All Action Marketing

What does a content audit actually look like?

A content audit shows you, in writing, why strangers searching for what you sell are not finding you. Most agencies will tell you your site needs work. Very few will show you the evidence. Below is a complete audit we ran for a client, published with their name, web address, city and project names removed.

Every number in it is real. We read every word on the site, counted how often the terms their buyers actually search for appeared, and measured how much of the copy was repeated from page to page. What you see is the same report a client receives.

Sample report · Client details removed, figures unchanged
Content Audit · Baseline
Website Content Audit

A read of every word on a client's website, measured against what people in their market actually type into Google when they are looking for that service.

Sample report 9 pages + 3 projects read in full Prepared for review
3of 10 · content

The writing is genuinely good. The problem is that it was written to be read by someone who already knows the company, not found by a stranger searching for the service. The words the market actually searches for do not appear on the site at all.

The headline finding

Every occurrence of the terms the business names as its targets, counted across all nine pages. These are the results.

Search term the business targetsTimes it appears on the entire site
Main service term (what buyers call it)0
Second service term0
Third service term0
Category word (outside the company name)0
Industry phrase the company does use6
Secondary offering3
Home city10 — 8 of them the same footer line

Why this one finding outranks everything else

Google matches pages to the words in a search. Somebody nearby types the plain-language name of the service plus "near me", or the service plus the city. The site never says either phrase, so there is nothing for Google to match, however well the page is written or how good the work is.

The site describes itself in the industry's own language for itself. That is not the customer's language.

Findings

Needs work

Twelve services, not one page between them

Every service is a one-line card on a shared list. The top service gets 19 words. The second gets 14. There is no page for Google to rank for any single service plus the city, because there is no page for that service at all.

Checked: the individual service URLs a visitor or Google would expect — all return 404. The only services content lives on one page totaling 335 words for all twelve.

One page per service, each answering what it costs, how long it takes, and what the process is. Start with the three that sell.

Needs work

The same words repeated across pages

Most pages are assembled from blocks that already appear elsewhere. The homepage is largely a stitched-together preview of the other pages, which leaves each page with very little of its own to be found for.

PageBody wordsAlso appears on another page
Homepage60974%
Projects / portfolio10677%
Services20871%
Secondary division page14969%
Process9663%
About24330%
Gallery6225%
Contact870%

Let each page own one job. The homepage points at the others rather than reprinting them.

Needs work

Nothing answers a buyer's real questions

Somebody planning a major purchase searches for money, time and trust before they search for a company. The site addresses none of it.

Across all nine pages: "cost" 0 · "price" 0 · "how much" 0 · "financing" 0 · "warranty" 0 · "licensed" 0 · "insured" 0 · "FAQ" 0 · testimonials 0 · "permit" 2 · "timeline" 2

This also costs the business the AI answers. When somebody asks ChatGPT or Google's AI overview what this kind of work costs locally, those tools quote pages that state real numbers. This site has none to quote.

A cost guide per service with genuine ranges, a FAQ block, and the licensing and insurance details stated plainly.

Needs work

Three project pages, and they are the strongest asset on the site

The three project write-ups are the only pages with anything specific to say, and the before-and-after sliders are the best thing on the site. Each page is 198 to 309 words: the story, four bullet points of scope, done.

Missing from every project page: neighborhood, project size, duration, budget band, the problem the owner started with, what was found during the work, the materials chosen and why, the client's own words.

Each project written up properly is a page that can rank for a neighborhood and a service at once. This is the cheapest content on the site because the work is already done and photographed.

Needs work

One city named, no neighborhoods, no blog

The home city appears 10 times, 8 of which are the same footer line repeated on every page. The five surrounding towns the business serves are never mentioned. Two larger nearby markets appear once each, in that same footer line, which is not enough for either.

Checked: the blog URL and the city landing-page URL both 404. No articles, no project updates, no location pages exist.

Location content and SEO articles have nowhere to live yet. That has to be built before either can be published.

Worth fixing

Headlines are poetry where they should be plain

Every page's main headline is a mood line rather than a description of what the page is about. A line like "Designed with intention. Built for real life." tells Google nothing. Only the project pages have headlines that name their subject.

Pattern found on 7 of 8 pages: an abstract brand line in the main headline position, with the actual subject of the page appearing nowhere in it.

Keep the mood line as a sub-headline; make the main headline say the thing. The brand voice survives this intact.

Working well

What is already right, and should not be touched

The page titles are the best-executed part of the site: unique on every page, correctly sized, brand present, and six of eight carry the city name. Image descriptions are complete across all 43 images with genuinely descriptive wording, which is rare and directly serves image search. One properly structured headline per page throughout. The writing itself is confident and specific where it is allowed to be, and the voice is a real asset once it is pointed at the right words.

Unknown

What could not be checked without access

How this content actually performs: which pages get found, for what, and what visitors do next. The site carries no analytics or Search Console tag of any kind, so that data does not exist yet rather than being hidden. Competitor content comparison also still to come.

What to do, in order

Ordered by what moves the needle soonest, not by how hard it is.

  1. Put the customer's words on the siteIntroduce the plain-language service terms buyers actually search into the homepage, services and about copy. Nothing else on this list works until Google has something to match.
  2. Build the three service pages that sellOne page per core service, each with cost ranges, timeline, process and a relevant project as proof.
  3. Write the existing projects up properlyNeighborhood, scope, duration, budget band, before-and-after narrative. The work and the photography already exist, so this is the cheapest content available.
  4. Add the trust contentLicensed and insured, years in business, warranty terms, a FAQ, and client testimonials. Absent entirely today.
  5. Give the homepage its own copyStop reprinting the other pages. Link to them instead.
  6. Rewrite the headlines to name their subjectMood line stays, moves down one level.
  7. Open a project-updates sectionSomewhere for the SEO articles and project updates to actually live.

Before any of this goes live

Cost ranges, timelines, warranty terms and licensing details are all claims about the business. Every number has to come from the owner directly and be approved before it is published. Material website changes and anything that alters customer expectations stay behind owner approval, and invented figures are exactly the failure that rule exists to prevent.

Want to know what yours says?

Same method, your website. We read every page, count what buyers actually search for against what your site says, and hand you the findings with the evidence and a prioritized list of what to fix first.

The written report is $9. For $47 you get that same report plus a live walkthrough of how to fix each issue, and one clear recommendation for what to do next.

See both options

Questions about this sample

Is this a real audit?

Yes. It is an audit we ran for a real client, published with their name, web address, city, owner and project names removed. Every figure in it is a genuine measurement taken from that site, so the numbers are illustrative of the method rather than being your own results.

What does a content audit actually check?

We read every word on the site and count how often the terms real buyers search for actually appear. We measure how much copy is duplicated between pages, check whether the site answers the cost, timeline and trust questions buyers ask before they call, and look at whether service pages and location pages exist at all. Each finding comes with the evidence behind it and the fix.

Will my report look like this one?

The structure is the same: a headline finding, the individual findings with evidence and fixes, and a prioritized action list. The findings themselves depend entirely on what your site says, so the content is different for every business.

What is the difference between the $9 and the $47 audit?

The $9 audit is the written report, like the one above, delivered within one business day. The $47 audit is that same report plus a live, time-capped walkthrough where we go through each finding with you and explain exactly how to fix it, ending with one clear recommendation for what to do next. It is a focused conversation about your report, not an open-ended consulting session.