Free SEO Audit Toolkit: Practical Checklist for Devon Businesses

Before you pay anyone for an SEO audit, run this one yourself. Most small businesses in Devon do not need a 60-page consultancy report. They need to know whether their site is technically sound, whether the right pages target the right local searches, and whether their Google Business Profile is doing its job. This checklist takes a couple of hours, costs nothing, and will tell you 80% of what a paid audit would.

1. Technical health

Run your homepage and a couple of inner pages through these free tools:

• PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev) — aim for 90+ on mobile. Anything below 70 is hurting both rankings and conversions. Pay attention to "Largest Contentful Paint" and "Cumulative Layout Shift".
• Google Search Console — check the Pages report for any "Indexed but not submitted in sitemap" or "Crawled — currently not indexed" warnings.
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free up to 500 URLs) — crawl your site to find broken internal links, missing meta titles, duplicate H1s and orphan pages.

Two things that wreck small business sites in Devon every time we audit them: hero images uploaded at full DSLR resolution (compress to WebP under 200KB), and old plugins that haven't been updated in two years.

2. On-page basics

For every page that matters (homepage, service pages, top-five blog posts):

• One H1 per page that reads naturally and contains your main keyword
• A meta title under 60 characters with the keyword toward the front
• A meta description under 155 characters that earns the click
• At least one image with descriptive alt text (not "image123.jpg")
• Internal links from at least three other pages pointing to it

If you are running WordPress, Rank Math or Yoast handle the meta side. They will not fix a thin page that has nothing useful on it — that part is on you.

3. Off-page and backlinks

Use a free Ahrefs Backlink Checker or Ubersuggest scan to see who links to you. For most small Devon businesses we look at three things:

• Are you listed in the obvious local directories — Yell, Bing Places, Apple Maps, Trustpilot, the Devon Chamber of Commerce?
• Have you got toxic links from spammy domains that need disavowing?
• Are there local opportunities you are missing — sponsorship of Newton Abbot races, Teignbridge District Council supplier listings, local press coverage from the Mid-Devon Advertiser or Herald Express?

Ignore anyone who tries to sell you 1,000 backlinks for £50. Those will hurt you, not help.

4. Local SEO audit

This is the bit that matters most for businesses in Newton Abbot, Torbay, Exeter and the wider South Devon catchment:

• Google Business Profile — claimed, verified, complete? Categories accurate? At least 20 photos? Posting weekly? Responding to reviews?
• NAP consistency — your business name, address and phone number are byte-identical across your website, Google, Bing, Yell and Facebook?
• Local pages on your site — if you serve Newton Abbot, Torquay and Exeter, do you have a properly written page for each, or are you trying to rank a single homepage for all three?
• Reviews — at least 25 Google reviews, with a 4.5+ average and replies to anything below five stars?

5. Tracking and reporting

You cannot improve what you do not measure. Make sure these are in place:

• Google Analytics 4 with conversion events for "phone call", "form submit" and "WhatsApp click"
• Google Search Console verified, with email alerts on for indexing issues
• Monthly check on rankings for your top 10 commercial keywords (Ubersuggest free tier handles this)

When to call someone in

Do this audit. Fix the obvious things. If after 90 days of consistent posting and link-building you still can't get past page two for the keywords your business depends on, the problem is usually structural — site architecture, a thin Google Business Profile, or strong competitors with much older domains. That is when paying for proper local SEOsupport is worth it.

We do exactly that work for Devon businesses. Retainers are £300/month and cover ongoing local SEO, content updates and reporting. If you would rather just talk it through first, call or WhatsApp 07887 988780.