An SEO audit is a structured review of your website that finds what is holding back its search visibility. A good SEO audit covers technical health, on page elements, content, backlinks and competitors, then ends with a prioritised action list. Published UK prices start around £500 for a basic check and reach £5,000 or more for large sites.
- An SEO audit reviews technical health, on page SEO, content, backlinks and competitors, and ranks the fixes by importance
- Published UK prices from agencies range from about £500 for a basic audit to £5,000 or more for large or complex sites
- Every price in this guide comes from a company selling audits, so use the ranges to sense check quotes
- Fixing the problems usually costs more than finding them, and one consultancy estimates 1.5 to 2 times the audit fee
- Free tools such as Google Search Console cover a lot for a small site
- The best audits are agreed in advance, prioritised and easy for a developer to act on
Table of Contents
What an SEO audit is
Our guide on what SEO is and how it works explains the foundations, and an SEO audit checks how well your site meets them. It is a health check, not a fix. You receive a report that shows what is wrong, what matters most and what to do first.
Audits come in different depths. ProfileTree describes four: a quick health check, a standard audit, a deep dive and a focused review of one area. Which one you need depends on the size of your site and what you are trying to solve.
What an SEO audit includes
Our post on why rankings suddenly drop shows how many separate issues can hide behind one symptom, which is why a proper audit covers several areas. ProfileTree lists these:
- Technical SEO: crawlability, indexing, site structure, page speed, mobile friendliness, HTTPS and structured data
- On page SEO: titles, meta descriptions, headings, thin or duplicate content and images
- Content: quality, gaps and pages to update or merge
- Backlinks: referring domains, anchor text and risky links
- Competitors: how rivals compare on rankings, content and links
- Local SEO, where relevant: Google Business Profile, citations and reviews
Whitehat SEO, a London agency, adds Core Web Vitals, AI search readiness and UK compliance such as cookie consent to its list. Treat extra items as optional, because an audit with more checks is not automatically better. If you suspect bought links, our guide to auditing a bought link profile goes deeper on that part.
What an SEO audit costs in the UK
Our guide to how much SEO costs covers ongoing pricing, and audits are usually a one off fee. There is no official price list, so the table compares what four sources publish. All of them sell audits, so each has an interest in its own numbers.
| Source | Smaller site | Larger or complex site |
|---|---|---|
| Whitehat SEO | £500 to £1,200 | £1,500 to £4,000, up to £5,000 to £15,000+ |
| ProfileTree | From £500 | £3,000 to £5,000+ |
| Mecanik (technical only) | £1,200 to £2,500 | £3,000 to £6,000 |
| Local SEO sources | £300 to £800 | Not given |
The last row comes from the local SEO sources we quote in our guide to local SEO costs in the UK. Categories do not line up exactly, and Mecanik says its own figures are illustrative. The pattern is still clear: a small site audit sits in the hundreds to low thousands, while big sites cost several thousand.
The cost people forget: fixing the problems
Our breakdown of SEO for small businesses stresses that the report is only the start. Mecanik estimates implementation at roughly 1.5 to 2 times the audit fee and a verification crawl at 15 to 25 percent of it. Those are one consultancy’s unsourced estimates, so treat them as a warning to budget for the work, not as a rule.
Turnaround varies too. Whitehat gives one week for a basic audit and two to three weeks for a comprehensive one, while ProfileTree says two to four weeks for a comprehensive audit and one to two weeks for sites under 100 pages. All are estimates until the scope is agreed.
Free versus paid options
Our SEO services start with an audit, but you can do a lot yourself first. Whitehat lists Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights and the free version of Screaming Frog, which crawls up to 500 URLs, as a starting toolkit, and claims they cover about 80 percent of what most small businesses need. That figure is unverified.
Paid tools add backlink and competitor depth, and Mecanik puts a Screaming Frog licence at about £200 a year. The honest trade off is time and skill: free tools find issues, but turning them into a ranked plan takes experience.
What a good audit report looks like
Our guide to picking the right SEO agency lists the questions to ask, and these are the signs of a good report. DemandSphere says deliverables should be agreed up front, right sized for the site, prioritised and actionable, with each item mapped to an owner and a deadline.
ProfileTree describes a short executive summary plus an action plan where each item states the issue, impact, recommendation and effort. DemandSphere also suggests a follow up audit three to six months after changes. Both are vendors, so check these expectations against what any provider actually offers.
Red flags to avoid
Cheap automated reports catch obvious errors but not strategy or priorities, as DemandSphere points out. Be wary of a free audit that is really a sales document, a report with hundreds of warnings and no ranking, vague scope, or guaranteed returns. Whitehat’s own page shows how an ROI figure can rest on assumed numbers, so ask what any promised result is based on.
Examples
These are illustrative scenarios rather than client case studies, but they show how audits tend to play out.
A small service business bought a basic audit. The report found a stray noindex tag, duplicate titles and slow images, ranked them, and the owner fixed the top three in a weekend.
A shop received a free automated report with two hundred warnings and no priorities. It asked the provider for a ranked list, which turned the report into a usable plan.
A retailer paid for a thorough audit but set no budget to implement it. Months later most recommendations were still waiting, which is the overlooked cost Mecanik describes.
Ready to get your SEO audit
A clear SEO audit tells you what to fix first and what to leave alone. At Atomic Artisans we audit sites and turn the findings into a plan through our SEO services. Take a look at our pricing, book a call with our team, or get in touch through our contact page to get started.
