1. Organic traffic has dropped or stalled
A 20%+ drop month-on-month, or zero growth over 12 months, both warrant investigation. Algorithm updates, technical regressions and competitor moves all cause this.
2. You can't find yourself for obvious searches
If you don't appear in the top 20 for '[your service] [your town]', something structural is wrong.
3. Your competitors are visible and you aren't
When competitors of similar size consistently rank above you, the gap is almost always content depth, link profile or technical health.
4. The site is slow
PageSpeed Insights scores below 50 on mobile mean both users and Google are deprioritising you.
5. Maps visibility is poor
No appearance in the local 3-pack for your service area means Google Business Profile work is overdue.
6. You've changed the site recently
Migrations and redesigns lose traffic about 80% of the time without proper SEO planning. An audit catches what was broken in the move.
7. You're getting clicks but no enquiries
This is conversion, not SEO — but a good audit covers both.
8. The site has thin content
If most pages have under 300 words, you're invisible to most searches.
9. Schema, sitemap or robots are broken
These technical foundations control whether Google can read and trust your site.