Key takeaways
- An audit checks whether Google can find and read your pages, and whether a customer on a phone can get a price and book.
- Search Console, PageSpeed Insights and a phone cover most of it in about an hour.
- Junk removal sites often fail on hidden pricing, broken photo-quote forms and pages for services the business dropped.
- Keep screenshots of today's numbers, so every fix can be checked against them later.
An SEO audit for a junk removal company website checks two things: whether Google can find, read and trust your pages, and whether a customer on a phone can get a price and book. You can run the core of it yourself in about an hour, which means you know what is broken before anyone quotes you to fix it.
What an audit checks
An audit checks seven areas, and free tools cover nearly all of them. Here is what each area means for a junk removal site:
| Area | What to check | Free tool |
|---|---|---|
| Indexing | Are your service and area pages in Google at all? | Search Console, Pages report |
| Search performance | Which searches show your site, and which get clicks | Search Console, Performance report |
| Speed on phones | Do pages load fast enough on mobile data? | PageSpeed Insights |
| Page basics | Does each title and heading name one job and, where relevant, one area? | A browser and Google's own results |
| Local signals | Does the Google profile match the site on name, phone, services and areas? | Your profile and your site, side by side |
| Booking path | Can a customer get a price, text photos and call in a few taps? | Your phone |
| Tracking | Are calls, texts and bookings tagged by source? | Your job software and analytics |
Google's SEO Starter Guide covers the basics behind most of these checks in plain language.
What an audit checks
Google profile
- Categories and services
- Service area and hidden address
- Photos and review replies
Website
- Speed on a phone
- A page for each service
- Titles and descriptions
Reviews
- How recent they are
- Whether each one is answered
Listings
- Name and phone consistent
- Duplicate listings
Tracking
- Calls tracked by source
- Forms tracked to bookings
Run a quick self-audit
- Search like a customer (10 minutes). On your phone, in a private browser tab, search "junk removal," "couch removal" and "garage cleanout." Do it at the yard, then again from a town you serve. Note who appears above you and whether your site shows at all.
- Check indexing (10 minutes). In Search Console's Pages report, look for your service and area pages among the indexed pages (Search Console). Pages marked "Excluded by 'noindex' tag" after a redesign are a common, silent cause of lost calls.
- Read your search queries (10 minutes). In the Performance report, look at the last three months of queries. If you see item and situation searches like "mattress removal" or "estate cleanout," your pages are working. If you see only your business name, they are not.
- Test speed on mobile (10 minutes). Run the home page and your busiest service page through PageSpeed Insights and read the mobile result (PageSpeed Insights). Large job photos uploaded straight from a phone are the usual culprit.
- Try to book yourself (10 minutes). On your phone, get a price, send photos for a quote and tap to call. Count the taps. Then check that the photo-quote request actually reached someone.
- Check your page titles (5 minutes). Search your own domain on Google and read the titles. Each one should name a different job or area. Ten pages titled "Home" means none of them is competing.
- Check the profile link (5 minutes). Tap the website button on your Google profile. It should open a working, fast page, ideally with a tracking tag on the link.
That is about an hour. Take a screenshot at each step, because those screenshots are your baseline.
Most common problems for junk removal companies
The problems below turn up on junk removal sites far more than on the average local business site, and most are quick to fix:
Prices hidden behind "call for a quote" : Customers comparing three haulers call the one that shows a range. A site with no ballpark loses the comparison before the phone rings.
A photo-quote form that doesn't work on phones : Upload limits that reject phone-sized photos, or a form that emails an inbox nobody checks. Each one is a customer who did everything right and never heard back.
Everything on one "What we take" page : Furniture, appliances, hot tubs, estate cleanouts and demolition crammed onto one page compete with each other and rank for none.
Pages for services you dropped : A dumpster page from the year you rented cans, or moving help you no longer offer, brings calls you turn away and confuses Google about what you do.
A town list in the footer instead of area pages : Thirty town names at the bottom of every page do not make you relevant in any of them.
Expired seasonal pages : A "spring cleanout special" still live in November, with an old price, tells customers the site is not maintained.
Slow job galleries : Before-and-after photos are your best sales tool, and also the main reason junk removal pages load slowly on phones (Core Web Vitals).
What to do after the audit
Rank the findings by how directly they cost you calls, put a name and a deadline beside each, and keep the baseline so you can verify later that each fix happened. Broken booking paths and indexing problems come first, because they lose customers who already found you. Speed and titles come next, and new pages last.
If you hand the list to a web person or an agency, give them your screenshots and ask for the same screenshots back when they are done. Four weeks after the fixes, rerun the steps above and compare. That closes the gap between being told the work was done and seeing it for yourself. The local SEO checklist picks up where this audit leaves off, and the website conversion checklist goes deeper on the booking path.
How VETS Growth Marketing helps
We run this audit live with you, on your own site and Google profile, and turn it into a short list with an owner and a date for each fix. Everything stays in your accounts, and we report the result in calls and booked jobs rather than scores. Book a growth consultation and bring your Search Console login.
Sources
- Google Search Console, Google
- PageSpeed Insights, Google
- Understanding Core Web Vitals and Google search results, Google Search Central
- SEO Starter Guide, Google Search Central