The website scorecard

1.1 A stranger can tell what you do, who you do it for, and where — in five seconds.

How: open your homepage on a phone, do not scroll. Show it to someone who does not know your business for five seconds, then hide it and ask them to describe what you sell. If they hesitate, score 0.

1.2 You can name the single most valuable action a visitor can take — and your team names the same one.

How: write it down. Ask two other people in the business to write it down. Compare. Different answers means the site is being pulled in different directions.

1.3 You know roughly what one new customer is worth to you.

How: average sale value × how many times a typical customer buys. A rough number is fine. Without it you cannot tell whether the website is paying for itself or quietly losing money.

1.4 You have looked at the three competitors who outrank you and can name one thing your site does better.

How: search your main service plus your city in a private browser window. Open the top three results that are not ads. Compare honestly.

1.5 Your site answers the top three objections customers actually raise.

How: ask whoever answers the phone what people hesitate about most. Then search your own site for those answers. If they only exist in your salesperson's head, score 0.

2.1 Every distinct service has its own page.

How: list what you sell. Count the pages. One combined "Services" page covering six offerings scores 0 — it competes with itself and ranks for none of them well.

2.2 The site has meaningfully more than the basic five pages.

How: count your real, useful pages. Home, About, Services, Contact and a dead blog is five. Most local service businesses should be working toward 25–50 genuinely useful pages over time.

2.3 Location pages contain genuinely unique content — not the same page with the city swapped.

How: open two location pages side by side. If the only difference is the city name, score 0. This is one of the most commonly flagged problems in public site audits.

2.4 Any important page is reachable in three clicks or fewer from the homepage.

How: pick your five most valuable pages. Start at the homepage and count clicks using only visible navigation. No cheating with the search box.

2.5 Service pages link to related proof pages and location pages.

How: open a service page. Count links to your own relevant content within the body content. Zero internal links means the page is an island.

2.6 URLs are readable and descriptive.

How: look at the address bar on five pages. /water-heater-repair is good. /index.php?p=47 or /services-2-new-final is not.

3.1 Each important page is built around one clear question or need.

How: read the page and write its job in one sentence. If you need the word "and" twice, it is doing too much.

3.2 Every important page has its own descriptive title — no duplicates, no "Home".

How: open each page and read the browser tab. A tab that says "Home" or your business name on every page scores 0. This is the single most common finding in public audit threads.

3.3 Every important page has a unique meta description written for a human.

How: search Google for site:yourdomain.com and read the grey text under each result. Google says identical descriptions across pages "aren't helpful" — and that descriptions affect whether people click, not where you rank.

3.4 Each page has one clear main heading that names the service, and the place where relevant.

How: "AC Repair in San Diego" works. "Welcome to Our Website" wastes the most valuable line on the page. Look at the biggest text at the top of the page content.

3.5 Pages show real proof, not just claims.

How: look for specifics — numbers, timelines, named results, photos of your actual work and actual people. A site built entirely on stock photography and the word "quality" scores 0.

3.6 Images have descriptive alt text.

How: right-click a page, choose "View page source", and search for alt=. Empty or missing alt text on meaningful images scores 0. It matters for screen-reader users first, search engines second.

4.1 Your main call to action is visible on a phone without scrolling.

How: open the homepage on your phone. Do not scroll. Is there an obvious button telling you what to do next? Score what you see, not what is one swipe away.

4.2 Your phone number is visible in the header and tappable on mobile.

How: on your phone, tap the number. If it does not open the dialer, it is an image or plain text. Score 0.

4.3 Every important page ends with an obvious next step.

How: scroll to the bottom of five pages. A page that just stops has handed the visitor back to Google.

4.4 Your contact form asks for the fewest fields you can live with.

How: count the fields. Baymard Institute's research on checkout flows found the number of form fields affects usability far more than the number of steps — and that most sites need far fewer fields than they use. The same logic applies to a quote form.

4.5 You have submitted your own form in the last 30 days and confirmed the lead arrived.

How: do it right now, from your phone, using a real email address. Then check the inbox, the spam folder, and your CRM. Silently broken forms are common and invisible.

4.6 There is a real confirmation page and it says what happens next.

How: "we'll call you within one business day"? A small grey "thanks" message that vanishes scores 1 at best. After submitting, do you land somewhere that says what happens next?

4.7 Cold traffic has an educational page to land on, not just a sales page.

How: if you run ads or post on social, where do those people land? Someone who has never heard of you usually needs to be educated before being sold to — a guide or a "reasons people choose us" page does that work.

5.1 The site loads over HTTPS with no security warnings.

How: look for the padlock in the address bar on several pages, including a page with a form. Any "not secure" warning scores 0.

5.2 Largest Contentful Paint is 2.5 seconds or under on mobile.

How: run your top pages through PageSpeed Insights. LCP measures when the main content appears. Google's published "good" threshold is 2.5s or less, measured at the 75th percentile of real visits.

5.3 Interaction to Next Paint is 200 milliseconds or under.

How: same report. INP measures how quickly the page responds when someone taps or clicks. Google's "good" threshold is 200ms or less. (INP replaced the older FID metric in 2024 — if a tool still reports FID, it is out of date.)

5.4 Cumulative Layout Shift is 0.1 or under.

How: same report. CLS measures how much the page jumps around while loading — the reason you tap the wrong button. Google's "good" threshold is 0.1 or less.

5.5 The site is genuinely usable on a phone.

How: on your own phone, complete the main journey. Text readable without pinching? Buttons big enough to tap accurately? No sideways scrolling? Most of your traffic is doing exactly this.

5.6 Your important pages are actually in Google's index.

How: search site:yourdomain.com and count. Then check the Pages report in Google Search Console. A page that is not indexed cannot rank, no matter how good it is.

5.7 Nothing is accidentally blocking Google from your money pages.

How: visit yourdomain.com/robots.txt and read it. Then use Search Console's URL Inspection tool on your top three. A leftover block from a staging site is one of the most expensive mistakes in this document, and one of the easiest to miss.

5.8 Your platform and plugins are updated, and backups actually run.

How: log in and look at the update count. Then confirm when the last backup ran and that someone has restored one at least once. An untested backup is not a backup.

6.1 Your Google Business Profile is claimed and verified.

How: search your business name. If you see "Own this business?" it is unclaimed. Unverified profiles are far less visible — Google names verification as a way to improve local visibility.

6.2 Your primary category matches what you actually sell most.

How: open your profile and read the primary category. Then look at the top three businesses in the map results for your main service and see what they use. "Contractor" when you are a kitchen remodeler is a real, common, and fixable problem.

6.3 Your hours are accurate right now, including holidays.

How: check today's hours on your profile against reality. Google specifically calls out keeping regular and special hours current.

6.4 Name, address and phone match exactly between your website and your profile.

How: put them side by side, character for character. Then search your phone number in quotes and see what old listings still show a number you stopped using three years ago.

6.5 Photos have been added within the last 90 days.

How: check the date of your most recent photo. Google recommends adding photos and videos to show what you offer. Real job-site and team photos beat a logo and a stock shot of a handshake.

6.6 You respond to reviews — the good ones and the bad ones.

How: read your last ten reviews and count the replies. Google states plainly that positive reviews and helpful replies can help a business stand out. Copy-pasted "Thank you!" replies score 1.

6.7 Your address or service area appears on the website itself.

How: check the footer and the contact page. Your website should confirm where you operate, not leave it to your Google profile alone.

7.1 You own your domain registration, in your name, on an email address you control.

How: log into the registrar yourself. If you cannot, or the account belongs to a former developer, score 0 and treat it as urgent. Your domain is the one asset you cannot rebuild.

7.2 You hold admin access to hosting, your website platform, analytics, and your Business Profile.

How: log into each one today. Vendors can be given access; they should not be the only ones who have it.

7.3 No typos, placeholder text, or broken images on important pages.

How: read your top five pages out loud. Out loud is not optional — it is how you catch what your eyes skip.

7.4 Privacy policy and any legally required pages are live and linked.

How: check the footer. If you collect any information through a form or run any advertising, this is not optional.

7.5 Someone outside your business has walked the main path and reported what annoyed them.

How: ask a customer or a friend to find a specific piece of information on your site while you watch silently. Do not help. Write down every hesitation.

8.1 Analytics is installed and currently recording data.

How: open your analytics and look at the real-time report while you visit your own site. If you do not appear, it is not working — regardless of what the setup checklist said two years ago.

8.2 Google Search Console is verified and your sitemap is submitted.

How: log in. It is free, and it is the only place Google tells you directly what it thinks of your site.

8.3 Form submissions and phone calls are counted, not estimated.

How: state how many leads the website produced last month. If the answer starts with "probably", score 0. Not tracking calls is one of the most frequently cited gaps in small business audits.

8.4 You know your top five pages by traffic and what each is supposed to do.

How: pull the report. Write the job of each page next to it. Popular pages with no next step are your fastest wins.

8.5 You review the numbers on a set schedule.

How: check your calendar for a recurring appointment. Thirty minutes a month, on the calendar, beats three hours in a panic quarter.

8.6 You have published or meaningfully improved at least one page in the last 60 days.

How: check the dates. A site that has not changed in two years is telling both customers and Google something you did not intend to say.