Practical resources you can use today, whether or not you work with us.
The same 50-point checklist we use internally, formatted for your team. Covers technical health, on-page elements, content quality, backlink signals, and AI visibility.
A self-assessment tool. Answer 20 questions about your site and get a rough health score with specific improvement areas.
The critical questions that separate thorough auditors from those who hand you a tool export. Read the full guide below.
122 SEO terms defined clearly and concisely, each with why it matters and how to check it on your own site. Written for business owners, marketers, and developers who want practical definitions, not jargon.
In-depth articles on technical SEO, content strategy, and audit best practices. Updated regularly with insights from real audits and live case studies.
Answer 20 yes-or-no questions about your site. Your score will reveal where your SEO foundations stand and where the gaps are.
Not all audits deliver the same depth. These ten questions will help you distinguish between auditors who diagnose real problems and those who repackage automated reports.
Many agencies run a crawler, export the results, and send them as your "audit." These reports flag thousands of warnings without any context about which ones actually affect your revenue or rankings.
What the right answer looks like: The auditor should confirm that a human analyst reads your pages, evaluates content quality, and assesses search intent alignment. Tools should support the analysis, not replace it.
A finished sample tells you everything about the depth, format, and usefulness of the deliverable. If an auditor cannot share even a redacted sample, that is a signal worth noting.
What the right answer looks like: They provide a real example with clear structure: findings grouped by severity, explanations in plain language, and actionable recommendations for each issue.
Listing 200 issues without priority order creates more confusion than clarity. Your team needs to know what to fix first, second, and third, based on actual impact on traffic and revenue.
What the right answer looks like: The auditor ranks issues by severity and business impact. Critical items that block indexing or destroy rankings appear first. Cosmetic issues are clearly labeled as lower priority.
Severity should be based on measurable criteria: how many pages are affected, whether the issue blocks crawling or indexing, and what the estimated traffic impact is. Without this, every issue looks equally urgent.
What the right answer looks like: They explain a clear framework. For example, issues that block indexing are critical, issues that reduce page quality are warnings, and issues that improve best-practice compliance are informational.
Technical jargon without context is useless to most teams. If your developer, content writer, or marketing manager cannot understand what needs to change, the audit sits in a folder and collects dust.
What the right answer looks like: Each finding includes what the issue is, why it matters, and exactly how to fix it. Explanations are written for the person who will actually do the work, not for other SEO specialists.
Technical SEO is necessary but insufficient. A site can be perfectly crawlable and still rank poorly if the content does not match what searchers are actually looking for. The best audits evaluate both layers.
What the right answer looks like: The auditor reviews whether your content answers the queries it targets, checks for topical gaps, and evaluates how well each page aligns with the intent behind its target keywords.
Knowing your own issues is only half the picture. Understanding what your competitors do well, where they outrank you, and what content gaps exist between your sites gives the audit strategic depth.
What the right answer looks like: They identify your actual search competitors (not just business competitors), compare content coverage, backlink profiles, and SERP feature presence, and highlight specific opportunities.
An audit is a knowledge product. If the auditor is confident in their work, they should be willing to stand behind it. A quality guarantee shows that they have delivered enough audits to know their work holds up.
What the right answer looks like: A clear refund or satisfaction guarantee, stated in writing. If the audit does not deliver value, you should not have to pay for it.
Timelines and requirements should be transparent before you pay. Ambiguity here often means the auditor has not standardized their process, which raises questions about consistency and thoroughness.
What the right answer looks like: They provide a clear delivery window (typically 4 to 5 business days), explain exactly what access or information they need upfront, and confirm scope before starting.
Some auditors include implementation. Others focus purely on diagnosis and hand the execution to your team. Neither model is wrong, but you need to know which one you are paying for to plan your resources accordingly.
What the right answer looks like: A direct answer. If they diagnose only, the report should be detailed enough for your developer to implement without follow-up calls. If they implement, the scope and pricing for that work should be separate and clearly defined.