SEO Website Audit: Built for Google and AI Search
Website, SEO, and AI Visibility Analysis
A website audit is a deep look at how your website functions: the technical details, the user experience, the design, and, increasingly, how well AI platforms can find, understand, and cite your content.
Why conduct an audit? Because it shows you which changes will raise your website's return on investment, whether that means better rankings and traffic, more email sign-ups, engaged customers, purchases, or a stronger presence in AI-generated answers.
People no longer get answers only from a list of blue links. They get them from Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI tools, often without ever clicking through to a site. A modern audit has to look at both worlds, so mine does.
A website SEO audit shows where you're succeeding and where you need to improve, and it can be a valuable part of your customized SEO / GEO plan. The ideal time for an audit is while you're planning a redesign, but there's never a bad time to make sure your site is performing at its best.
To help you know what to expect, here is what I look for in a website audit and what you can do with what I find.
An SEO audit includes:
Website Performance: Your site's performance shapes the value it brings to your company. If it doesn't convert, loads slowly, or isn't mobile-friendly, it erodes a user's confidence (and patience). I analyze SEO, site health, indexing practices, duplicate content, mobile optimization, mobile usability, site speed, conversion rates, and more.
Technical SEO: Technical SEO is the foundation that lets search engines and AI systems crawl, index, and understand your site. If it's weak, even great content can go unseen.
- Site indexing: Which pages are indexed, which aren't, and why, including your XML sitemap and overall crawl coverage.
- Site health: Crawl errors, broken links, redirect chains, and server response issues.
- Structured data: Whether schema markup is present, valid, and an accurate match for what's on the page.
- Robots directives: Your robots.txt file and meta robots tags, so pages that should rank aren't blocked by accident.
- Canonicals: Canonical tags and duplicate content, so ranking signals consolidate on the right URLs.
- and more: HTTPS and security, URL structure, pagination, hreflang for international sites, and JavaScript rendering.
User Experience: This is a visitor's experience from the moment they land on your site.
- Navigation: Can visitors find what they're looking for?
- Information architecture: Is information organized logically?
- Content: Is it relevant, authoritative, and high quality? Does it meet the visitors’ needs?
- Accessibility: Is the site accessible to all users?
- Design: Does it reflect your brand identity and make clear who you are and what you offer?
- Goals: What is the behavior flow toward your goal, and is it effective?
If visitors have a bad experience, they're unlikely to move to the next stage of your marketing and sales funnel. Finding strengths and weaknesses in the experience lets you make changes that improve your bottom line.
Site Structure: Site structure covers your design, architecture, and navigation, including internal linking. It affects user experience and SEO directly, and it also shapes how well search engines and AI systems understand how your topics and pages relate to one another. Whether the fix is refreshing an outdated design (which can reflect on your credibility) or making sure your content can be crawled and indexed, a sound structure can improve everything from first impressions to conversions.
SEO & Online Marketing: SEO and online marketing are tied to your site's performance. Visitors arrive from search queries, ads, and social media, and then work their way through your marketing funnel toward your site's goal. In the audit I explore questions such as:
- Is your site content optimized for Google's current standards and E-E-A-T guidelines?
- Can visitors find relevant content easily, and is that content leading to conversions?
- What would improve conversions on your website?
- Are you using social media effectively?
- Are the backlinks to your site high quality?
- How are your on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and keyword strategy supporting your online marketing?
AI Search Visibility (GEO): Generative engine optimization (GEO) is about making your business easy for AI platforms to find, understand, and recommend.
- AI crawler access. Can AI crawlers reach your content? I check your robots.txt, server settings, and page rendering so your content isn't blocked or hidden by accident, and so the choices about which AI bots you allow are deliberate.
- Content structure. Are your pages organized with clear headings, direct answers, and well-defined topics that AI systems can extract and summarize accurately?
- Structured data and entity clarity. Is schema markup in place and correct, and does the web clearly show who you are, what you do, and where you operate?
- Authority and trust signals. I review expertise and authorship on your site, plus the reviews, citations, and third-party mentions that AI systems draw on when deciding whom to trust.
- Your presence in AI answers. I test the questions your customers actually ask across major AI platforms to see whether and how your business appears, which competitors are cited instead, and whether what's said about you is accurate.
No one controls what an AI platform says, and I won't promise you a placement. What the audit does is show where the gaps are and prioritize the fixes most likely to improve your visibility.
Your Competition: To fully optimize your site, it helps to know what your competitors are doing. I research their tactics, in both traditional search and AI answers, and give you analysis to help you gain a competitive advantage in your industry.
SEO audit options:
A website audit doesn't just show how your site is functioning today. It gives you a plan to move forward and helps you get the most from your online marketing investment. Both options include the AI search visibility assessment.
- Option 1: A basic but in-depth overview with discovery and remedy recommendations.
- Option 2: A comprehensive written audit, which can also serve as an educational reference, with discovery and remedy recommendations.
You can then take concrete action on the findings to improve your website. For businesses auditing at a critical moment, such as a redesign or a site update, the audit can provide a guiding vision for success. And any company that audits its website can gain the insight to optimize it and increase its bottom line.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some questions that come in regarding site audits. Let us know if you have additional questions!
What is an SEO audit?
An SEO audit is a deep-dive analysis of how your website performs: its technical health, user experience, structure, content, and marketing. It shows you where you're succeeding, where you're falling short, and remedy recommendations.
What is a GEO audit, and how is it different from a traditional SEO audit?
Generative engine optimization (GEO) focuses on how AI platforms such as Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity find, understand, and cite your business. A traditional audit looks at how you rank in search results. The site audits I provide covers both, because the same website needs to work well for search engines and for AI systems.
Why does AI search visibility matter for my business?
More people now get answers directly from AI tools, often without clicking through to a website. If those tools don't know your business, can't read your content, or describe you inaccurately, you can lose visibility with customers who never reach a traditional search results page.
Can you guarantee my business will appear in AI answers?
No, and be cautious of anyone who does. No one controls what AI platforms say. The audit shows where the gaps are and prioritizes the fixes most likely to improve your visibility.
What's the difference between the two audit options?
Option 1 is a basic, but in-depth, overview with discovery and remedy recommendations. Option 2 is a comprehensive written audit, which can also serve as an educational reference for your team, with the same discovery and remedy recommendations. Both include the AI search visibility assessment.
What does an SEO audit cost?
All pricing is specifically customized to the project. Cost depends on the size of the site and which option you choose.
When is the best time to get an audit?
The ideal time is while you're planning a website redesign, since the findings can guide the new site’s design and development. But there's never a bad time to make sure your site is performing at its best, and it's worth revisiting after major site changes.
What can I do with the results?
The audit gives you a plan, not just a list of problems. You can take concrete action on the recommendations to improve rankings, traffic, conversions, and your presence in AI answers. I'm happy to talk through how I can help and how to prioritize the recommended actionables for your business.
Ready to Schedule an SEO audit?
Often the first step in an SEO project is a site audit to determine the project's work flow moving forward. I look forward to helping your business take the first step!