Services

Affordable Website Reports, SEO Audits & Editorial Services

I’m a freelance web doctor.  I’m hands-on and affordable.

You’re a small business, charity or solopreneur. You’re likely to be on a budget.

You might feel there’s nothing you can do to improve your site. Perhaps you’ve been warned off SEOs. You’ve heard they charge eye-watering monthly sums. Or you’re worried that they’ll pass off automated reports as hand-crafted ‘white-label’ ones. Perhaps you’re not aware of the errors in your site or how competitors’ sites have leapfrogged over yours.

Let me help. I work with smaller organisations and individuals and offer affordable and confidential support. My site audits cost between £100 and £800.

I offer 4 website reports in addition to editorial services.  These are:

• First Impressions Report
• Website MOT
• SEO Audit
• Combined Website MOT and SEO Audit

 

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Local search is becoming increasingly important for the smaller business. Take Moz’s quick test to see how well your site scores.

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Pricing

My audits cost between £100 (First Impressions)  and £800 (Combined Website MOT and SEO Audit). I charge £50 an hour for one-off commissions. For retainer work, such as regular blog writing, this reduces to £35.

Website Reports

First Impressions £100.00 GBPSite MOT £500.00 GBPSEO Audit £500.00 GBPCombined Audit £800.00 GBP

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First Impressions (£100)

This report offers a low-risk, affordable way of improving your website. It includes:

• first impressions of your site
• a look at your source code to highlight any on-page SEO problems
• a detailed homepage review (including design & content, technical matters, CTAs)
• supplementary automated reports
• a sample edit if your text is not written for the web.

The cost is deductible from further reports, provided that the offer is taken up within 6 months.

It’s free to retainer clients.

Website Reports

First Impressions £100.00 GBPSite MOT £500.00 GBPSEO Audit £500.00 GBPCombined Audit £800.00 GBP

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Website MOT (£500)

This report focuses in detail on the items below.

Content:  ‘Content, navigation, design’ is the traditional starting point for any website review. A site doesn’t need to be gimmicky or complicated. Its priority is to meet your visitors’ needs.

Do you know who your audience is? Or perhaps your visitors fall into different categories? For example, a restaurant would have customers, suppliers and critics.

After this, it’s about providing quality and relevant content. It’s about knowing the difference between features (about you) and benefits (about your visitors).

Is your site’s content good enough to attract attention and engage customers? The jargon term is ‘sticky’ – having a site that makes people stay for longer.

Are you writing in a style suited to the web? And finally, do you include visual as well as textual content?  Videos are particular link magnets.

The user experience: Is your site easy to use?  Is the navigation intuitive? Is there a clear hierarchy? Do users know what to do next?  Or is it more like a sprawling department store with no exit signs?

Accessibility: Does your site have barriers that prevent people from accessing it? Low contrast is one.  Too small a font size another. Lack of responsive mobile design another.

Design: Is your design in keeping with your brand? Is it up to date? Are your images optimised for the web?  Do you use stock images (office executive with a computer keyboard)? Do you use different types of visual content?

Technical matters:  However attractive your content and design etc, if your site takes an age to load and the links flag up a 404 error (ie broken), you’ll impress neither your visitors nor Google’s spiders.

The homepage checklist: Visitors are able to enter your site through any page, but the homepage remains the usual first point of contact. I’ll check that this important page has everything a visitor might expect on it.  And that it doesn’t include any glaring errors (such as ‘Welcome to my site’).

SEO: I’ll report on all your on-page SEO elements, and look at key indicators such as title tags, urls and meta descriptions in detail.

To discuss your needs send me an email or give me a ring. Confidentiality assured.

Website Reports

First Impressions £100.00 GBPSite MOT £500.00 GBPSEO Audit £500.00 GBPCombined Audit £800.00 GBP

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SEO Audit (£500)

This report covers on-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO as well as Google Analytics.

On-page SEO: On-page SEO refers to the various elements of your site – under your control – that help search engines such as Google and Bing to rank it.  First are textual elements that include your target keywords. Some are designed for visitors (headings, subheadings, body text, link text, captions) and some for Google’s spiders (page title tags, urls, ‘alt tags’ for images, the ‘meta descriptions’ that contribute to Google’s snippets).

Technical SEO: refers to removing barriers for Google – and other – spiders to search your site and make it visible.  These include numerous factors, from page-loading time to broken links to whether a site is mobile-friendly.

Findability: This includes both off-page SEO and paid services. Off-page strategies include anything published that brings visitors to your site, whether social media, blogs or conventional publicity. Local search is growing in importance.  Building external links (from quality and relevant sources) is perhaps the most important aspect of off-page SEO.

Paid services such as PPC are part of Search Engine Marketing, though not technically of SEO. Here’s a link to Search Engine People‘s explanation.

Accountability: Goals are most effective when measurable.  Statistics-tracking software such as Google Analytics allows you to monitor visitors’ engagement with your site.  It allows you to identify and track your specified ‘metrics’.

If you’re new to this, I’d recommend starting with a few performance indicators, such as the number/percentage of new and returning visitors and the ‘bounce rate’.

As you gain confidence in this user-friendly application, you’ll want to delve deeper.  For example, you might use GA to identify your best page-performers or pinpoint your site’s graveyard slots. You’ll be able to find out which country your visitors come from and what specific mobile device they use.  And much more.

I’m happy to help you to select the Google Analytics reports most relevant to you, and teach you how to interpret them.

If you use WordPress (.org) I can show you to improve your site’s on-page Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) with Yoast’s excellent SEO plugin.

To discuss your needs send me an email or give me a ring. Confidentiality assured.

Website Reports

First Impressions £100.00 GBPSite MOT £500.00 GBPSEO Audit £500.00 GBPCombined Audit £800.00 GBP

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Combined Audit (£800)

This Audit combines the Website MOT and SEO Audit, as a discounted price.

Website Reports

First Impressions £100.00 GBPSite MOT £500.00 GBPSEO Audit £500.00 GBPCombined Audit £800.00 GBP

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Other Services

These might include

1. Edits and rewrites
2. Editorial calendars
3. Researching and/or writing blogs or infographics
4. Liaising with your designer/developer to implement my recommendations.
5. In-house support (cribsheets and/or training)

If you’re looking for confidential, practical help, I’d love to hear from you.

Edits and rewrites

Is your text written for the web?  Is it updated regularly? Is the tone and content pitched at the right level?  Does it engage visitors?  Do you use different content formats (infographics, videos etc)?

Or perhaps you’d like to add new sections, such as an ‘About Us’ or history of your organisation.

Editorial work might extend to writing:

• blog posts
• news stories
• tweets and other social media updates

A blog editorial calendar means you’re not caught out by deadlines.  Above all, be realistic about your time. Better a quality monthly blog than a weekly cut & paste.

Whether it’s a set number of hours writing and/or editing, or a  ‘Content Audit’, I’m happy to help.

To discuss your needs email or ring me. Confidentiality assured.

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Why Use Me?

Here are 5 reasons to choose my services:

• My reports are customised – no one-size-fits-all template. I write them myself.
• I identify where I’m using automated reports – I won’t ‘white label’ them and pretend they’re my own work.
• That said, I’ve an extensive toolkit of automated tools and keep up to date with new ones.
• I prioritise recommendations and explain the reasoning behind them.
• Finally, my First Impressions report is free to retainer clients.

Let’s talk about how I might help!  Drop me an email or give me a ring. Confidentiality assured.

 

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I’m a web doctor, not a specialist Consultant. If you need in-depth help on a specific area (eg how to recover from a Google penalty), I’ll redirect you. If you’re a larger company with a healthy budget, head over to Moz’s recommended list of SEO/Web Marketing  Consultants, Firms and Agencies.

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 My 5-Stage Audit Approach

A website audit is a site’s MOT.  Here’s my 5-stage approach.

1. First, I’ll run a site crawler tool in the background to check your on-page SEO elements (title tags, meta descriptions, alt tags and more). You can do this manually through a site’s source code but it takes longer.
2. While that’s in progress I’ll perform a manual ‘First Impressions’ report from the perspective of a new visitor.  It’s important to do this before becoming too familiar with a site. No automated tool has learned to replicate user experience.
3. Next, I’ll check out your main competitor/s to get a fix on how their site/s compare.
4. After that, I’ll examine your key pages in detail as well as poke around in the nooks and crannies of your site. I’ll check for what’s missing as well as assessing what’s there. I’ll provide an illustrative sample rewrite should your text not be written for the web.
5. Finally, I’ll run ten of the most important automated tests to check for technical problems.

Finally, I’ll prepare a jargon-free report. I’ll explain what I’ve found and why it matters. I’ll prioritise my recommendations. You’ll have a fully workable action plan.

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SIDENOTE  Automated tools (eg website graders) are increasingly sophisticated. They’ll check aspects such as page-loading time, mobile-friendliness, security, on-page SEO, links and more. These auto-generated reports are characterised by impressive graphs, tables and performance scores. Subscription-based plans often offer digital agencies the option of what’s called ‘white label’ branding.  In other words, the report will contain an agency’s logo and contact details for them to present the report as their own work.

Such reports save time and present data in a visually attractive way. However, they’re not a substitute for a manual report. That’s why I attach them as appendices and flag that they’re automated (ie not my own work).

Here’s an example of a very simple automated report.  Subscription-based services cover a wider ranger of indicators.

Website Performance – Hubspot’s website grader.

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What Website Audits Will and Won’t Do

A report is a starting point for improving your website.

A report will help you to:

• understand the strengths and weaknesses of your site,
• align it with your overall business strategy,
• make incremental improvements using the report’s prioritised recommendations,
• deliver improvements for your customer, your Google ranking and your business, and
• learn how to measure the impact of changes you make.

It won’t fix everything overnight. Improving a website is a long-term process. Your enthusiasm and commitment will drive your site forward in the long term.

I’m available to help you implement the suggestions outlined in the report with the exception of fixing technical or design problems (that’s for your designer or developer).

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