Most inquiries start with a brief description of the site and where it stands today: how old it is, whether it's indexed yet, what's already been tried. We reply with a short set of questions if anything is unclear, then confirm whether the site is a fit for this kind of engagement before anything is scheduled.
If it is a fit, the next step is scoping the audit itself: which pages, subdomains, or content types need review, and access to analytics or search console data if it exists yet.
Inside the audit
The audit isn't a single report generated by a tool. It's a manual review across five areas.
We crawl the site the way a search engine would, checking status codes, redirect chains, robots directives, and which pages are actually indexed versus which ones exist. For sites under six months old, it's common to find pages that were never submitted for indexing at all, or pages accidentally blocked during development.
Loading speed, layout stability, and interactivity are checked on both mobile and desktop, since these affect how usable a page feels.
Every existing page is cataloged by topic, length, and intent, which becomes the starting point for the topic map.
We look at how the site's navigation, URL structure, and internal links currently connect pages, noting where the structure works against what the startup is trying to rank for. This review feeds directly into the internal linking plan built afterward.
A look at what similar, more established sites cover helps identify topic gaps worth addressing, without copying their structure directly.
Common questions
Two weeks is the standard window. It can extend slightly for larger sites with more subdomains or content types to review, but the two-week structure holds for most early-stage startup sites.
We build the topic map and structural recommendations. Whether we write the content, hand it to your existing writer, or your team drafts it internally depends on the engagement's scope, which is agreed on after the audit.
That happens occasionally. In that case the engagement shifts toward topic authority and internal linking work sooner, since the technical foundation is already in reasonable shape.
No. Scope and duration are discussed after the audit, based on what the findings actually call for rather than a fixed retainer length.
Typically read access to Google Search Console and analytics if they exist, plus a way to view the site's staging or production environment. If neither tool is set up yet, that setup itself often becomes one of the first recommendations.
The contact form walks through a few short questions about your site and what you're hoping to understand.
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