What separates a real SEO audit from a tool report?
Judgement and prioritisation. Any tool can list 400 issues; an audit decides which five matter, why, in what order, and what each is worth, then explains the implementation so a developer can act without translation. Automated reports flag missing alt text on decorative images with the same urgency as an indexation catastrophe. If a "free audit" arrives instantly as a PDF, it is lead-generation software, not analysis.
What does a full audit actually examine?
Crawl and indexation reality (crawl versus index reconciliation, and log files where volume justifies), rendering (what Googlebot receives on JavaScript-heavy sites), site architecture and internal linking, on-page and content quality against the live SERP competition, structured data validity, Core Web Vitals from field data, backlink profile health, local signals where relevant, AI-citability readiness, and analytics/consent integrity, because unmeasurable campaigns cannot be managed.
How much should an SEO audit cost?
Ours is £500 for the full written audit, delivered in two weeks and credited in full against a retainer signed within 30 days. Market context: genuine audits run £500-£5,000 depending on site scale; sub-£200 offerings are almost always automated. Enterprise-scale audits with log analysis and migration risk assessment run higher, and we scope those individually.
Is your free audit actually free, and what is in it?
Yes, and it is honest about being partial: a manual review of your key pages, an indexation and technical spot-check, competitive positioning read, and the two or three highest-impact opportunities, delivered as a written response, not an automated PDF. It exists because the fastest way to demonstrate competence is to be useful before invoicing. Many recipients act on it themselves and never hire us; that is a legitimate outcome.
Can we take the audit to another provider?
Yes, deliberately: the document is written to be implemented by anyone, your in-house team, your existing agency, your developer, with implementation notes rather than vague recommendations. Audits designed to be useless without the author are a sales tactic. Ours are portable on principle, and a reasonable number of clients implement independently and return later for the next phase.
How long does an audit take and what happens after?
Two weeks for the full written audit, with a walkthrough call to pressure-test priorities. Afterwards, three honest paths: implement it yourself with our notes, have us implement (retainer or fixed-scope project), or take it elsewhere. We recommend the path that fits your team, and say plainly when "do these five things yourself, then reassess in six months" is the right answer.
Do you audit for AI-search visibility too?
Included as standard now: crawler access verification (many sites block AI bots accidentally at CDN level), entity consistency checks, answer-structure assessment on money pages, schema depth, and a prompt-sampled baseline showing whether engines currently cite you for your core questions. It sits inside the same document because it is the same discipline.