Key takeaways
- Search Console, PageSpeed Insights and your own phone answer most audit questions for free in about an hour.
- The usual landscaping problems are one page for every service, seasonal pages deleted each year, and a photo gallery that is slow and has no text.
- Request a quote from your own site on your phone. If it never reaches your CRM, nothing else on the audit matters yet.
- Turn the findings into a dated list, ordered by what has to be fixed before the next season starts.
An SEO audit for a landscaping company website checks whether Google can find your pages, whether they match what homeowners search, and whether someone on a phone can request a quote. You can run a useful version yourself in about an hour with free tools, and finally see for yourself what your site, or the provider you pay, is actually doing.
What an audit checks
An audit checks five things: whether Google can index your pages, what searches you appear for, how fast the site is on a phone, whether a visitor can reach you, and who controls the accounts.
| Area | The question it answers | Free tool |
|---|---|---|
| Indexing | Are your service and area pages in Google at all? | Search Console, Page indexing report |
| Search performance | Which searches show your site, and do they match what you sell? | Search Console, Performance report |
| Speed and mobile | Does the site load quickly on a phone? | PageSpeed Insights |
| Conversion | Can a homeowner request a quote in a minute? | Your own phone |
| Ownership | Are the domain, site, Search Console and analytics in your name? | Your registrar and account logins |
Search Console is Google's own record of how your site performs in search (Search Console). If you do not have access to it, that is the first finding.
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 homeowner (5 minutes). On your phone, in a private tab, search "lawn care near me", "landscaper" with the name of a town you serve, and "paver patio" with the same town. Note where you appear and who appears above you.
- Check indexing (10 minutes). In Search Console, open the Page indexing report. Confirm each service page is indexed. Look for pages excluded by a "noindex" tag, a common leftover from a redesign.
- Read your queries (10 minutes). In the Performance report, sort by clicks and read the searches. If the top ones are your business name and nothing else, the site is not winning new homeowners.
- Test speed (10 minutes). Run PageSpeed Insights on your homepage and your project gallery, and read the mobile result (PageSpeed Insights). The gallery is usually the slowest page on a landscaping site.
- Request a quote yourself (10 minutes). Use the site's form on your phone. Time it. Then check whether the request reached Jobber, LMN or your landscaping CRM, and whether anyone followed up.
- Open your Google profile (10 minutes). Check the categories, the services list, the phone number and where the website link goes.
- Check who owns what (5 minutes). Log in to your domain registrar, hosting and analytics. If a former designer or agency holds any of them, write it down.
Most common problems for landscaping and lawn care companies
The same handful of problems show up on landscaping site after landscaping site, and most of them are fixable in days, not months.
- One "Services" page for everything. Mowing, design, hardscaping, cleanups and snow removal share a page, so none of them ranks well.
- Seasonal pages deleted and rebuilt. The snow removal page comes down in spring and goes back up in fall at a new address, losing everything it earned.
- A gallery of photos with no words. Google cannot tell a retaining wall from a mulch bed without captions, and full-size camera photos make the page crawl on a phone (Core Web Vitals).
- The best work lives only on social media. Your installs are on Instagram and nowhere on your own site.
- "Serving the greater area" with no list of towns.
- A quote form that goes to someone's inbox instead of your CRM, where it waits until someone checks.
- The phone number as an image, which cannot be tapped to call.
- A site in someone else's account. Common with builder templates set up by a designer years ago.
What to do after the audit
Turn the findings into a short list with a name and a date on each line, ordered by what has to be working before the next season starts. A finding with no owner and no date is just a note.
Example plan for an audit run in October:
- By the end of October: snow removal page updated and linked from the homepage, quote form connected to the CRM.
- By the end of November: separate pages for each core service, gallery photos compressed and captioned.
- By the end of January: area pages for the towns on your busiest routes, profile services list checked against the new pages.
- Before the first mow: rerun the self-audit and compare.
If a fix needs a developer, ask what it will cost and when it will be done before you approve it. The local SEO checklist covers the profile side, and the SEO cost guide explains what outside help should deliver each month.
How VETS Growth Marketing helps
We run this audit live with you, explain what each finding means for calls and signed clients, and turn it into a dated project timed around your season. Every account stays in your name, including the ones we help you recover from a former provider. We report in calls, quote requests and signed recurring clients. Book a growth consultation and leave with your five highest-impact fixes.
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