An SEO audit full of technical terms is only useful if you can actually understand what it's telling you. This guide translates the most common audit findings into plain English, so you can tell what's urgent, what's minor, and what actually deserves your time first - whether the audit came from us or someone else.
Core Web Vitals and site speed scores
This measures how fast your site loads and how stable it feels to use - specifically, loading speed, how quickly the page responds to a click or tap, and whether content shifts around unexpectedly while loading. A poor score is worth fixing, but it's rarely the single biggest lever for a local business; treat it as important but not urgent unless it's genuinely poor (deep red, not borderline yellow), or unless you've already handled the bigger items below.
Crawl errors and indexing issues
A crawl error means Google's crawler tried to access a page and couldn't - usually a broken link, a server error, or a page accidentally blocked from indexing. The urgency depends entirely on which page: an error on your homepage or a service page is urgent, while an error on an old, unimportant page you don't care about ranking is low priority. Don't treat every error in the list as equally important - check which URLs are actually affected first.
Google Business Profile score
If this comes back low, it's almost always one of a small number of causes: a vague or incorrect primary category, an incomplete services list, too few photos, or no recent Google Posts activity. Fix the category first - it's the single most influential field on the whole profile - then work through the rest. Our GMB listing optimization breakdown covers exactly what a complete profile looks like.
Keyword gaps
This finding means there's a real search your potential customers are using that you have no page specifically targeting. It's usually one of the highest-value items in an audit, because it represents demand you're currently handing to competitors by default rather than losing on merit. The fix is straightforward, if not always quick: a dedicated page (or blog post) that actually answers that specific search.
Backlink and citation findings
This section covers how many other sites link to yours, and whether your business's name, address, and phone number are listed consistently across directories. Inconsistent NAP data is a quiet but real drag on local rankings - it's worth fixing even though it feels like a small, unglamorous task. A thin backlink profile matters more for competitive keywords than for a business with light local competition.
How to prioritize everything at once
When a full audit lands with a dozen or more findings, prioritize by impact-to-effort ratio rather than working top to bottom: Google Business Profile fixes and homepage/service-page issues tend to move the needle fastest, quick technical fixes (broken links, missing title tags) are worth clearing before bigger content projects, and content gaps for your highest-value keywords should come before content for lower-priority ones.
If you haven't had your site and Google Business Profile audited yet, start with a free SEO audit - our companion post on what's included in a free SEO audit covers exactly what you'll receive.