How to prepare for an SEO audit without wasting the fee
The access, context and questions that turn an SEO audit into an action list rather than a PDF you never open again.
An SEO audit is only as good as the brief. If the auditor does not know how you make money, they will prioritise vanity metrics. If they cannot access Search Console, they will guess at indexation.
Access worth arranging first
Google Search Console, analytics (even if messy), the CMS, and staging if you have a redesign in flight. You do not need to hand over bank-level access to everything; you do need someone who can confirm what Google is actually indexing. Crawl and index questions are documented in Google’s crawling and indexing guide.
Context worth writing down
Which ten pages should generate enquiries? Which services are you trying to stop selling? Are you about to change domain, CMS or navigation? Hampshire firms should also list the towns they will travel to — and the ones they will not. That list should match your local SEO footprint, not a wish-list of every postcode.
What “done” looks like
You should leave with a sequenced list, owners, and a view on whether a monthly retainer is justified. Expect technical, on-page and local findings in that order of “can we rank at all?”. If the deliverable is only a crawl export, you paid for a tool you could have run yourself.
We offer SEO audits on that basis, including a walkthrough so the file does not stall in someone’s inbox.