A sample audit for The River & Bean Coffee Co., a business we made up. Its details come from its sample website; the problems and the numbers are invented.
Marketing · Sample SEO Audit
One Cafe's SEO Audit, Shown in Full.
What a full audit from us looks like for a neighborhood coffee shop in Huntington Beach: the grades, the baseline, what we found and the order we'd fix it in. It's the same cafe as our Sample Campaign, which picks up where this report leaves off.
The Short Version.
- Business ProfileNeeds Work
- WebsiteNeeds Work
- ListingsMissing
- ReviewsStrong
- CompetitorsNeeds Work
River & Bean is easy to like and hard to find. Its reviews beat most of the cafes around it, but its profile says it opens an hour later than it does, its category doesn't match the cafes Google ranks above it, and Apple Maps and Bing don't list it at all. Most of the This Week list is an afternoon's work the owner can do alone.
The Baseline.
Recorded before anything changed. Every monthly report compares against these numbers. Each is a monthly average over the three months before the audit.
- Clicks From Google Search
- 312 a month
- Times Shown in Search
- 14,800 a month
- Average Position
- 18.4
- Calls From the Profile
- 41 a month
- Direction Requests
- 126 a month
- Orders Started From Search
- 23 a month
Place in the Map Results
Five of the ten target searches, each run from three points in the cafe's area. A dash means it wasn't in the top 20.
| Search | By the Cafe | 1 Mile North | 2 Miles East |
|---|---|---|---|
| coffee shop huntington beach | 7 | 12 | — |
| coffee near me | 3 | 9 | 18 |
| cold brew near me | 5 | 11 | — |
| cafe with patio | 4 | 6 | 14 |
| order ahead coffee | — | — | — |
What We Found, in the Order We'd Fix It.
Each finding with its impact and effort. Anything the owner can fix alone is marked. The step number links to the check it came from.
This Week
About an afternoon, nearly all of it the owner's.
| Finding | Step | Impact | Effort | Who |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The profile's primary category is “Cafe”. All three cafes ranking above it use “Coffee shop”. | 03 | High | An hour | You can do this |
| The profile says it opens at 7 am on weekdays. The website says 6 am, which is right. | 06 | High | An hour | You can do this |
| Yelp still shows the old phone number, (714) 555-0199. | 06 | Medium | An hour | You can do this |
| The last post on the profile was five months ago. | 03 | Medium | An hour | You can do this |
This Month
Mostly the website.
| Finding | Step | Impact | Effort | Who |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The home page takes 4.8 seconds to show on a phone, against Google's good mark of 2.5. Most of that is one 3.1 MB photo at the top. | 04 | High | A day | Us |
| Order Ahead is a section of the home page, not a page of its own, so “order ahead coffee” searches have nowhere to land. | 05 | Medium | A day | Us |
| The menu page has the same title as the home page, so it can't rank for menu searches. | 05 | Medium | An hour | Us |
| No LocalBusiness markup, so Google has to guess the address and hours from the page. | 04 | Medium | An hour | Us |
| No listing on Apple Maps or Bing Places. | 06 | Medium | An hour | You can do this |
Ongoing
A few minutes a week.
| Finding | Step | Impact | Effort | Who |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| None of the last 30 reviews has a reply. | 07 | Medium | Ongoing | You can do this |
| Twelve photos on the profile, the newest from March. Add a few each month. | 03 | Low | Ongoing | You can do this |
| Reviews come in when customers think of it. A short link sent by text after an order would bring in more. | 07 | Low | Ongoing | You can do this |
Listings, Side by Side.
The cafe's name, address, phone and hours on each site, checked against the one version on its website.
| Site | Name | Address | Phone | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | Matches | Matches | Matches | Wrong: 7 am weekdays |
| Yelp | Matches | Matches | Wrong: old number | Matches |
| Matches | Matches | Matches | Matches | |
| Apple Maps | Missing | |||
| Bing Places | Missing | |||
Against the Three Cafes Above It.
The three businesses that show up in the map for its best searches. They're made up too, so they're lettered.
| Measure | River & Bean | Cafe A | Cafe B | Cafe C |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary category | Cafe | Coffee shop | Coffee shop | Coffee shop |
| Reviews | 212 at 4.7 | 486 at 4.6 | 158 at 4.8 | 97 at 4.5 |
| Photos on the profile | 12 | 140 | 64 | 38 |
| Newest profile post | 5 months ago | 6 days ago | 3 weeks ago | 2 months ago |
| Home page on a phone | 4.8 s | 2.1 s | 3.0 s | 2.4 s |
| Pages for its services | 2 | 5 | 4 | 3 |
What the AI Answers Said.
We asked Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity for “best coffee shop in Huntington Beach” and “coffee shop with a patio near the pier”. River & Bean was named in one answer of the six. Nobody controls these answers, so this part isn't graded.
- The Sites They Cited. Yelp, Google reviews and two local best-of lists, in that order.
- What Would Help Most. Fixing the Yelp listing and replying to reviews, which are already on the lists above.
What Happens Next.
If River & Bean hired us, the fix order would become its first month of work.
- Week 1
The Owner's List
The category, the hours, the Yelp number and a first profile post, with us on call.
- Weeks 2–4
The Website
The photo, an Order Ahead page, the menu title and the markup, each one tested again once it's done.
- Every Week
The Profile, Kept Alive
Posts and photos from its 90-Day Campaign, three a week, and a reply on every review.
- Every Month
Measured
A report against this baseline: clicks, position, calls and direction requests.