What Is an SEO Audit?

An SEO audit is a complete assessment of your website's ability to rank in search engines. It identifies what is working, what is broken, and what opportunities you are missing. Think of it like a home inspection, but for your online presence. You cannot fix problems you do not know about.

At Buzz Cue, our SEO audits are built for small businesses. That means we focus on the issues that will actually move the needle for your traffic and leads, not a 200-page report full of technical jargon you will never act on.

What the Audit Covers

Our audit examines five areas of your website's SEO health. Each section includes specific findings and prioritized recommendations.

Technical SEO

This is the foundation. If your website has technical problems, nothing else matters. We check:

  • Site speed and Core Web Vitals scores (mobile and desktop)
  • Mobile responsiveness and usability
  • Crawl errors, broken links, and redirect chains
  • XML sitemap accuracy and robots.txt configuration
  • HTTPS implementation and security issues
  • Structured data and schema markup
  • Indexation status (are your pages actually in Google's index?)

On-Page SEO

This covers how well your individual pages are optimized for your target keywords:

  • Title tags and meta descriptions (are they present, unique, and well-written?)
  • Header structure (H1, H2, H3 hierarchy)
  • Content quality and keyword targeting
  • Internal linking structure
  • Image optimization (alt text, file sizes, formats)
  • URL structure and slug optimization

Local SEO

For businesses that serve a geographic area, local SEO is often where the biggest opportunities live:

  • Google Business Profile completeness and optimization
  • NAP consistency (name, address, phone) across the web
  • Local citation audit across major directories
  • Review quantity, quality, and response rate
  • Local keyword rankings and map pack visibility
  • Competitor comparison in local search results

Content Audit

We evaluate your existing content to find gaps and opportunities:

  • Thin or duplicate content pages that may be hurting your site
  • High-potential pages that need optimization
  • Content gaps where competitors rank but you do not
  • Blog and resource page performance
  • Content freshness and update opportunities

Backlink Analysis

Backlinks are still one of Google's top ranking factors. We review:

  • Your current backlink profile (quantity, quality, and diversity)
  • Toxic or spammy links that could be hurting your rankings
  • Competitor backlink comparison
  • Link-building opportunities specific to your industry and location

What You Get

The final deliverable is a written report with three sections:

  1. Executive summary: A plain-language overview of your site's SEO health and the top priorities. No jargon.
  2. Detailed findings: Every issue we found, organized by category and severity. Each finding includes what it is, why it matters, and exactly how to fix it.
  3. Prioritized action plan: A ranked list of recommendations sorted by impact and effort. We tell you what to fix first, what can wait, and what you can skip entirely.

We also include a 30-minute walkthrough call where we review the findings together and answer your questions. You should understand every recommendation before deciding what to act on.

Pricing

SEO audit pricing depends on the size and complexity of your website:

  • $500 to $800: Small business sites with 10 to 50 pages. Covers all five audit areas with prioritized recommendations. Turnaround: 5 to 7 business days.
  • $800 to $1,200: Medium sites with 50 to 200 pages, e-commerce stores, or businesses in competitive markets. Includes deeper competitor analysis. Turnaround: 7 to 10 business days.
  • $1,200 to $2,000: Large sites with 200+ pages or complex technical setups (multiple locations, subdomains, international targeting). Turnaround: 10 to 14 business days.

Every audit includes the written report and walkthrough call. If you decide to hire us to implement the recommendations, the audit fee is credited toward your first month of SEO services.

What Happens After the Audit

You have three options after receiving your audit:

  1. Do it yourself: Take the report and action plan, and work through the fixes on your own or with your web developer. The recommendations are detailed enough to follow without us.
  2. Hire us to fix it: We implement the recommendations through our ongoing local SEO services. Most clients start here.
  3. Get a second opinion: Use our audit to evaluate proposals from other agencies. A good audit gives you the knowledge to ask the right questions.

If you want a broader view of your overall SEO strategy, check out our local SEO checklist. And if you are looking for ongoing SEO support, our SEO consultant page explains how that works.

Get Your SEO Audit Started

Tell us about your website and your goals. We will scope the audit, give you a firm quote, and get started within a few business days.

Request an SEO audit