SEO audit services are a structured review of a website's technical health, on-page content, off-page authority, and AI-search visibility, benchmarked against the competitors outranking you. Foundgrove turns every finding into one prioritized fix roadmap — highest-impact first. Start with a free initial audit, then engage month-to-month, no lock-in, to ship the fixes.
SEO Audit · Updated July 2026
SEO Audit Services That Find What's Capping Your Rankings
Know exactly what's holding your rankings back. We benchmark your site against the competitors beating you and hand you a prioritized fix-it roadmap.
Definition
What is an SEO audit?
An SEO audit answers one question: what is actually capping your rankings, and what should you fix first? We review technical health, content and on-page signals, backlink profile, local presence, and AI-search visibility — then prioritize by impact and effort so you are not handed a 200-item checklist with no order. Foundgrove also offers a free initial audit so you can see the opportunity before committing.
Benchmarked against who beats you
We do not audit in a vacuum — we compare your site to the specific competitors outranking you for your money terms, so the findings are about closing a real gap, not chasing generic best practices.
Prioritized by impact
Every finding is ranked by expected impact and effort, so you fix the few things that move rankings first instead of drowning in a flat checklist of low-value tweaks.
Covers AI search too
We assess AI visibility — whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews cite you — alongside traditional SEO, because that surface increasingly decides who gets found.
Scope
What's included?
- Technical health review — crawlability, indexation, Core Web Vitals & INP, schema
- On-page & content review benchmarked against the competitors outranking you
- Off-page & backlink profile and authority-gap analysis
- Competitive gap analysis against your money-term rivals
- Local SEO and Google Business Profile review (where applicable)
- GEO & AEO readiness check across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews
- A written report prioritized by impact × effort
- A 90-day roadmap your team can ship
Part of our full SEO, GEO & AEO service. Pricing starts at $2,500/mo — Month-to-month — no lock-in.
The 4 pillars of an SEO audit
A complete SEO audit covers four pillars, and a gap in any one caps the others. We assess all four and weight the findings by how much each is actually costing your rankings.
- Technical — can engines crawl, render, and index the site (speed, schema, crawlability)
- On-page & content — depth, relevance, titles, headings, and internal linking
- Off-page & backlink — referring domains, anchor profile, and authority gaps
- Competitive — where you sit against the specific rivals outranking you
What our technical audit checks
The technical layer is where most quiet ranking caps hide. The audit checks the full stack of crawl, index, speed, rendering, and structured-data signals — and quantifies the impact of each so you fix the highest-leverage issues first.
- Crawlability & indexation — coverage errors, index bloat, robots.txt, sitemaps
- Core Web Vitals & INP — measured on real field data
- Site architecture, mobile responsiveness, and internal linking
- Canonical tags, redirect loops, and duplicate or thin content
- JavaScript rendering, crawl errors, and schema markup
scoring green on Core Web Vitals and INPwhat a technical SEO scope includes
GEO & AEO readiness audit
This is the audit gap almost no competitor covers, and it is Foundgrove's core positioning. The audit checks whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews already cite you in your category, and reviews the signals that drive citation: passage structure, schema, entity clarity, and llms.txt. As AI answers absorb clicks, being citable is increasingly as decisive as ranking.
GEO & AI-search optimizationgetting cited by Google AI Overviews
SEO audit types we run
Different sites need different audit lenses. We scope the review to your model so the findings and roadmap fit how you actually rank and convert.
- Technical SEO audit
- E-commerce / product-catalog audit
- Local SEO audit
- Mobile & Core Web Vitals audit
- Competitive gap audit
- GEO / AEO readiness audit
What you get: the deliverable
You do not get a raw tool export. You get a written report with every finding prioritized by impact × effort, plus a 90-day roadmap your team (or ours) can actually ship. The point is a clear order of operations, not a flat 200-item checklist.
How long does an SEO audit take?
The free initial audit is fast: a 10-minute personal video teardown within 2 business days, plus an optional full written audit — keyword gaps, competitor analysis, and a 90-day roadmap — in 5–7 business days. A deep technical crawl of a large site is scoped separately, since analysis time scales with the number of URLs. Nothing here has to start with a paid engagement — take the free teardown, if you want a look first, then scope the deeper work once you have seen the findings.
How much do SEO audit services cost?
The initial audit is free. A comprehensive deep-dive for a larger site is scoped to its size and complexity, and many clients roll it into an ongoing SEO retainer starting at $2,500/mo — month-to-month, no lock-in — where the fixes get implemented rather than just documented.
The tools behind our audits
We name only what is actually in the workflow: Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights for field data, a full-site crawler for crawlability and indexation, backlink and keyword datasets for authority analysis, schema validators, and direct AI-Overview and LLM citation checks. No proprietary black-box score — a strategist reads and prioritizes the findings.
Real audit-to-growth results
Proof beats promises. Our anonymized case studies show real audit-to-growth outcomes, with every figure drawn from the client's own Google Search Console data — not invented numbers. Small-base percentages carry an honest caveat.
FAQs
Common questions about seo audit.
What are SEO audit services?
SEO audit services are a structured diagnostic of your website's search performance across technical health, on-page content, off-page authority, local presence, and AI visibility. The output is not just a list of problems but a prioritized roadmap — the highest-impact fixes ranked by effort — benchmarked against the competitors actually outranking you, so you know exactly what to do first.
Is there a free SEO audit?
Yes. Foundgrove offers a free initial audit: a 10-minute personal video teardown within 2 business days, plus an optional full written audit — keyword gaps, competitor analysis, technical SEO, AI-search visibility, and a 90-day roadmap — in 5–7 business days. It is run by a senior strategist, not a junior rep. For larger sites that need a deep technical crawl and remediation, we scope a full paid audit engagement from there.
How much do SEO audit services cost?
The initial audit is free. A comprehensive deep-dive audit for a larger site — full technical crawl, content gap analysis, backlink review, and a remediation roadmap — is scoped to the site's size and complexity. Many clients roll the audit into an ongoing SEO retainer starting at $2,500/month, where the fixes get implemented rather than just documented. Engagements are month-to-month with no lock-in.
What's the difference between an audit and ongoing SEO?
An audit is the diagnosis: it identifies and prioritizes what is wrong and what to fix. Ongoing SEO is the treatment: actually implementing the fixes, producing content, building authority, and tracking results month over month. An audit is the right starting point if you want a clear, unbiased picture before committing; many clients then move into a retainer to execute the roadmap the audit produced.
How long does an SEO audit take?
Your free initial audit is fast: a 10-minute personal video teardown within 2 business days, plus an optional full written audit — keyword gaps, competitor analysis, and a 90-day roadmap — in 5–7 business days. A deeper technical crawl of a large site is scoped separately, because crawl and analysis time scale with the number of URLs and the size of the issue backlog.
What tools do you use for an SEO audit?
Our audit runs on industry-standard tooling: Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights for field data, a full-site crawler for crawlability and indexation, backlink and keyword datasets for authority and gap analysis, schema validators, and direct checks of how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews cite your category. We do not hide behind a single black-box score — the findings are read and prioritized by a strategist.
Do you audit e-commerce sites?
Yes. E-commerce sites carry technical patterns general reviews miss — faceted-navigation crawl traps, near-duplicate product and collection pages, thin category copy, canonical and pagination handling, and product and review schema. The audit flags these alongside the standard technical, content, and authority checks so the roadmap reflects how commerce sites actually rank.
Do you check AI-search visibility?
Yes — it is one of our core differentiators. The audit checks whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews currently cite you in your category, and reviews the signals that drive those citations: passage structure, schema, entity clarity, and llms.txt. As AI answers absorb more clicks, being citable there is increasingly as important as ranking a traditional blue link.
Ready to see what's possible?
Free 10-minute video teardown within 2 business days — plus an optional full written audit in 5–7 business days.
Written by Hyder Shah, Founder & CEO · Updated July 2026