You get an email from a company you have never heard of, warning you about hundreds of problems with your website. It says they ran a free SEO audit of your brokerage website, and the attached report gives your site a score out of 100 and lists a few hundred “critical issues.” Nothing in it says which issues actually matter, which ones cost you leads, or if any are real problems for a land site.
Google’s guidance on hiring an SEO tells site owners to be wary of SEO firms that email out of the blue. That warning deals with the email. It leaves the real question open: what is an SEO audit, and what should your brokerage actually get from one?
This guide explains what an SEO audit is, what to expect from one, and how it applies to land broker websites. It covers what an audit includes, what your website platform should already handle, what an audit should check on a land site, what a useful report looks like, and the five areas every audit covers, with a deeper article on each.
What is an SEO audit?
An SEO audit is a review of your website that finds what is keeping your pages out of search results or lower than they should be, puts those problems in priority order, and says how to fix each one.
SEO is simpler than the industry makes it sound. Google’s SEO Starter Guide describes it as helping search engines understand your content and helping people find your site and decide whether to visit. An audit checks how well your site does that, page by page.
For a land brokerage, “your pages” means much more than the homepage. It means every listing, every county and state page, every agent page, and the blog. A good audit looks at the pages buyers and sellers actually land on and asks whether each one can show up for the searches that matter in your market.
An audit vs. an automated scan
Most free audits are automated scans. A crawler visits your site, flags everything it can detect, and rolls the results into a single score. A scan catches broken links and missing page titles quickly, but it can’t tell you which findings matter for a land brokerage.
The score deserves the most skepticism. Google’s guidance on third-party SEO tools states that these tools have no access to Google’s internal ranking data, and it recommends Search Console, which reports directly from Google Search. A score out of 100 reflects the tool vendor’s own formula, built without any view into how Google actually ranks your pages.
An audit vs. the work that follows
An audit is a diagnosis, and the fixes are separate work. A report that stops at findings leaves you with a to-do list and no one assigned to it. Google’s hiring guidance says an audit should give you realistic estimates of improvement and the work involved.
Before you agree to any audit, find out who will make the changes. That could be you, your web team, your platform provider, or the auditor. Then read the findings with that person in mind.
What your platform handles, and what an audit still checks
Brokers on a modern land platform often ask whether they need an audit at all. A well-built platform handles much of the technical foundation by default, and an audit shouldn’t waste your time checking what the platform already covers.
On REALSTACK sites, pages ship set to be crawled and indexed, with large image previews and full-length snippets allowed. AI crawlers are not blocked. The sites run on fully managed hosting with a CDN, backups, and security updates. Every land listing stores price, acreage, county, property type, and coordinates as structured fields. Collections build location pages around live inventory, and agent pages output Person schema.
The platform cannot control how the site is used after launch. Agents write the listings, someone decides whether the county pages get local copy, and listings sell, expire, and come back to market. A Business Profile gets set up carefully or left half-finished. Those choices are where an audit finds most of its work.
A clean platform gives the audit less to fix so that it can spend its time on the parts specific to your brokerage.
What does an SEO audit include?
Every audit, on any website, starts with the same basics. These are the page elements and settings Google reads first, and most of them are quick to fix once someone finds them.
Page-level basics
The page title is the headline that usually appears as the clickable link in Google’s results. Google’s title link documentation says Google draws on several sources for that headline, including the title you set. The meta description is the summary that can appear under it, and Google’s snippet documentation lists it among the sources Google uses. An audit checks that every listing and location page has a title and description written for the search it targets, rather than a template repeated across hundreds of pages.
The audit also checks that each page has one clear main heading. It also looks for a clean, readable URL. It looks at alt text, the written description attached to each property photo. It reviews the links between your own pages, so a county page points to its listings and each listing points back to its county. Finally, it checks how each page looks and works on a phone, since Google’s mobile-first indexing guidance explains that Google uses the mobile version of a page for indexing and ranking.
Crawl basics
Two small files guide search engines through your site. Google’s introduction to robots.txt describes it as the file that tells crawlers which pages they can access, and one wrong line can block pages you want found. The XML sitemap tells Google which pages you consider important, according to Google’s sitemap documentation. That matters on a site where listings come and go.
An audit checks both files, along with broken links, redirect chains, and HTTPS. It also checks canonical tags, which tell Google which version of a page is the main one when similar versions exist. If you have switched website platforms, the audit should confirm that old page addresses redirect to the new ones, as Google’s site move guidance recommends, since outside links and bookmarks still point to the old addresses.
On REALSTACK sites, robots.txt allows search and AI crawlers by default, so the audit only needs to confirm nothing has changed.
Search Console checks
Search Console gives an audit Google’s own view of your site. Google’s overview of Search Console reports describes a Performance report that shows which searches your site appears for, how many people clicked, and your average position. That gives the audit a starting baseline.
The audit also checks the Manual Actions and Security Issues reports, which show whether Google has taken action against the site for spam or found security problems. The Links report shows which other websites link to yours.
What an SEO audit should check on a land brokerage website
Most audit checklists are written for online stores and local service businesses. A land brokerage site behaves differently. Inventory turns over constantly, buyers search by county and acreage, and a single site can carry hundreds of listing pages.
These checks matter most on a land site.
Can Google reach and index your listings and location pages?
Start with Search Console’s Page indexing report. It shows which of your pages Google has indexed and lists the reasons the others were left out. An audit should compare that list with your listings, Collections, and agent pages, because a page that isn’t indexed cannot appear in search. Google also notes that an indexed page is not guaranteed to show up, so indexing is the first check and rankings come after it.
Does every page have one job?
Each important page should target one clear search, such as hunting land in a specific county, so your pages aren’t chasing the same buyer. When two pages compete for the same search, you have less say over which one appears. An audit maps your main searches to your pages and flags the overlaps.
Do your location pages carry real local knowledge?
Buyers search by county and state, so location pages carry a lot of weight. On REALSTACK, Collections build the page structure and pull in listings automatically, and brokers can add local copy at the state, region, or county level. An audit should flag location pages that show listings and nothing else, since those are the pages your local knowledge improves most. Our guide to winning county and state AI searches covers what to write.
Are your agents presented as real people?
Agent pages should show a name, photo, license state, contact details, and a bio written from real experience on the land. On REALSTACK, each agent gets a dedicated page with Person schema built in. An audit checks whether those pages are filled in or left as a name and a phone number.
Can AI tools read your site?
Google’s AI features in Search are built on its core ranking and quality systems, so the SEO basics still apply. Google’s guide to optimizing for generative AI features also says you can skip tactics like special AI text files. An audit should confirm that AI crawlers are not blocked and that your key facts appear on the page as plain text. The Land Broker’s Guide to AI Search covers the rest.
Those five checks are specific to land. The next five areas apply to any website, and each one has a full article of its own.
The five areas every land brokerage audit covers
The technical side of an audit, sometimes called a technical SEO audit, covers how your site is built and measured. Here is what each area involves and where to go deeper.
Schema markup
Schema markup is code that labels the facts on a page so search engines can read them as data. Google’s Organization markup documentation says adding it to your home page helps Google understand your business details and tell your organization apart from others in search results. On a land site, agent pages carry their own Person markup as well, and the audit validates the markup with Google’s Rich Results Test. Our article on schema markup for land brokerage websites walks through each type.
Page speed and Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are Google’s measures of how fast a page loads, how quickly it responds to a tap or click, and how stable it stays while loading. Google’s page experience documentation says its ranking systems use these measures. It also says good scores do not guarantee top rankings, since page experience covers more than the scores alone. Land sites carry heavy map and photo pages, so speed is worth checking on your listing pages specifically. Our article on why land brokerage sites fail Core Web Vitals covers the usual causes.
Local search and citations
Most land brokerages work a defined region, so local search matters. Google’s local ranking guidance says local results depend mainly on relevance, distance, and prominence, and that you can’t pay for a better local ranking. An audit checks your Business Profile and whether your name, address, and phone number match across the directories buyers and Google use. Our article on local citations for land brokerages covers which directories matter.
GA4 and conversion tracking
An audit without tracking can find problems, but it cannot show whether the fixes worked. With key events in GA4, you mark the actions that matter, such as a form submission or a phone call click, and count them by page and by source. Every REALSTACK site gets GA4 at launch, plus a custom channel group for AI referrals that builds on GA4’s own AI channel.
The audit should confirm those key events fire on the actions your buyers actually take. Our article on GA4 and conversion tracking for land brokerage websites has the setup. For AI referrals specifically, see Is AI sending your land brokerage leads?
What an audit doesn’t solve on its own
An audit fixes the site you have. It does not write new content, earn links from other sites, or buy you placement in search results. Google’s hiring guidance states that advertising with Google does not affect where your site appears in organic results, so paid search and SEO are separate channels with separate budgets. Our article on SEO vs. Google Ads for land brokerages explains when each makes sense.
Knowing what an audit covers makes it easier to judge the report you get back.
What a real SEO audit report gives you
A useful report reads like a plan, listing specific fixes and showing what kind of improvement you can expect. It names the pages with problems, explains each problem in plain English, and puts the fixes in order so the most important work happens first. It also tells you what is already working, so no one spends time changing pages that are doing their job.
Google’s hiring guidance adds two practical points. An audit should include realistic estimates of improvement and the work involved, and during the audit you should grant read access to Search Console only. For a fuller set of questions to ask before you hire anyone, our comparison of AI search and regular SEO includes a vetting checklist.
Use this short SEO audit checklist when a report lands in your inbox.
Red flags in a free SEO audit
The same warning signs show up in most unsolicited audits:
- A score presented as if it came from Google. Third-party tools can’t access Google’s ranking data.
- Hundreds of issues with no priority order, which leaves you to guess what matters.
- Advice that would fit any website, such as “improve your content,” with no pages named.
- A promise of a first-place ranking. Google states that no one can guarantee a number-one spot, and its hiring guidance says to find someone else if an SEO makes that promise.
How long an SEO audit takes and when you’ll see results
The time an audit takes depends mostly on your site’s size. A brokerage with a few dozen listings can be reviewed much faster than one with hundreds of listings across several states and a large blog. Ask for a timeline up front, including the date you will see the findings.
Results take longer than the audit itself. Google’s SEO Starter Guide says some changes show up within hours and others take several months, and it suggests waiting a few weeks before judging whether a change helped. Anyone who promises results by next week is promising something no one controls.
Frequently asked questions
How often should you do an SEO audit?
Run a full audit when you launch or redesign your site, after a large drop in search traffic, and about once a year otherwise. Google’s hiring guidance names a redesign or a new site launch as a great time to bring in an SEO, so the site is search-friendly from the start. Between full audits, check Search Console’s indexing and performance reports each month.
How long does an SEO audit take?
It depends mostly on site size, from days for a small brokerage site to longer for a multi-state site with hundreds of listings. Results from the fixes usually take weeks to months to show.
Is a free SEO audit worth it?
A free audit is useful as a quick scan for obvious errors like broken links or missing page titles. It is rarely a plan, because it usually lists every issue a tool can detect without ranking them or tying them to your business. Treat it as a starting point and check its advice against Google’s own documentation, which Google itself recommends.
Can you do your own SEO audit?
You can do much of it yourself. Google says a small local business can probably handle much of its own SEO and recommends starting with its SEO Starter Guide. Set up Search Console, check the Page indexing report, and review your top listing and county pages by hand. Bring in help when the fixes require technical work, or you don’t have the hours.
Start with what your site already handles
REALSTACK has built hundreds of land broker websites, and every one ships with the foundation this guide describes: indexable pages, structured listings, location Collections, agent pages, and GA4. An audit then looks at what your brokerage has built on top of that foundation. If you want to know where your site stands, our land broker SEO team can walk you through it.
Sources
- Google Search Central, Do you need an SEO?
- Google Search Central, Guidance on third-party SEO tools and advice
- Google Search Central, SEO Starter Guide
- Google Search Central, Influencing your title links
- Google Search Central, Snippets
- Google Search Central, Mobile site and mobile-first indexing best practices
- Google Search Central, Introduction to robots.txt
- Google Search Central, Learn about sitemaps
- Google Search Central, Move a site with URL changes
- Search Console Help, Reports at a glance
- Search Console Help, Page indexing report
- Google Search Central, Understanding page experience
- Google Search Central, Organization structured data
- Google Search Central Blog, Expanding markup support for Organization details
- Google Business Profile Help, Tips to improve your local ranking
- Google Analytics Help, About key events
- Google Analytics Help, Default channel group
- Google Search Central, Optimizing for generative AI features
- Search Engine Land, Google adds guidance on third-party SEO tools and updates hiring an SEO doc
- Search Engine Land, Search Console adds the links report