Start the audit with commercial search journeys
An audit should not begin with a list of every technical warning a tool can produce. Begin with the advice areas the firm genuinely offers, the clients it is equipped to consider and the actions a suitable prospect can take. For a London adviser, that might involve retirement planning, investment advice, protection or advice for business owners, but the website must reflect the firm's actual permissions, expertise and client acceptance criteria.
Map representative searches to the page that should answer them. A broad query about finding a financial adviser in London has a different purpose from a question about consolidating pensions or arranging protection for company directors. If both lead to a generic home page, the problem is unlikely to be a shortage of articles. It is more likely to be unclear service architecture.
A documented journey creates a useful brief for SEO work and prevents content production from racing ahead of commercial decisions.
Check crawling, indexing and page duplication
Technical inspection should determine whether important pages are accessible, indexable and represented by one preferred URL. Review robots directives, XML sitemaps, canonical tags, redirects, broken internal links and status codes. Look for service pages accidentally excluded from search, old campaign URLs still competing with current pages, and multiple versions created by trailing slashes, parameters or content management settings.
Financial adviser websites often accumulate near-duplicate pages when services, office areas and blog themes have been added at different times. Two pages targeting substantially the same London retirement planning need can divide internal links and make it difficult to decide which one deserves prominence. Choose whether to retain, combine, redirect or reposition them. Do not merge pages merely because their wording overlaps if they support genuinely different client decisions.
Decide whether existing pages satisfy search intent
Read the pages as a prospective client, not just as a crawler. A useful service page should explain who the service may suit, what the initial conversation covers, how the process broadly works, what information may be needed and what the visitor should do next. It should also distinguish educational information from personalised financial advice.
Assess whether an article contributes to a service journey. A post can answer an early question, then direct a reader towards a relevant service explanation without pretending that the article resolves their personal circumstances. Examples of how an agency presents completed work can be reviewed in the digital project portfolio, but an adviser's own proof should remain factual, current and appropriately approved.
Audit London relevance without producing thin area pages
If the adviser has one office but works with clients across several boroughs, do not automatically build a page for every area. A location page earns its place when it offers distinct, useful information, such as a genuine office, a specific team or a materially different service context. Otherwise, strengthen the principal London page. This London agency page shows how location can sit within a wider service journey.
Compare the website with the firm's business listings and map presence. Name, address, telephone number, hours, categories and appointment information should agree wherever they appear. The Google Business Profile local SEO guide provides a practical companion check. Any listing change should reflect real operating arrangements rather than an attempt to imply offices that do not exist.
Review trust, compliance and conversion boundaries
Financial services content needs both search clarity and controlled accuracy. Review adviser identities, qualifications, regulatory wording, firm details, privacy information and any claims about services or outcomes. Confirm that dates and ownership are visible where ongoing review matters. Testimonials, review excerpts, logos and photographs also need appropriate consent and must comply with business-specific regulatory requirements and platform policies.
The firm should define who approves regulated website copy. Marketing staff can improve structure and readability, but they should not decide whether a financial promotion is compliant or whether risk wording is sufficient. Approval must follow the firm's own compliance process and, where relevant, involve its authorised compliance personnel or professional advisers. An SEO audit is not legal, regulatory or financial advice.
Use a fix before publish sequence
Turn the audit into an ordered plan rather than a large spreadsheet of equal priorities:
- Protect access and accuracy. Resolve critical crawl, indexing, security, contact and compliance issues affecting important pages.
- Set the page map. Assign priority audience needs and search themes to service, location and supporting information pages.
- Consolidate competition. Combine or reposition overlapping content, then update redirects, canonicals and internal links where required.
- Strengthen decision pages. Improve service explanations, local evidence, adviser trust information and suitable next steps.
- Validate measurement. Check that analytics and search reporting capture meaningful actions with suitable consent controls.
- Approve the next content brief. Publish only when the proposed article fills a documented gap and has an agreed owner and review route.
Measure whether the repairs improve useful visibility
Do not judge the audit by an overall site score. Track index coverage for priority URLs, impressions and clicks for relevant query groups, landing page engagement and completed contact actions. Separate branded searches from non-branded discovery, and review service and local themes independently. A rise in irrelevant impressions is not evidence that the site is attracting suitable prospects.
Review early technical signals after deployment, but allow content and search behaviour to be assessed over a sensible period. If the audit reveals unclear tracking, resolve that before using performance data to justify more publishing. Advisers who need help scoping priorities can use the agency contact route to discuss the site, its current constraints and the decisions the audit needs to support.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which technical checks should come before new content planning?
Before planning further articles, check that priority service and London pages can be crawled and indexed, use the intended canonical URLs, return appropriate status codes and receive working internal links. Review robots directives, XML sitemaps, redirects and duplicate URL variants. Also confirm that contact routes, consent controls and measurement are functioning, so new content is not added to an unclear or inaccessible site structure.
How can an adviser identify pages that overlap in search intent?
List the search need, audience, decision stage and intended next action for every service, location and supporting page. Pages are likely to overlap when they answer substantially the same London advice question and compete for the same internal links or queries. Compare their purpose before changing them. Retain, combine, redirect or reposition pages according to their distinct role, rather than judging duplication only by similar wording.
What trust information should be easy to find on advice pages?
Advice pages should make it straightforward to find accurate firm and adviser identities, relevant qualifications, regulatory wording, contact details, privacy information and an explanation of the service process. Where appropriate, show when material was reviewed and who is responsible for it. Claims, testimonials, logos and images should be current, approved and supported by suitable consent. The page should distinguish general information from personalised financial advice.
Who should review SEO content before it is published?
The review route should include the content owner, a person able to confirm service accuracy and the firm’s appropriate compliance reviewer where wording could be a financial promotion. SEO specialists can check search intent, page structure, links and technical implementation, while marketing can check clarity and brand consistency. The final process should reflect the firm’s documented approvals and record substantive changes before publication.
How can an SEO audit account for regulated wording?
Include regulated wording in the audit inventory alongside technical and content findings. Flag statements about services, outcomes, risk, qualifications, permissions and client suitability for review against the firm’s own approval process. SEO recommendations should improve clarity and relevance without altering approved meaning or removing necessary context. When a page needs material wording changes, route the revised copy to the appropriate compliance reviewer before it is published.
