SEO audit service that names what is holding your rankings back
We do not charge for the audit. There is no paid tier and no upsell to a report.
An SEO audit is a diagnosis: a prioritised list of what is stopping your site ranking, with the evidence behind each finding. A crawl export is not an audit. A score out of 100 is not an audit. You get findings rated by the traffic they cost you, in the order they should be fixed.
- Free, in full. Published UK audit prices commonly run from £500 to £2,500 plus VAT.
- Ten audit areas checked by hand, not exported from one tool.
- Every finding rated Critical, High, Medium or Low, with the fix and who does it.
- Technical
- On-page
- Content
- Site structure
- Backlinks
- Local
- Ecommerce
- AI visibility
Request your free SEO audit
Takes about 40 seconds. We reply with the first findings, whether or not you go further.
What to know before you book any SEO audit
The audit is the entry point to everything else we do, and it sits inside our wider range of SEO services. Where the diagnosis points at a structural problem rather than a page problem, the fix usually belongs to our semantic SEO and topical authority work.
What is an SEO audit, and what is it not?
An SEO audit is a prioritised diagnosis: a list of what is stopping a site ranking, each finding carrying the evidence for it, the traffic it costs, and the specific fix.
Three things get sold as audits that are not audits, and knowing the difference saves you money.
- A crawl export is not an audit. A spreadsheet of every missing meta description is raw material. An audit is the judgement applied to it: which of those 400 rows actually matter, and which three would move something this quarter.
- A score out of 100 is not an audit. Tool scores weight every issue equally and none of them against your commercial model. A site can score 92 and be invisible, or score 54 and rank well.
- A sales document is not an audit. A report that finds problems only your provider can fix, with no severity and no evidence, is a proposal wearing an audit’s clothes.
What separates a real audit is that each finding survives four questions: what was observed, what evidence supports it, what it costs in traffic or enquiries, and what specifically to do about it. A finding that cannot answer all four does not go in the report.
What does an SEO audit cost?
Ours costs nothing. There is no free tier and paid tier, no sample report and full report, and no figure at the end of the process. The audit is free in full.
That is unusual, so it is worth explaining rather than leaving you to wonder where the catch is.
| Typical UK paid audit | True SEO audit | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Commonly £500 to £2,500 plus VAT, by site size | £0 |
| What triggers the fee | The report itself is the product | Nothing. The report is not the product |
| Depth | Varies, often a tool export with commentary | Ten areas checked by hand |
| Turnaround | Commonly several days to a week | Usually three to five working days |
| Obligation after | None, but the fee is spent | None, and nothing is spent |
| Who can act on it | You or your developer | You or your developer |
The reason we can do this is the business model. We are a consultancy billed on agreed KPIs, not a firm selling deliverables by the unit. The audit is how we work out whether we can help you and whether you would want us to, and it is cheaper for us to do that properly than to write proposals for work that was never going to fit. Around a third of the audits we run end with us telling the business it does not need a monthly programme.
You keep the findings either way. Where the audit shows that cost is your real question rather than diagnosis, our breakdown of what SEO costs in the UK sets out the market bands, and the monthly SEO packages start from £499 a month.
What is checked in a technical SEO audit?
The technical audit answers one question: can a search engine reach, render, understand and trust every page that matters, and is anything actively blocking it?
Checked by hand in the technical audit
- Indexation: what is indexed against what should be
- robots.txt rules and accidental blocks
- XML sitemap accuracy and status codes
- Canonical tags and self-referencing errors
- Redirect chains, loops and 302s left in place
- Crawl budget waste and parameter bloat
- Core Web Vitals: LCP, CLS and INP
- Mobile rendering and viewport handling
- JavaScript rendering of primary content
- HTTPS, certificates and mixed content
- Structured data validity and coverage
- Server response codes across the crawl
A technical finding only counts when it is costing something. A redirect chain on a page nobody visits is noted and rated Low. A site-wide canonical pointing at one URL is rated Critical and leads the report. Where the technical work then needs doing rather than just naming, it moves into our technical and on-page SEO service.
What is checked in an on-page SEO audit?
The on-page audit checks whether each page states clearly what it is about, to both a reader and an extractor, and whether any two pages are claiming the same thing.
Checked by hand in the on-page audit
- Title tags: length, duplication, intent match
- Meta descriptions, including truncation
- Heading hierarchy and answer-first structure
- Whether headings are questions a buyer asks
- Keyword cannibalisation between your own pages
- Image alt text coverage and quality
- Internal anchor text and its descriptiveness
- Thin pages and near-duplicate templates
- Entity coverage: what the page names and misses
- Passage eligibility of individual sections
Cannibalisation is the finding that surprises people most. Two of your own pages competing for one query split the signal and both underperform, and it is common enough that we check it on every audit rather than only when asked.
What is checked in a content audit?
The content audit measures coverage rather than volume: whether your site answers the full question set of the subjects it wants to be known for, and where it repeats itself instead.
Checked by hand in the content audit
- Topical coverage against the subject question set
- Intent match: does the page answer what was searched
- Restatement, where sections repeat one idea
- Depth against the pages currently outranking you
- Content that should be merged or deleted
- Missing formats: comparisons written as prose
- Freshness where the subject genuinely decays
- Author and credential signals on advice content
The recommendation here is often to cut rather than write. A page that says the same thing three times covers one intent, not three, and consolidating two competing pages usually moves rankings faster than publishing a third.
What is checked in a site structure and internal linking audit?
This part checks whether your site has a hierarchy a search engine can read, or whether every page sits at the same depth with the same navigation links and no page looks more important than another.
Checked by hand in the structure audit
- Crawl depth: how many clicks to each money page
- Orphan pages with no internal route in
- Body links counted separately from navigation links
- Whether hubs actually link down to their children
- Anchor text variety and relationship signals
- Breadcrumb accuracy against real hierarchy
- Faceted navigation and filter URL handling
- Pagination and its canonical treatment
Navigation links are counted separately from body links throughout, because a mega menu gives every page the same inbound count and hides which pages a site actually treats as important. Body links are the signal that distinguishes a hub from a spoke.
What is checked in an off-page and backlink audit?
The off-page audit establishes whether your link profile is helping, doing nothing, or carrying risk, and whether the sites vouching for you are ones a search engine would take seriously.
Checked by hand in the off-page audit
- Referring domain quality and relevance
- Toxic and paid link patterns
- Anchor text distribution and over-optimisation
- Lost links worth reclaiming
- Unlinked brand mentions
- Competitor link gaps you could realistically close
- Directory and citation consistency
- Any manual action visible in Search Console
We do not sell links and we do not recommend buying them, so this section frequently concludes that the link profile is not the constraint. That is a finding in itself, and it saves businesses spending on links when the actual problem was structure or coverage.
What is checked in a local SEO audit?
The local audit checks the three things that decide the map pack, proximity, prominence and relevance, and tells you which of them you can actually change.
Checked by hand in the local audit
- Google Business Profile completeness and categories
- Services listed individually rather than as one entry
- Name, address and phone consistency across the web
- Citation coverage and duplicate listings
- Review volume, recency and response rate
- Service-area configuration where there is no shopfront
- Location page quality and duplication
- Local relevance of the linking domains
Proximity cannot be changed, so any provider promising you rankings across a whole county from one address is selling something that will not happen. Relevance and prominence are the levers, and the audit names which ones are underused. The delivery side sits in our local and multi-location SEO service.
What is checked in an ecommerce SEO audit?
An ecommerce audit adds the problems a service site does not have: category architecture, faceted navigation, product variants, out-of-stock handling and feed-driven pages.
Additional checks on a WooCommerce or Shopify site
- Category and subcategory architecture
- Faceted navigation and near-duplicate URL sprawl
- Product variant and canonical handling
- Out-of-stock and discontinued product routing
- Product schema accuracy against real data
- Review markup legitimacy
- Internal search pages leaking into the index
- Pagination across large catalogues
- Duplicate manufacturer descriptions
- Checkout and cart URLs excluded from the index
Faceted navigation is where most catalogue sites lose crawl budget. Filters for colour, size and price can generate tens of thousands of near-identical URLs, and the audit names which filter combinations match real demand and should stay indexable. Platform-specific work continues in our Shopify and ecommerce SEO service.
What is checked in an AI and LLM visibility audit?
This checks whether your business can be retrieved and cited by an AI assistant, which depends on entity clarity, machine-readable service data and independent corroboration rather than on ranking alone.
Checked by hand in the AI visibility audit
- Whether your business resolves to one unambiguous entity
- Consistency of name, address and description everywhere
- Service-level structured data rather than a generic listing
- Extractable answers: is the answer in the first sentence
- Whether competitors are named instead of you
- Corroborating sources that agree with your own site
- Crawler access for AI user agents
- Contradictions between your site and third-party profiles
Roughly a third of UK Google searches now show an AI summary above the standard results, and more than half of UK adults say they see those summaries regularly. Where this section produces the biggest gap, the work continues in our AI and LLM search visibility service.
How do we rate what the audit finds?
Every finding gets one of four severities, and the scale is calibrated so that Critical means Critical. An audit where everything is urgent tells you nothing about what to do on Monday.
| Severity | What it means | Typical fix window |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | Actively losing traffic, revenue or rankings right now, or creating technical or compliance risk | Days |
| High | Meaningfully suppressing rankings or conversion, but nothing is broken | 30 to 90 days |
| Medium | Costing you something measurable, worth scheduling into normal work | One to two quarters |
| Low | Real but minor. Fix when the page is next touched | Opportunistic |
Every finding then follows the same four-part shape, which is what makes the report usable rather than interesting.
- Finding. What was observed, in one or two sentences, with no hedging.
- Evidence. The URL, the crawl row, the Search Console query or the screenshot it came from.
- Impact. What it costs you, quantified where the data allows it.
- Recommendation. What to do, in the imperative, sequenced where there are several steps.
Two things get flagged separately because they are where the fastest gains sit. Stuck keywords are queries sitting at positions four to seven, close enough that structural fixes usually move them within weeks. Competitor gaps are the subjects two or three named competitors cover that you do not.
What do you receive, and in what format?
You receive a written audit document plus a call to walk through it. The document is yours to keep, forward to a developer, or act on without us.
| You receive | What it contains | What you do with it |
|---|---|---|
| Executive summary | The verdict, severity counts, and the top three to five actions | Decide what happens first |
| Scope and method | What was audited, over what period, and how | Know what was and was not covered |
| Site health overview | A grade per area: technical, on-page, content, off-page, local, keywords | See where the weakness concentrates |
| Findings by area | Each with severity, evidence, impact and recommendation | Hand individual items to whoever fixes them |
| Stuck keyword list | Queries at positions four to seven with the blocker named | Target the fastest available gains |
| Competitor benchmark | Two or three named competitors and the gap against each | Understand what you are actually up against |
| Prioritised action plan | Quick wins, strategic actions and maintenance, in order | Work through it, in sequence |
| Walkthrough call | A conversation, not a sales pitch | Ask what the document cannot answer |
The walkthrough matters more than people expect. A written finding says a redirect chain exists. The call is where you find out that it only matters because it sits on the one page bringing you enquiries.
How long does an audit take, and what happens after it?
Usually three to five working days from the point we have access, longer for large catalogue sites. Nothing is required from you afterwards.
| Stage | What happens | Typical timing |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Request | You send the form above with your website and one line on the problem | Two minutes |
| 2. Access | We ask for read access to Search Console, and Analytics where you have it | Same or next day |
| 3. Crawl and analysis | Full crawl, query segmentation, competitor coverage, manual review of the ten areas | Two to four days |
| 4. Document | Findings written, rated, sequenced into the action plan | One day |
| 5. Walkthrough | A call to go through it and answer questions | Booked at your convenience |
| 6. Your decision | Act on it yourself, hand it to a developer, or talk to us about delivery | No deadline |
We ask for read-only Search Console access because without it an audit is guessing at which pages matter. Where you cannot grant it, we still audit, and the report says plainly which conclusions are weaker as a result.
Do you implement the fixes, or hand them to our developer?
Either, and the audit is written so your own developer can act on it without us. Every recommendation names what to change and where, not just what is wrong.
Three routes people take after an audit, all of which are fine with us.
Your team does it
You take the action plan and work through it. This is the most common outcome on smaller sites, and the report is structured for it: each finding is a self-contained ticket.
We do the technical repair only
A one-off engagement to fix what needs specialist handling, usually crawl, indexation and structure, with no ongoing commitment afterwards.
We run the programme
Where the diagnosis shows a coverage problem rather than a page problem, the fix is a planned programme rather than a task list. That is a separate conversation, priced separately.
Around a third of the audits we run end with us saying a monthly programme is not warranted. We would rather tell you that at the audit stage than take a retainer that cannot pay for itself.
Which businesses and areas do we audit?
We audit UK businesses in any sector where buyers research before they commit, from our Cardiff base, working remotely across the whole of the United Kingdom.
Local visibility is checked against your actual trading area, so the audit names the towns and cities where you should realistically appear rather than promising national coverage from one address.
Businesses outside the UK are audited too, through the same fully remote process, though the local sections carry less weight where there is no physical trading area.
Who should not book this?
Three situations where an audit will not help you, and we would rather say so before you spend the time.
You need enquiries in four weeks
An audit tells you what to fix. Fixing it takes time after that. Where the need is immediate, paid search is the honest answer and we will say so. Where there is a date attached to the need, a launch or a season, it usually belongs in a digital marketing campaign with a number set against it.
You cannot change your website
Where a platform provider owns your templates and will not take instruction, most findings cannot be acted on. We will tell you what to ask them for instead.
You had one three months ago
Unless something material changed, a second audit will find the same things. Act on the first one, or ask us to review what was already done.
Frequently asked questions about SEO audits
Is the audit really free, or is there a paid version?
Really free, and there is no paid version. We removed the paid tier because it was never the point. The audit is how we decide whether we can help you and whether you would want us to, and charging for that step slowed down a conversation that is useful to both sides. You keep the document either way.
What is the difference between your audit and a free tool report?
A tool report lists issues. An audit decides which of them matter to your business, rates them, and puts them in order. Tools cannot tell you that two of your own pages are competing for the query that brings you enquiries, or that the fault costing you most is the one they scored as a minor warning.
Do I have to give you access to Search Console?
No, but the audit is better with it. Read-only access shows which queries you already appear for and which sit at positions four to seven, which is where the fastest gains are. Without it we work from crawl data and public sources, and the report states which conclusions are weaker as a result.
Can my own developer act on the findings?
Yes, and many do. Each finding names the URL, the change and the reason, so it can be handed over as a ticket without translation. Nothing in the audit is written to be actionable only by us.
How is this different from your monthly SEO packages?
The audit is a diagnosis and it ends. A monthly programme is delivery: building and fixing over time against agreed KPIs. Plenty of businesses take the audit and never take a programme, which is a reasonable outcome and not a failed sale.
Will you tell me if I do not need SEO?
Yes. Around a third of the audits we run conclude that a monthly programme is not warranted, usually because the search demand is too small, the site cannot be changed, or the commercial model does not depend on organic search. That conclusion is in the document.
Request the free audit
Find out what is holding your rankings back, at no cost and no obligation
True SEO Consultants Ltd, company number 16563516, works from Startup Stiwdio, University of South Wales, 86-88 Adam Street, Cardiff, CF24 2FN. We audit businesses across the United Kingdom and onboard clients worldwide through a fully remote digital onboarding and delivery process.
Send the form at the top of this page, or book a conversation first if you would rather talk it through. Either way you keep the findings, and there is nothing to pay at any point in the audit.
SEO audits from Cardiff, delivered across the United Kingdom.
