Are those "free SEO audit" reports legit, or just a sales gimmick? How do I tell?

Missing image alt tags are at the very bottom of ranking factors. Automation tools flag even the most trivial backend issues as "critical errors" just to pad the page count and scare the client. What you actually need to watch out for are canonical tag errors, noindex directives, and server response codes.

In the industry, this is just bulk cold outreach. They run thousands of sites through software, fire off automated messages through contact forms, and if three out of a hundred people panic and sign a contract, it's free money for the agency. Never take an unsolicited audit seriously.

I fell for one of these reports two years ago and signed a 6-month contract at 15.000 TL a month. All they did was write descriptions for images and type in meta tags. Our organic traffic didn't increase by a single cent. We literally threw that money in the trash.

Ask the people who sent you that report just one question: "If we fix these errors, how many prospective clients looking for cleaning services in Ankara will we reach?" If they can't give you a revenue or conversion estimate and just say your score will go up, block them immediately.

bots spit out those 30-page pdfs in 15 seconds anyway. they just slap their logo on top and send it and nobody sat down and reviewed your site by hand relax.

edit: I wrote something wrong above, sorry about that.

It's like googling your symptoms before seeing a doctor and having a minor headache turn out to be terminal. Feed any site to an SEO bot, and it'll find 200 pages of flaws even on a flawless site—otherwise, it can't justify its own existence.

Were you getting traffic from the old site before the redesign? Did you preserve the old URL structures during the launch, or did 404 errors explode everywhere? What you really need to verify isn't these incoming pitches, but whether proper redirects were set up from the old site to the new one.

Congrats on the new site, don't panic at all. Since your site is only a month old, it's going to take time for search engines to fully index and rank your pages anyway. Set those pitches aside for now and focus on enriching your core business content.

How did you solve this? A page that answers one question works better than one touching on five topics.

That's all, sorry if I went on too long.

Let me summarize the topic since several different answers were given. The biggest time-waster for us was not knowing who had the final say.

If rankings stay the same but clicks drop the issue isn't your page but the search result appearance. Good luck with that.

how did you solve this? btw updating an existing page yields faster results than creating a new one.

just leaving this note it mihgt be useful.

thanks for writing this, that's the right way. start with a small trial; don't commit to everything at once.

just because everyone does it doesn't mean it's right but that's all sorry if I went on too long.

You're right. A competitor's ranking might come from years of accumulation, not just their content.

If it's your first time, start small; scaling comes later.

yes, that's exactly how it is with free seo audit. tbh the biggest time-waster for us was not knowing who had the final say.

everything goes well for the first trhee months; problems arise in the fourth but correct me if I'm wrong.

Absolutely. If I were to add anything: Merge instead of deleting; deleted content doesn't come back.

Everyone rushing into free seo audit gets stuck at the same point. If you have questions, write them; I'll answer as best I can.

if youre going this route, sort this out first. a page that answers one question works better than one touching on five topics.

correct me if I'm wrong.

Let me summarize the topic, since several different answers were given. Any comment made without a control group is just a guess.

Exactly like that. If rankings stay the same but clicks drop, the issue isn't your page, but the search result appearance.

I'm also curious if anyone does it differently.