FAQ

“Do I look fat in this dress?”…yeah, you’re probably not going to get a straight answer to a loaded question like that. If you hire an SEO company to do the audit, they may dial up the negativity and then pitch you on ongoing SEO services. If you ask your existing SEO team to do the audit, they may gloss over or otherwise neglect to mention things that might make them look bad. Worst case scenario, your SEO agency and/or your in-house team may lack the skill necessary to spot a major issue. Yes, it’s cynical, but we’ve encountered this WAY too often. We don’t offer ongoing SEO services, and that makes us a totally unbiased 3rd party.

Our team has done SEO work for hundreds of sites, and has audited sites ranging from 1 page to 2 billion + pages. We also use a variety of specialized processes and tools in our audits and strategy creation, and we’re confident we can handle anything you send our way.

Absolutely not. Each strategy is tailored to the client’s goals, specific industry, budget, timeline, and other resources. We have a kickoff session with you prior to composing the SEO strategy where we’ll ask a ton of questions so that we can effectively dial this in. A strategy that isn’t tailored to your specific needs would be a total waste of money, and we don’t waste money.

Nope, they’re two very different beasts. An audit is designed to identify what has been done previously and what is currently wrong. A strategy is designed to guide your actions going forward, whether you’ve done SEO before or not. Because creating a strategy has some research overlap with our audit process, we offer strategies at a reduced rate when done in conjunction with an audit.

We’ve seen audits floating around ranging from $500 to $50,000+, but $2,000 to $20,000 seems to be the most common range for higher quality audits (you do want a high-quality audit, right?) Based on the quality of our audits and the time and expertise it takes to prepare them, we believe that our range of $2,500 to $20,000 is very fair. Companies like Walk Score, Invision, Microsoft, HTC, and hundreds of others seem to agree.

Our audit is designed, first and foremost, to be usable. We’ve gone to great lengths to engineer an audit that is clear, detailed and actionable enough for you to simply hand it to your SEO or web team and then let them implement it. In addition, all audits have an executive summary that highlights the most important takeaways from the audit, in plain old English.

What if the sun doesn’t rise tomorrow? What if we’re really enslaved by machines and living in The Matrix? Honestly, we’ve just never had someone unhappy with an audit. Our audits elicit compliments, referrals for additional business, and maybe lots of grumbling from the SEO agency or team who has to go fix everything. Contracts of course are signed before we begin any engagement, and if we fail to deliver what we’ve promised in the contract we’ll work with you to make it right, but that has never happened.

We’re not a bank, nor a credit card company. We don’t have a risk assessment or loss prevention team, and we’ve had one too many companies skip out on paying for finished work. Because our services are delivered like products, we charge for them like products. If you want to pay for something over time instead of all upfront, we happily accept credit cards.