PRICING · WEBSITE AUDITS
- Audit — Core $590
- Audit — Deep $1,700
Scope agreed in writing before work starts.
Audit and QA Review fees are credited in full against any build started within 60 days.
See the full rate card →← Services / VERIFY / 04
Website Audits
Most audits are 40-page PDFs that die in a downloads folder. A Black Oar Website Audit is a diagnosis with a fix path. We measure what actually moves the needle — Core Web Vitals, crawlability, conversion friction, accessibility gaps, and whether AI engines can even read you — then rank every finding by impact over effort. You leave knowing exactly what to fix first, why it matters, and what it is worth.
What you get
Deliverables
- Performance audit — Core Web Vitals measured on real mobile hardware (LCP < 2.5s, INP < 200ms, CLS < 0.1), with the exact scripts and assets dragging each metric down.
- Technical SEO crawl — indexation, broken links, redirect chains, canonical and sitemap health, schema coverage across every URL.
- Conversion + UX teardown — hero clarity, offer hierarchy, CTA friction, mobile flow, and the 3–5 moments where visitors drop off.
- Accessibility pass — WCAG contrast, focus order, touch targets, alt text — the gaps that lose users and invite legal risk.
- AI-visibility check — whether Perplexity, ChatGPT Search, Claude and Google AI Overviews can technically reach and parse your site, and whether your content carries the machine-readable signals those systems use for retrieval and citation (robots.txt, llms.txt, structured data, answer-first structure). Whether a platform then cites you is its own decision.
- Trust + security scan — HTTPS, security headers, CSP, exposed metadata, and stale dependencies that signal neglect.
- Prioritized action report — every finding ranked by impact × effort into fix-first / fix-next / safe-to-ignore, walked through live in one call.
What it costs
Pricing
All prices in USD, net. Excludes taxes, duties and third-party fees (domains, hosting beyond free tiers, apps, licences, stock assets) applicable in the client's jurisdiction.
How it works
Process
01 — INTAKE
Scope & Goals
One 30-minute call: what the site is for, who it serves, and what "better" means in real numbers.
02 — MEASURE
Automated Sweep
Lighthouse, full crawl, schema validation, and AI-crawler checks run against every key page.
03 — INSPECT
Manual Teardown
The human pass machines miss — copy, offer logic, conversion friction, real-device feel.
04 — RANK
Impact Scoring
Every finding scored impact × effort and sorted into fix-first, fix-next, or ignore.
05 — DELIVER
Report + Walkthrough
Prioritized report handed over and walked through live. Every question answered.
Plain language
Jargon, Decoded
CLICK A TERM TO DECODE
Core Web Vitals PERFORMANCE
Google's three real-world speed measurements: how fast the main content appears, how quickly the page reacts to a tap, and how much the layout jumps around while loading.
YOUR ADVANTAGE → They put a number on what a visitor actually feels — waiting, lag, content jumping under the thumb — and the thresholds are published, so anyone can check a site against them.
INP PERFORMANCE
Interaction to Next Paint — the modern measure of how quickly a page responds after someone taps or clicks. It replaced the older responsiveness score in 2024.
YOUR ADVANTAGE → It measures the delay between a tap and something happening — the part of "slow" a visitor blames on you rather than on their connection.
WCAG ACCESSIBILITY
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — the global standard for making a site usable by everyone, including people with visual, motor, or cognitive impairments.
YOUR ADVANTAGE → A site everyone can use reaches more people, and the same clean semantics that help a screen reader also help a machine read the page. Whether it meets a given legal requirement is a question for a lawyer, not a build.
Structured Data AI SEARCH
Invisible labels in the page code that give supported search engines and machine-readable systems explicit context about what is on the page: this is a service, this is a price, this is a review.
YOUR ADVANTAGE → Makes your pages eligible for richer search listings — and puts your facts in a form a machine can take straight from the source rather than guess at.
llms.txt AI SEARCH
A plain-text summary of your business that lives on your site, written specifically for AI systems to read — like a business card for ChatGPT and friends.
YOUR ADVANTAGE → AI assistants get a first-hand, machine-readable source on your business — instead of having to guess.
GEO AI SEARCH
Generative Engine Optimization — the work of making your business findable and understandable for AI answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, the way SEO does for classic search results.
YOUR ADVANTAGE → When customers ask an AI for a recommendation, your name is in the running — not invisible.
Common questions
Website Audits FAQ
How is this different from a free SEO scanner?
Free scanners spit out 200 generic warnings with no priority. A Black Oar audit is measured on real hardware, read by a human, and ranked by what actually moves revenue — so you fix the five things that matter, not the two hundred that do not.
How long does an audit take?
Turnaround is 3–5 business days from access. Larger or multi-domain sites may run 7–10. You receive the full report plus a live walkthrough call.
Do you fix the issues, or just report them?
The audit is the diagnosis. Fixes are scoped separately — usually as a Website System, Landing Page, Automation, or AI Search Optimization engagement. Your audit fee credits in full toward any build we start within 60 days.
Does the audit cover AI search visibility?
Yes. We check whether AI engines can reach and parse you, and whether your content gives them something citable: robots.txt access for the crawlers that matter — the search crawlers OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT Search), Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, plus the training agents GPTBot, ClaudeBot and Google-Extended, which are a separate decision — then llms.txt, structured data and answer-first content. What we cannot check is whether a given engine then quotes you: no provider publishes that, and anyone who promises it is selling you someone else’s decision. AI visibility is a first-class part of the audit, not an afterthought.
Will I actually understand the report?
That is the point. Every finding is written in plain language with a "why it matters" and a verdict, then walked through live. No jargon dump, no 40-page PDF you will never open.
Ready to ship?
Tell us the goal, the deadline, and the constraint. Pricing is on the rate card; you get an exact scope and figure in writing, usually within two business days.
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