Before you pay anyone for SEO, including us, you should know what shape your website is actually in. A basic audit takes about ten minutes with free tools, and it tells you whether you have five small problems or one big one.

Here's the exact sequence, in the order that surfaces the most important issues first.

Step 1: Crawl your site and get a score (3 minutes)

An automated crawler reads your site the way search engines do and flags what's broken: missing titles, duplicate descriptions, broken links, slow pages, missing schema.

We built NX RNK for exactly this, enter your domain, and it crawls the site, scores your technical and on-page health, and returns a prioritized fix list rather than a 400-row spreadsheet. The audit is free and takes a few minutes to run.

Whatever tool you use, you're looking for the same things:

  • Pages missing a title tag or meta description, or sharing duplicates
  • More than one H1 per page, or none
  • Broken internal links and 404s
  • Pages blocked from indexing by accident
  • Missing structured data (schema)

Step 2: Check your speed where it counts, on a phone (2 minutes)

Run your homepage and one key service page through Google's PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev). Look at the mobile score and the Core Web Vitals, that's how most of your customers experience the site, and it's what Google measures.

Under 50 on mobile usually means structural problems: oversized images, bloated themes, too many plugins. This is chronic on aging WordPress sites, it's the single most common reason we migrate clients to static sites, which routinely score in the high 90s.

Step 3: Confirm Google can actually see you (1 minute)

Search Google for `site:yourdomain.ca`. This lists every page Google has indexed.

  • Nothing comes back? Your site is blocked from indexing, an emergency, and often a one-line fix.
  • Way fewer pages than you have? Crawl or quality issues.
  • Weird pages you forgot existed? Old test pages and tag archives diluting your site, clean them up.

Step 4: Audit your Google Business Profile (2 minutes)

For a local business, the map listing carries as much weight as the website. Open your profile as a customer would and score it honestly: current hours, specific primary category, 10+ photos from this year, services listed, reviews answered. Our Google Business Profile checklist covers each item, and if the profile isn't appearing at all, start here instead.

Step 5: Check where you actually rank (2 minutes)

Pick the five searches that would bring you money, "bathroom renovation london ontario", not your business name. Search each in an incognito window and note where you land. Your name ranking #1 means nothing; strangers don't search your name.

To watch these positions over time instead of spot-checking, NX RNK includes a rank tracker, set your keywords once and it records movement weekly. Ranking on page two for a money keyword is the classic "striking distance" situation where focused work pays off fastest.

Step 6: Read the results like an agency would

  • A few missing titles and descriptions? Fix them yourself this afternoon.
  • Mobile speed under 50? That's structural. Budget for a rebuild or migration before spending anything on content or ads, everything else is pushing water uphill until the site is fast.
  • Site fine but invisible for money keywords? Your problem is relevance and authority: service pages, local content, reviews, and links. That's a local SEO program, not a quick fix.
  • Everything's actually good? Congratulations, now the leverage is in content and your Business Profile, not technical repair.

The point of auditing before hiring: when an agency proposes work, you'll know whether they're describing your real problems. Any agency that won't show you findings this concrete is selling fog. If your audit turns up more than you want to handle, book a call and we'll walk through your results together, no obligation attached.

Frequently asked questions

What's the best free SEO audit tool?

For a fast, plain-language result, we're biased but honest: NX RNK, free audit, scored results, prioritized fixes. Pair it with Google's own PageSpeed Insights for speed and Search Console for index data, both free. Any of the big commercial crawlers work too if you don't mind the complexity.

How often should I audit my website?

Quarterly for a stable site, plus immediately after any redesign, migration, or platform change, that's when things silently break. Rank tracking should run continuously since it's automated.

What's the difference between a free audit and a paid SEO audit?

A free automated audit finds technical and on-page issues, the objective layer. A paid audit adds human analysis: competitive gaps, content strategy, link profile quality, and a sequenced plan. Run the free one first; it makes the paid conversation sharper and shorter.

My audit score is high but I still get no customers from Google. Why?

A clean site is the floor, not the ceiling. You're likely missing content that matches what people search, local relevance signals, or reviews and authority, the competitive layer an automated crawl can't score. That's the exact gap a local SEO program exists to close.

Do I need to fix everything the audit finds?

No. Fix the blockers (indexing, speed, missing titles on money pages) and ignore the trivia. A prioritized list beats a complete one, chase the items that affect pages customers actually land on.