Find out exactly why your site isn't ranking, not just that it isn't.
Most audits hand you a hundred-page PDF and wish you luck. Ours gives you a clear list of what's actually holding your rankings back, and what to fix first.
Ranking dips don't need more guessing, they need a straight answer.
Whether you're a marketing lead who's inherited a website nobody's touched in years, a founder wondering why traffic's flatlined, or an in-house team stretched too thin to dig into technical SEO yourselves, you need answers you can act on, not another vague report.
We run a full technical SEO audit alongside a proper website SEO analysis, covering crawlability, site speed, content gaps and backlink health, then hand you a prioritised action list instead of a spreadsheet full of jargon and no next steps.
Why Teams come to us?
“We got an audit, but no idea what to actually do.”
Every recommendation comes ranked by impact and written in plain English, so you know exactly what to fix first and why it actually matters.
“Our traffic's dropped and nobody can tell us why.”
We dig into the technical detail, crawl errors, indexing issues, site speed, until we've found the actual cause, not just a list of symptoms.
“I don't trust our own SEO reports enough to act on them.”
We show our working. Every finding in your website SEO analysis is backed by the data behind it, so you can walk into any budget conversation with proof, not assumptions.
“We're too small a team to fix everything an audit finds.”
We prioritise. A good technical seo audit service tells you the five things worth doing this quarter, not the fifty things you'll never get round to.
The Gecko Way™
Our approach to successful projects
Before we open a single tool, we get access, and get talking. That means CMS and analytics access, Search Console, your existing keyword targets, and a proper conversation about what's actually prompted the audit, a ranking drop, a stalled traffic line, or just not knowing where you stand. We also ask who else needs to see the results. A board that's sceptical of marketing spend needs different proof to a developer who just wants a punch list. Getting this right at the start means the final report answers the right question for the right person, rather than a generic checklist that misses what's actually keeping you up at night.
This is where the seo site audit itself happens. We crawl the site properly, checking indexing, site architecture, page speed, mobile performance, structured data and internal linking, then layer in a full content and keyword gap review against your actual competitors, not a generic top ten. We also look at backlink profile and any technical debt sitting under the surface, the sort of thing that never shows up until someone actually goes looking. Nothing here is templated. A five-page brochure site and a two-hundred-page e-commerce catalogue fail in completely different ways, so the evaluation is built around your site's actual architecture and audience, not a one-size checklist.
Raw findings aren't useful on their own, so we turn them into a report built to be acted on. Every issue is ranked by the impact fixing it will actually have, not just how many were found. You'll get a plain-English write-up, a prioritised action list your developers or content team can pick up directly, and the reasoning behind each recommendation, because "trust us" isn't good enough when you're the one signing off the budget. Where something's a quick technical fix, we say so. Where it's a bigger structural issue, we're honest about that too, rather than padding the list to look more thorough than it is.
We don't post a PDF and disappear. We walk you through the findings properly, in a call where you can ask the daft question and actually get an answer, not a sales pitch dressed up as one. If you're taking this into a board meeting, we'll help you translate it into language that lands with people who don't care about crawl budgets, they care about leads and revenue. If your team's going to implement the fixes themselves, we make sure they understand not just what to change, but why it matters, so nobody's just following instructions blind.
Some clients take the report and run with it in-house. Others want us alongside them for the fixes, especially the technical ones that touch code rather than content. Either way, the audit doesn't sit on a shelf. We check back in to see what's moved, what's stuck, and whether the priorities need revisiting once search behaviour or your own site's changed. An SEO audit service that ends the day you get the report hasn't actually done its job, the point was always to move your rankings, not just describe them.
What's Included in an SEO Audit
Technical SEO Audit
We check the technical foundations most audits skim over: site speed and Core Web Vitals, mobile performance, structured data, indexing status, and any crawl errors quietly costing you rankings. This is the core of a proper technical seo audit service, because content and backlinks can only do so much if Google's struggling to crawl or render your site properly in the first place.
We test across devices, check your robots.txt and sitemap are actually doing their job, and flag anything blocking search engines from seeing your best pages. You'll get a clear list of what's broken, what's slowing you down, and what to fix first, not a wall of technical jargon with no context. We also check canonical tags, your XML sitemap and general HTML markup for errors, and test mobile usability specifically alongside broader mobile performance.
Schema markup gets checked alongside your existing structured data too, because page speed and wider website performance issues often hide in the details rather than the headline score.
On-Page & Content Analysis
We look at what's actually on the page, title tags, meta descriptions, heading structure, keyword targeting, and whether your content answers the questions people are actually searching for. A lot of sites are optimised for what the business wants to say, not what the searcher wants to know, and that gap shows up directly in rankings.
We flag thin or duplicate content, missed opportunities to target valuable keywords you're already half-ranking for, and pages competing against each other for the same search terms. The result is a clear picture of which pages are pulling their weight and which need rewriting, restructuring, or retiring altogether. Good on-page SEO isn't just about page titles and keyword placement either, it's about genuine content quality: whether your content signals real expertise and trustworthiness (what Google calls E-E-A-T) or just fills a page.
On sites with category pages and product pages, this often means checking for thin or duplicated descriptions specifically, since these pages tend to carry the most search traffic and the least original writing. We'll also flag any content strategy gaps and keyword opportunities we spot along the way, terms you could realistically rank for that nobody's targeting yet.
Site Architecture & Crawlability
How your site's structured affects everything from how easily Google finds your best content to how easily your own visitors find what they came for. We map your site's architecture, internal linking, and URL structure, checking for orphaned pages, confusing navigation, and link equity that's not flowing where it should.
Poor architecture is one of the most common reasons a genuinely good page never ranks, it's simply never told the search engines it matters. We'll show you exactly where the structure's working against you, and what a cleaner hierarchy would look like for your specific site, not a generic template. Beyond how search engines read your structure, a cleaner hierarchy also improves user experience for actual visitors, not just crawlers.
We check for broken internal links specifically, since these quietly damage both search visibility and how people experience the site, often showing up as high bounce rates and poor dwell time in your analytics.
Backlink & Authority Review
We review your backlink profile to understand where your site's authority is actually coming from, and whether any of it's doing more harm than good. That means checking for toxic or spammy links worth disavowing, identifying genuinely valuable link opportunities in your industry, and comparing your link profile against the sites currently outranking you.
We're honest about what backlinks can and can't fix. No amount of link building rescues a site with fundamental technical problems, so this sits alongside the rest of the audit rather than as a silver bullet. You'll come away knowing exactly where you stand on authority, and what's realistic to build from here. This sits alongside the wider off-page SEO picture too.
A proper backlink analysis often surfaces things worth knowing about beyond the links themselves, unlinked brand mentions worth turning into real links, or link patterns risky enough to warrant concern about a Google penalty further down the line. Where backlinks are genuinely holding keyword rankings back, we'll say so plainly.
Local SEO Audit
If local search matters to your business, we check the things that decide whether you show up when someone nearby searches for what you do: Google Business Profile accuracy, local citation consistency, review signals, and location-specific content.
We'll flag inconsistent business details across directories, missing or poorly optimised location pages, and gaps against competitors who are currently outranking you locally. This part of the audit is scaled to how much local search actually matters for your business, we won't pad it out with generic advice if you're a national or online-only operation where it's simply not the priority.
Competitor Analysis & Reporting
Understanding your own site in isolation only tells half the story, so we benchmark you against the competitors actually outranking you for your target terms, not an aspirational list of the biggest names in your sector.
That means comparing content depth, technical performance, and backlink strength directly, so you understand exactly why they're ahead and what it would take to close the gap. Everything comes together in a single, prioritised report that ties the whole website seo analysis back to business impact, so whoever needs to sign off the next steps can see exactly why they matter.
What's Included in an SEO Audit
Technical SEO Audit
We check the technical foundations most audits skim over: site speed and Core Web Vitals, mobile performance, structured data, indexing status, and any crawl errors quietly costing you rankings. This is the core of a proper technical seo audit service, because content and backlinks can only do so much if Google's struggling to crawl or render your site properly in the first place.
We test across devices, check your robots.txt and sitemap are actually doing their job, and flag anything blocking search engines from seeing your best pages. You'll get a clear list of what's broken, what's slowing you down, and what to fix first, not a wall of technical jargon with no context. We also check canonical tags, your XML sitemap and general HTML markup for errors, and test mobile usability specifically alongside broader mobile performance.
Schema markup gets checked alongside your existing structured data too, because page speed and wider website performance issues often hide in the details rather than the headline score.
On-Page & Content Analysis
We look at what's actually on the page, title tags, meta descriptions, heading structure, keyword targeting, and whether your content answers the questions people are actually searching for. A lot of sites are optimised for what the business wants to say, not what the searcher wants to know, and that gap shows up directly in rankings.
We flag thin or duplicate content, missed opportunities to target valuable keywords you're already half-ranking for, and pages competing against each other for the same search terms. The result is a clear picture of which pages are pulling their weight and which need rewriting, restructuring, or retiring altogether. Good on-page SEO isn't just about page titles and keyword placement either, it's about genuine content quality: whether your content signals real expertise and trustworthiness (what Google calls E-E-A-T) or just fills a page.
On sites with category pages and product pages, this often means checking for thin or duplicated descriptions specifically, since these pages tend to carry the most search traffic and the least original writing. We'll also flag any content strategy gaps and keyword opportunities we spot along the way, terms you could realistically rank for that nobody's targeting yet.
Site Architecture & Crawlability
How your site's structured affects everything from how easily Google finds your best content to how easily your own visitors find what they came for. We map your site's architecture, internal linking, and URL structure, checking for orphaned pages, confusing navigation, and link equity that's not flowing where it should.
Poor architecture is one of the most common reasons a genuinely good page never ranks, it's simply never told the search engines it matters. We'll show you exactly where the structure's working against you, and what a cleaner hierarchy would look like for your specific site, not a generic template. Beyond how search engines read your structure, a cleaner hierarchy also improves user experience for actual visitors, not just crawlers.
We check for broken internal links specifically, since these quietly damage both search visibility and how people experience the site, often showing up as high bounce rates and poor dwell time in your analytics.
Backlink & Authority Review
We review your backlink profile to understand where your site's authority is actually coming from, and whether any of it's doing more harm than good. That means checking for toxic or spammy links worth disavowing, identifying genuinely valuable link opportunities in your industry, and comparing your link profile against the sites currently outranking you.
We're honest about what backlinks can and can't fix. No amount of link building rescues a site with fundamental technical problems, so this sits alongside the rest of the audit rather than as a silver bullet. You'll come away knowing exactly where you stand on authority, and what's realistic to build from here. This sits alongside the wider off-page SEO picture too.
A proper backlink analysis often surfaces things worth knowing about beyond the links themselves, unlinked brand mentions worth turning into real links, or link patterns risky enough to warrant concern about a Google penalty further down the line. Where backlinks are genuinely holding keyword rankings back, we'll say so plainly.
Local SEO Audit
If local search matters to your business, we check the things that decide whether you show up when someone nearby searches for what you do: Google Business Profile accuracy, local citation consistency, review signals, and location-specific content.
We'll flag inconsistent business details across directories, missing or poorly optimised location pages, and gaps against competitors who are currently outranking you locally. This part of the audit is scaled to how much local search actually matters for your business, we won't pad it out with generic advice if you're a national or online-only operation where it's simply not the priority.
Competitor Analysis & Reporting
Understanding your own site in isolation only tells half the story, so we benchmark you against the competitors actually outranking you for your target terms, not an aspirational list of the biggest names in your sector.
That means comparing content depth, technical performance, and backlink strength directly, so you understand exactly why they're ahead and what it would take to close the gap. Everything comes together in a single, prioritised report that ties the whole website seo analysis back to business impact, so whoever needs to sign off the next steps can see exactly why they matter.
"When I look over an SEO audit before it goes out, I check every recommendation ties back to a number the client's board will actually believe."
Mhairi Bell, Marketing Director at Gecko
SEO Audit Case Study
[CASE STUDY PLACEHOLDER: no real audit-led case study exists yet. Suggested framing once one's available: "After we ran a full SEO audit service for [CLIENT NAME], we uncovered the technical issues quietly capping their organic traffic, worked through the priority list with their team over [TIMEFRAME], and tracked the measurable lift in rankings and traffic that followed."]
A proper SEO audit service looks at everything affecting your rankings, not just one slice of it. That means the technical foundations (site speed, indexing, crawlability, structured data), your on-page content and keyword targeting, your site's architecture and internal linking, your backlink profile, and where relevant, your local SEO signals too. We pull all of that together into a single prioritised report, ranked by impact rather than by how many issues we can list. You'll walk away knowing exactly what's holding you back and what's worth fixing first, not a jargon-heavy PDF you need a developer to translate. Plenty of SEO audit services (and plenty of website audit templates) stop at a technical checklist, but we also pull in your Google Search Console and Google Analytics data directly, so the report reflects how you actually appear on search engine results pages and perform in organic search, not just what a crawler thinks in isolation.
It depends on the size and complexity of your site, but most technical seo audit service projects take between two and four weeks from kick-off to final report. A smaller brochure site with a handful of pages moves faster. A larger site with thousands of pages, multiple content types, or a history of migrations and redesigns takes longer, because there's simply more to check properly. We'd rather take the time to get the crawl and analysis right than rush out a surface-level report, so we'll give you a realistic timeline once we've seen the site, not a generic estimate upfront. That timeline also depends on what we find as we go: a site with widespread crawl errors or years of untouched keyword research to work through naturally takes longer to review properly than one that's been kept in reasonably good shape.
An audit tells you where you stand right now, what's working, what's broken, and why you're ranking or not ranking for the terms that matter to you. A strategy is what comes after, the plan for what to actually do about it, over what timeframe, and in what order. We'd always recommend the audit first. Building a strategy without a proper seo site audit underneath it means you're guessing at priorities instead of working from evidence, and that's exactly the kind of vague promise we try not to make to our own clients. If you already have an SEO strategy in place, the audit is what tells you honestly whether it's actually working.
Yes, though not full admin access in most cases. We'll typically need read access to your analytics and Search Console, plus permission to crawl the site itself, which doesn't require any changes on your end. If you want us to look at anything sitting behind a login, or check how specific user journeys perform, we'll talk through exactly what access that needs before we start. We're always specific about what we're asking for and why, rather than requesting broad access "just in case."
Both are on the table, and it genuinely depends on what suits you. Some clients take the report and hand it straight to their own developers or content team. Others want us to pick up the technical fixes directly, especially anything that touches code rather than content. Either way, the audit itself is built to be actionable on its own: every recommendation is written so someone without a technical background could understand it and someone with one could implement it. If you'd like us to handle the fixes, just say so when we talk it through.
Once a year is a reasonable baseline for most sites, more often if you're in a competitive market, going through a redesign, or you've noticed a sudden dip in traffic or rankings that needs investigating properly. Search behaviour and algorithms shift constantly, and a website SEO analysis that's two or three years old is often describing a site and a way of searching that no longer exists. If you're not sure whether it's time for another look, that's worth a quick conversation rather than guessing either way. It's worth doing more often right now specifically, given how much AI Overviews and zero-click search are changing what a page actually needs to rank well, and how often the Google algorithm itself seems to shift the goalposts.
That's genuinely common, and it's exactly why the audit's written the way it is. Every finding comes with a clear priority order, so even a very small team, or a team of one, knows where to start rather than facing fifty equally urgent-looking issues. If you'd rather not tackle the fixes alone, we can support with implementation directly, whether that's the technical work, the content rewrites, or both. We'll always tell you honestly what's realistic to do in-house versus what genuinely needs specialist hands, rather than assuming you need more help than you actually do.
It varies with the size and complexity of your site, so we'd rather give you an honest number after a quick look than a generic price that doesn't reflect the actual work involved. A small site with straightforward architecture costs less to audit properly than a large one with years of legacy content and technical debt behind it. Book a quick call and we'll talk through your site, what you're hoping to get out of the audit, and give you a clear, specific cost from there, no vague ranges and no surprises further down the line.
