What does an SEO audit include? Read ours in full.
This is the actual document a new client receives in week one — filled in for a fictional demonstration business so you can judge the deliverable, not a promise.
What’s actually wrong, in one paragraph?
Evergreen Paddle Co. is invisible for the searches that pay its rent: the booking page is blocked from Google entirely, the homepage takes too long to load on a phone, the business has no structured data and no complete Google Business Profile, and not one page answers the questions people ask before renting a kayak.
The good news is the shape of the problem: most of it is removal, not construction. Unblock the money page, cut the page weight, tell the machines what the business is — then build the content that makes it the obvious answer. The order matters, which is why every finding below carries a fix window instead of a vague “recommendation.”
What did the technical crawl find?
Six findings, ranked by how much they cost: two critical (a blocked booking page and a 14 MB hero video), two high (no canonical tags, no LocalBusiness schema), and two medium (orphaned pages and unoptimized images). Each comes with its plain-English impact and a committed fix window.
| Issue | Severity | Plain-English impact | Fix window |
|---|---|---|---|
| Booking page blocked by a robots.txt disallow left over from staging | Critical | The one page that takes money is invisible to every search engine. Nothing else in this audit matters until this line is deleted. | Day 1 |
| 14 MB unminified hero video autoplaying on the homepage | Critical | On a phone at the dock, the page takes double-digit seconds to show anything. Visitors leave before the first frame; Google notices. | Week 1–2 |
| No canonical tags — the site resolves at four URL variants | High | http, https, www, and non-www all serve the same pages, so ranking credit is split four ways instead of stacking on one URL. | Week 1 |
| Missing LocalBusiness schema (no hours, location, or service markup) | High | Search and AI engines have to guess what the business is, where it is, and when it opens. They guess conservatively. | Week 2 |
| 9 orphaned pages reachable only from the XML sitemap | Medium | Old rental prices and 2023 event pages still rank occasionally — quoting prices the shop no longer honors. | Week 2–3 |
| Full-resolution PNG photos with no lazy loading | Medium | Every gallery page carries megabytes it doesn’t need, slowing the site and burning mobile data goodwill. | Week 3 |
Which searches should this business own?
The intent map pairs each target query with what the searcher actually wants and the page that should answer it — because ranking a page that answers the wrong question is a rounding error, not a result. This is the excerpt; the full audit maps every service the business sells.
| Query | Intent | The searcher wants | Page that should answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| “kayak rental seattle” | Commercial — ready to book | Prices, location, hours, and a booking button above the fold | Homepage + a dedicated rentals page (currently blocked) |
| “paddle board rental near me” | Local — immediate | A map-pack result with photos, reviews, and tap-to-call | Google Business Profile + location landing page (neither exists) |
| “can you kayak on lake union” | Informational — planning | A direct yes-with-details answer, then rental info one click away | New question-format guide (no page answers this today) |
| “do i need experience to rent a kayak” | Informational — reassurance | A plain answer a nervous first-timer (or an AI assistant) can quote | FAQ with schema markup (currently a paper sign at the counter) |
Can the neighborhood find this business?
Not reliably. The Google Business Profile is incomplete — generic category, no services or photos, hours that don’t match the website — and the site has no location landing page, so “near me” searches have nothing solid to attach to.
- Business Profile category too generic to match rental searches
- Phone number formatted three different ways across the web
- No page names the lake, the dock, or the neighborhood
- Reviews unanswered — a silence Google and humans both read
The fix lives in our local SEO service.
Do AI answers know this business exists?
No. Asked where to rent a kayak in Seattle, AI assistants recommend competitors — because this site gives them nothing to quote: no direct answers, no structured data, and key facts locked in images and PDFs machines can’t reliably read.
- We ask the major assistants the money questions and log every mention
- Zero pages contain a quotable 40–60-word direct answer
- No question-format coverage for planning-stage searches
- Prices and policies exist only in a PDF — invisible to answer engines
The fix lives in our AI-powered SEO service.
What happens in the first 90 days?
Three phases in a deliberate order: unblock and stabilize in the first two weeks, rebuild the local and structural foundation through week six, then publish the content that makes the business the answer through week twelve. Every item is a logged deliverable — and if we miss one, that month is free.
Unblock and stabilize
- Delete the staging robots.txt rule and request reindexing of the booking page
- Replace the 14 MB hero video with a compressed, lazy-loaded version
- Set canonical tags and redirect all URL variants to one https origin
Foundation
- Ship LocalBusiness schema with hours, geo, and rental services
- Build the Lake Union location page and complete the Google Business Profile
- Retire or redirect the 9 orphaned pages; fix stale pricing everywhere
Be the answer
- Publish question-format guides for the planning queries in the intent map
- Add a quotable FAQ (40–60-word direct answers) with FAQ schema
- Baseline AI-visibility checks and start the monthly reporting cadence
How this maps to a monthly engagement — and what each phase costs — is on the pricing page. The reasoning behind the sequence is documented on our method page, and the field-teardown versions of audits like this live in Sasquatch Sightings.
Want this for your actual website?
The free SEO audit runs these same checks on your real site — crawl, intent, local, and AI visibility — and you keep the document whether or not you hire us.