SEO audits by industry

What we actually found when we audited local business websites, broken down by trade. Each page carries its own measured data rather than the same advice with a different noun.

The spread between industries is wider than the spread within them. Law firms and dental practices average close to 88 out of 100, while beauty salons and car repair workshops sit in the sixties. That gap is rarely about budget. It is about who built the site: professional services usually commissioned a developer, while personal services and trades are far more likely to be running a template or a page generated by a booking platform.

Ordered below from the weakest average score to the strongest, because the weakest are where the work is most obvious and the improvement most dramatic. Every figure comes from our audit of 2,661 local business websites, which also sets out the method and its limits.

By trade, weakest first