What Our Free Audits Find on Orlando Service-Business Websites

We pulled the free-audit records for 103 Central Florida service-business websites, mostly roofers, electricians and plumbers. The most common problem was speed on a phone: on 83 of the 97 sites Lighthouse could test, the main content took longer than four seconds to appear. Next came title tags Google will cut short (43 of 97), which mostly doesn't matter, and missing LocalBusiness markup (42 of 93), which does.

Everything below is a count read off our own audit records. These are counts and not percentages because the sample is small enough that you should see the denominators. Each finding says how many sites we could actually measure, since a check that failed to run is unknown, not a failure.

What did we look at, and how many sites?

Our free audit is a URL check. It fetches up to ten pages, runs Google's Lighthouse on mobile and desktop, reads the structured data, and samples images. It doesn't log in to anything, and it doesn't open the business's Google Business Profile.

We planned to compare roofers, plumbers and electricians. We dropped it. Only 15 of the 103 came from the plumber search, and the Maps searches returned other trades too (an appliance repair shop and HVAC companies turned up under "electricians"), so a split by search would compare noise. On the audit's own 100-point grade, no site earned an A. 14 got a B, 44 a C, 36 a D and 9 an F, and the middle site scored 71.

What is the most common problem on these sites?

Slow loading on a phone, by a wide margin. Google's guidance treats a Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less as good and anything over 4 seconds as poor. In our mobile lab runs, only 6 of 97 sites came in under 2.5 seconds. The middle site took 7.9 seconds, and 39 took longer than ten.

• 2.5 s or less: 6
• 2.5 to 4 s: 8
• Over 4 s: 83

The overall Lighthouse score tells the same story. On mobile, 26 of 97 sites landed in what Lighthouse labels the red, poor band (0 to 49), 65 in the orange band and 6 in the green. On desktop the same sites did far better: the middle score was 85 against 60 on mobile, and 88 of the 95 sites with both runs scored lower on the phone.

One caveat: a lab test is one simulated page load, not your customers' real experience. Google's real-user data would settle it, but only 4 of the 97 sites had any, because the Chrome UX Report only covers sites with enough visitors to qualify. For a typical local trade site, the lab test is the only speed reading there is.

Every finding we counted, by frequency

"Of" is the number of sites where that check produced a result. A site whose page builds itself in the browser can hide tags from a plain fetch, so we count those checks as unmeasured instead of failed. 24 of the 99 sites with a readable homepage passed every homepage tag check.

Copy the table

Here is the same table as HTML with the source line attached. It renders from the same list as the table above, so the two can't disagree.

How many sites are missing the Maps basics?

Every business in this sample has a Google Maps listing, because that is how we found them. The audit doesn't open that listing, so it can't tell you whether the hours or category on it are right. What it can check is the website's half of the job: whether the site tells Google, in machine-readable form, the business name, address, phone number and hours.

That is what LocalBusiness structured data is for. Google's documentation says it can tell Google about business hours and other details, lists the name and address as required, and recommends the phone number and opening hours.

• No LocalBusiness markup: 42
• Markup, but phone or address missing: 7
• Phone and address, no hours: 9
• Phone, address and hours: 35

42 of 93 sites had no LocalBusiness markup on any page we sampled, and 15 had no structured data of any kind. Of the 51 that did have it, 44 included both the phone and the address and 35 added hours as well. That leaves 58 of 93 sites without the full set.

Markup isn't a ranking switch. Google's own page on local results says ranking rests on relevance, distance and prominence, and that complete, accurate business information helps. The markup is the website's way of stating that information without making Google guess it from the footer.

Which problems cost you calls, and which are cosmetic?

An audit that lists everything at the same volume buries the few findings that matter. We sort them by what they can do to a customer trying to reach you, and that cuts the list down fast.

The first column is short, and it's the one that matters. A homepage that doesn't load (3 sites) or is blocked from the index (1) can't bring in anyone from search. A page with no viewport tag (3) shows a shrunken desktop layout on a phone. And a page that takes eight seconds to show its main content gives a homeowner with a leaking roof plenty of time to tap back and call the next result. Links Google can't follow (13) belong here too, since Google can only crawl a link that is an HTML <a> element with an href, and a page nobody links to properly may never be found.

The third column is where most audit noise lives. Google says there is no limit on title length; it trims the title to fit the screen. A long title is a presentation choice. Open Graph tags only change how the link looks when someone shares it. And Google says a site with about 500 pages or fewer that links its pages well may not need a sitemap, which describes almost every site here. If someone quotes you a project fee to fix 43 long titles, ask what it does for the phone.

What does fixing it look like, week to week?

We fix things in the same order as the columns above, one batch a week, and each week's changes go in a log the owner can read. The order below is how our own client work has gone. The dated examples come from our case studies.

1. Week one: anything that blocks a visit. Server errors, pages Google can't reach, an index block. At a Central Florida wildlife removal company the server errors stopped on day 2.
2. Weeks two to four: speed and the phone layout. Image sizes, scripts that hold up the first paint, a missing viewport tag. Some take more than one pass: that same site's layout shift needed three.
3. Alongside: the business facts. LocalBusiness markup with the phone, address and hours, matched to the Maps listing. Profile edits only the owner can make go to them as written steps.
4. Then: pages for the searches you're missing. Service and town pages for searches that show your site but that no page on it answers. At an Orlando immigration law firm the first fixes went live on day 22, and the order of everything after is in our change-by-change write-up of both businesses.
5. Last, if ever: the cosmetic column. Long titles get rewritten while a page is being edited for some other reason, not as a project.

How long the whole thing takes depends on where the site starts. We put dated numbers on that in how long SEO takes for an Orlando small business.

How do I find out which of these my site has?

Run the same audit on your own domain. It checks everything in the table above and marks anything it couldn't measure as unknown, not failed. If the report shows only cosmetic findings, you can stop worrying about your website and spend the time on your Google Business Profile. Our local SEO service covers both if you'd rather hand it off.