SEO Audit Case Study

This case study shows how an SEO audit helped a dyslexia specialist understand what was holding her website back – and what to do next.

JAS Assessments is an independent dyslexia assessment service based in Dorset, run by specialist teacher and assessor Joanne Southgate.

Joanne’s website was less than a year old, but she wanted a clearer understanding of how well it was performing in search, whether it was set up correctly, and what could be improved to attract more of the right enquiries.

The challenge wasn’t to just produce a list of SEO issues. Joanne’s understanding of SEO is limited, so the audit needed to explain things clearly and avoid unnecessary jargon. It was important to make the next steps feel manageable.

Joanne asked me to carry out an initial SEO audit of JAS Assessments website: https://jas-assessments.co.uk/

The aim was to understand:

For a specialist service like dyslexia assessment, SEO isn’t just about keywords. Visitors may be parents, adults, students or schools looking for guidance on a sensitive and important issue, so the website needs to be clear, reassuring and trustworthy, as well as visible in search.

The final audit report ran to 31 pages, but it was deliberately structured to make the findings easy to follow.

Each issue was explained in plain English, using a simple format:

What I found
Why it matters
Recommended action
Priority

This meant Joanne was able to see not only what needed improving, but why it mattered and where to start. It also provided a clear roadmap to refer back to at each stage of the improvements that were to follow.

The audit looked at:

The site already had some good foundations.

JAS Assessments offers a specialist service with clear local relevance in and around the Dorset area. Joanne’s qualifications, professional memberships and experience were represented on the site, and the business already had a number of positive Google reviews.

The audit uncovered several opportunities for the website to communicate with both search engines and potential clients far more clearly.

These included:

One of my most important early recommendations was to check whether Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager and Bing Webmaster Tools had been properly set up in the past, and whether Joanne had access to them.

SEO audits can easily become overwhelming, especially when they are full of technical language and long lists of recommendations.

That was something I wanted to avoid.

Joanne’s first feedback after reading the report was that it was set out so clearly that she could easily understand:

Although the report was in-depth, the structure helped it feel practical and manageable rather than daunting.

That was important, because the aim of the audit wasn’t just to identify problems. It was to give Joanne a clear route forward that she or someone else could follow.

A few days after Joanne received the audit report, we met to talk through the findings.

We started with the first priority: checking access to Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Once I had access to the WordPress admin panel, I could see that some tracking and verification elements had been added to the site previously. However, further investigation showed me that the accounts themselves had been created by a former development company, which was no longer trading. Joanne had no access to them.

This created an important ownership issue.

Even if tracking had technically been set up before, Joanne didn’t have proper control over the accounts or the website data.

We agreed that the best approach was to start again with new accounts owned by JAS Assessments. This would mean Joanne had control of her own website data going forward, with the ability to give access to other people when needed and revoke that access if circumstances changed.

Setting up these tools can be somewhat confusing if you aren’t familiar with them, so I prepared step-by-step instructions to help Joanne create the core accounts and then add me as a user.

Once that was done, I completed the remaining configuration.

This included:

There isn’t enough data yet to draw conclusions about performance, and to be honest, we already know that current traffic levels are likely to be low, but at least the important measurement foundations are now in place.

That means future SEO work can be guided by real data rather than guesswork.

An SEO audit shouldn’t leave a client feeling confused, overwhelmed or dependent on jargon – just the opposite!

This project has already helped JAS Assessments move from uncertainty to a much clearer position.

Joanne now has:

The site has genuine expertise behind it. As a next step, the aim is to make that expertise more visible, more useful and more search-friendly. The site audit has helped Joanne see where the gaps were, and the opportunities to plug them.

I wanted to improve my website’s visibility but wasn’t sure where to begin. Mandy’s audit gave me a clear understanding of what was working well, what needed improving and, importantly, why those changes mattered.

The report was written in plain English and wasn’t full of technical jargon, which made it much easier to understand.

The step-by-step guides were excellent. I printed them out and worked through each stage, ticking them off as I went, which made what initially felt like quite a daunting process much more manageable. Whenever I had a question, Mandy responded quickly and was always happy to help. When I made an error while setting up one of my Google accounts, she quickly helped me put it right.

I’m looking forward to working with Mandy using her hybrid approach. She’s already helped me understand how my website works and encouraged me to take ownership of it. Going through this process has given me much more confidence and motivated me to be more proactive about keeping my website up to date and adding useful content based on the questions my clients ask. Knowing that Mandy will be there to provide specialist SEO support whenever I need it gives me the confidence to keep developing the site myself.

Following the audit and follow-up work, Joanne hopes to continue working with me going forward. A hybrid solution would be a sensible next step, where I act partly as an SEO consultant to guide Joanne through tasks she can do herself (for example, creating targeted content) and partly with more hands-on SEO support for specialist technical, strategic or optimisation tasks.

This kind of flexible arrangement works well when a client wants expert guidance, but also wants to stay involved and build their own understanding of SEO over time.

Do you need a better understanding of where your website’s gaps and opportunities lie?
An SEO audit can help you understand what is working, what is getting in the way, and what to prioritise next.