with the scope and have given the go-ahead.
Prefer to talk? 01242 323 543
SEO audit
Request an audit quote