What the audit is for
A client audit has two jobs. It shows the business where it stands today, and it gives you an agreed starting point to measure your work against. For a prospect, it does a third job: it shows that you understand their business before they have paid you anything.
That means the audit is judged on whether the client understands it and acts on it, not on how many checks it contains. Ten clear findings in order of impact beat a hundred-row spreadsheet.
Step 1: Collect the basics
Before you check anything, agree with the client on:
- The exact business name, website, address or service area, and main phone number.
- The two or three services that bring in the most revenue. These are the searches that matter.
- The towns or neighbourhoods they want customers from.
- Who they see as competitors. Compare this later with who actually ranks above them.
- Access to Google Business Profile, Google Search Console and analytics, if they have them.
Step 2: Search the way a customer would
Search the main services in the client's city on a phone, signed out, as a customer would. Note where the client appears in the map results and the organic results, and which three businesses rank above them. Results change with the searcher's location, so check from the area the client serves, or use a tool that searches from there.
Step 3: Work through the checks
Go through the Google Business Profile, reviews, name/address/phone consistency, on-page basics, speed and mobile, the contact path and AI search readiness. Our local SEO audit checklist lists every item in order. Record each finding with evidence: a screenshot, the figure, or the competitor's number beside the client's.
Step 4: Put the findings in order
Clients act on a short list. Sort what you found by impact and effort:
- First, anything that stops the business appearing or being contacted: an unverified profile, a wrong phone number, a broken contact form, a site that blocks search engines.
- Next, the gaps against the competitors who rank above them, usually reviews, categories and service pages.
- Then quick wins: missing hours, photos, page titles that don't name the service and city.
- Last, longer projects such as new service pages, a site rebuild or a citation clean-up.
Step 5: Present it in the client's terms
Business owners care about calls, bookings and customers, not crawl errors. Explain each finding as what it costs them: "customers searching for an emergency plumber in your area see three competitors before they see you". Show the competitor comparison; it is often the most persuasive page of the report.
End with what you recommend doing first, what it involves, and how you will measure it. For a prospect, that recommendation is your proposal.
Step 6: Re-run it on a schedule
Run the same audit again every month or quarter. The difference between the two reports shows the client what your work changed, and catches new problems, such as a profile edit or a site update that broke something.
Doing it faster
By hand, a thorough audit takes two to four hours per business. LocalBusinessAudit runs the checks in about a minute, compares the business with the top local competitors, and produces a prioritized fix list as a white-label report you can send under your own brand. On agency plans you can audit a whole list of prospects at once.