SEO Audit Checklist: 15 Things to Check Before You Hire an Agency

A lot of business owners come to me after sitting through three or four agency pitches. They've seen the same slides each time, the same "360-degree approach", and they still can't tell who actually knows what they're doing.

My advice is always the same. Before the next pitch, spend one afternoon looking at your own website. You don't need to be technical. You'll find a fair number of problems yourself, and you'll walk into that meeting with much sharper questions. The good agencies will love that. The weak ones get uncomfortable fast.

All you need is Google Search Console (it's free, and if you don't have it set up, that's finding number one), your phone, and maybe two hours.

Start with whether Google can even see you

1. Check how many of your pages are indexed. Type site:yourwebsite.com into Google. If you have 80 pages and Google shows 20, a big chunk of your site basically doesn't exist for search.
2. Open your homepage on your phone, on mobile data. Not office Wi-Fi. If you're staring at a blank screen for more than a few seconds, so is everyone else, and most of them have already gone back.
3. Look for the padlock in the address bar. If your site still isn't on HTTPS, browsers warn visitors before they even see your page. It's a quick fix, and there's no excuse for skipping it now.
4. Look at the Pages report in Search Console. A few errors are normal. If you see dozens of "not found" or "crawled but not indexed" pages, nobody has been looking after the site for a while.
5. Try yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml. If nothing loads, or it's listing pages you deleted two years ago, that's an easy one your developer can sort out in an hour.

Then look at the pages themselves

1. Google your own brand name and read your results. If half of them say "Home | Company Name", Google can't tell those pages apart either. Each page needs its own title.
2. Read your service pages like a stranger would. I see a lot of pages called "Solutions" or "What We Do". Those rank for nothing. A page called "Admission Campaign Management for B-Schools" can rank for exactly the people you want to reach.
3. Check the main heading on each page. It should say what the page is about. "Welcome to our world" tells Google nothing.
4. Look at your image file names. If they're all IMG_4821.jpg with no descriptions, you're missing out on image search, and on visitors who use screen readers.
5. See if your pages link to each other. Blog posts should point to your services. Service pages should point to proof, like results or testimonials. A page nothing else links to usually just sits there.

Content and reputation

1. Find the date on your latest blog post. If it's from 2023, your website looks abandoned. Google notices, and so does every prospect deciding whether to call you.
2. Search your main service and look at the "People also ask" box. Those are real questions people are typing. If your site doesn't answer any of them, a competitor's site is getting that traffic.
3. Open the Links report in Search Console. You'll see which websites link to yours. Ten relevant, real websites are worth far more than two hundred junk directories somebody once submitted you to.
4. Look at your Google Business Profile properly. Are the hours right? Are the photos real or stock? When did you last reply to a review? For anything local, this often matters more than the website itself.
5. Check that your name, address and phone number match everywhere. Website, Google profile, Facebook, Justdial, industry directories. Even small differences like "Sec 45" in one place and "Sector-45" in another can confuse search engines.

Now take that list into your next meeting

Write down what you found. Then ask each agency which of these they'd fix first, how long it would take, and how you'll know it's done.

The agencies worth hiring will answer specifically, and they'll probably point out things you missed. The others will steer you back to a standard package. You'll know within ten minutes which kind you're talking to.

One caveat from my side. A checklist shows you symptoms. It won't tell you which problem is actually costing you the most enquiries, or what your competitors are doing that you aren't. That's where experience really matters, and honestly it's where most of the gains are.