What a real audit checks
Indexing first, because a page Google has not indexed cannot rank no matter how good it is. Then the structure: does each service have a page, or do nine of them share one. Then on-page: titles, headings, whether two pages are competing for the same search.
Then speed on a phone, the Google Business Profile, and the link profile. Six areas, and in practice one of them is usually responsible for most of the problem.
Findings ranked by cost, not by severity label
Tools label things critical that cost nothing and label things minor that cost a lot. A missing meta description on a page nobody can reach is not critical. Nine services sharing one page is, and no tool flags it.
So the report is ordered by what we think it is costing you, with the reasoning stated so you can disagree. If we are not sure, we say we are not sure rather than padding the list.
The finding owners are most surprised by
Two or more of your own pages competing for the same search. Google picks one, usually not the one you want, and both underperform. It is invisible without looking at the data and it is extremely common on sites that grew page by page.
The fix is rarely deletion. It is usually deciding which page owns which search and making the titles and content say so.
The audit includes the profile, not just the site
For a Kansas City local business the Google Business Profile does more for map rankings than the website does, and it is usually the least complete thing in the whole setup. Categories, services, descriptions, photos, posts.
An audit that only looks at the website is looking at the smaller half for a local business.
What you actually receive
A written report in plain English, ordered by priority, with the specific URL and the specific change for each item. Not a tool export. You should be able to hand it to any competent developer and have them act on it without calling us.
If you want us to do the work that is a separate conversation, and the audit is useful either way.
What usually happens next
Most audits produce three or four things worth doing and a long tail that is not. We say which is which. Chasing every warning in a tool report is a good way to spend a quarter and move nothing.
Where the work is ongoing it rolls into the Kansas City SEO services side, and anything structural usually touches the Kansas City web design build.
What an audit cannot tell you
It cannot tell you how long a fix takes to show up, because that depends on crawl rate, competition and how much authority the site already has. Anybody putting a date on it is guessing.
It also cannot find a shortcut that does not exist. If the businesses above you have ten times the referring domains, the audit will say so, and no amount of on-page work closes that gap on its own.
What it does is stop you spending the next quarter on the wrong thing, which for most Kansas City businesses is worth more than the report costs.
Audit questions Kansas City owners ask
About a week for a typical Kansas City service site. Longer if the site is large or if we are waiting on access to Search Console, which is the single most useful thing you can give us.
We do a free first look that tells you whether there is a real problem and roughly where. The full audit, the one with specific URLs and specific changes, is paid because it takes real time.
No. The report is written so another developer can act on it. Plenty of clients do the fixes in house and come back for the parts that need a specialist.
Search Console is the important one. Analytics and site admin help. We can audit without any of it from the outside, but we will be guessing at things the data would tell us.
Once properly, then not again for a year or two unless something changes. Audits are not a subscription. What should be ongoing is tracking, which is a different and much cheaper thing.
Roughly, yes. Each finding comes with a sense of whether it is an hour, a day or a project, because a list of problems with no idea of effort is hard to make decisions from. Exact quotes come after, and only for the things you decide are worth doing. Plenty of the list is usually work your own developer can handle.
Want to know what is actually wrong?
We will map where you rank across Kansas City and show you the gaps.