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About Websites & SEO

Episode 2000: Listen To This Before Meeting With Level 10 For Your Website Audit (2025 Update)

Introduction

Thanks for listening to this episode of the podcast today—it’s specifically geared for people who requested a Website Audit from my company, Level 10 Contractor… and what I I’m going to do is show you how to create a website that delivers 200 to 500 quotable leads to your business every month using Google… with half or more of those coming to you organically. Think about that—100 to 300 quotable organic leads a month—what would THAT do for your business?

My name is Rich Harshaw; for those who don’t know me, I’m the founder and CEO of Level 10 Contractor; we’re a marketing agency dedicated to elite contractors home remodeling and home services industries—it’s all we do, and we’re really good at it. We build websites and do SEO; we also offer digital and traditional advertising services… TV, Radio, Streaming TV, Facebook paid advertising… and of course, Pay Per Click.

If you’re doing $5M in revenue or more, then we’re going to be good friends. We rarely work with companies smaller than that because quite frankly—as you’re about to learn on this podcast—we only do things one way—the right way—and it simply costs more to deliver stellar results. Meaning, we deliver large quantities of qualified quotable leads. Say that three times fast.

If you’re bigger than $5M—no problem. Most of our Client-Partners are in the 5 to $20M range… but we do have clients up to and over $100M in sales. What matters most is that you’re a forward-thinking company that is willing to take the time to UNDERSTAND what it is we do… and HOW we do it… so that we’ll be on the same page from minute 1.

If you’re under $5M, we will review your situation and contact you to let you know if following through with the audit makes sense or not. In some cases, it might.

A little more about me, and Level 10 Contractor. I’ve been in business now for 30 years; I’ve written two books on marketing, including Unlocking Unlimited Lead flow that is geared specifically to contractors—it’s 400 pages of solid gold… I literally wrote the book on lead gen for this industry… and I also run two podcasts: Marketing Matters Podcast, which I do for Qualified Remodeler Magazine—episodes drop twice a month. And also, this podcast that you’re listening to right now—the Level 10 Contractor Daily Podcast… yes, it is a daily podcast, and today happens to be episode 2000. If you’re keeping score at home—that’s a lot of podcasts. I’m also one of the most in-demand speakers in the industry… having given keynotes at every even that matters—from dealer conferences for companies like Pella, Marvin, James Hardie, ReBath, and GAF—just to name a few… to major conferences like Top 500 Live, FAST Live, Service RoundTable, Leadcon, and a bunch of others. My company, Level 10 Contractor, is the premier marketing agency in the industry; we have over 60 employees that over 100 Client-Partners trust to generate qualified quotable leads.

Our goal is simple: To help you generate 200 to 500 quotable leads a month, and to do it for 10% marketing spend or less… and to do it ALL from Google. We can help in other areas—Facebook or YouTube paid ads… radio, television, OTT/CTV… but today’s conversation is Google. 200 to 500 quotable leads a month. I’ll show you exactly how we do that in this podcast.

If you have requested a website audit from Level 10 Contractor, there are some very specific things that I want you to know and understand before you get on a zoom call with one of my team members; it will make our time on the zoom much more efficient and effective. I appreciate your time and effort—trust me, it will be time well spent. What you’re about to learn is definitely worth knowing.

Preparing for Surprise

I also want you to be prepared for some bad news: There is an 85 to 90% chance that we will tell you that, “Your website is underperforming so badly… it’s at such an unacceptable level that you are going to need to tear it down, start over and build a new one.” This is not a remodel, it’s a do-over. Nobody wants to hear that, but brace yourself—it’s almost certainly coming. After you listen you’ll understand why.

You might be thinking, nope, nope, nope, nope, that’s not my site. But hard facts: the average score for the websites that we audit is 27 out of 100. TWENTY-SEVEN. What if your kid brought home a 27 on their report card? You’d be furious? But you’d also want to know WHY. The website audit will show you exactly how and why and where your website is underachieving.
Fire Your Website!

In fact, you will almost certainly need to FIRE YOUR WEBSITE! Think about it this way: What if you hired a new sales person, and after a month of training, their closing ratio was only 5%… or 10%… instead of the expected 30 or 35 or 40%? You might give him a second chance, but at some point, you would cut your losses, fire his butt, and move on. Because if he is closing 10% instead 30%, he is LOSING 20 sales for every 100 leads you give him! If you hand him 10 leads a week, 50 weeks out of the year… that’s 500 leads that he SHOULD be closing 150 of… but he’s only closing 50. If your average sale is $15,000… that’s $1.5M LOST for the year for that underperforming salesperson!

Why would you treat your website any different? What if you are losing 100 to 500 quotable leads a month to your site because Google doesn’t like it… because it’s executed poorly… because it is scoring 27 out of 100 instead a higher score?

Your website should be bringing you a bare minimum of 100 quotable leads a month. MINIMUM. If it’s only bringing you 20… you just lost 80 quotable leads… which is probably about 20 sales… at $15,000 per sale… let’s do the math on THAT: $300,000 a MONTH in sales that you’re missing. $3.6M a year.

At a minimum.

Let me say it again, in unmistakable terms. Your website might look nice—but based on what you’re about to learn… it’s a near certainty that you are losing MULTIPLE MILLIONS of DOLLARS A YEAR. MULTIPLE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS A YEAR. Poof. Gone. And the worst part is… you don’t even realize that it’s missing in the first place. I will prove to you that this is a happening… keep listening.
A new site with Level 10 Contractor is going to cost you about $20 to $30,000… PLUS Ongoing SEO services are ON TOP OF that… which of about $5,500 a month to $12,000 or more.

If you’re reaction to that is “that’s too much, there’s no way I’d ever spend that much on a website and SEO,” then thank you for your time, and have a nice life.

A better reaction would be “Okay, that sounds like a lot… but tell me more about how investing that much money with Level 10 is going to get me that $3.6 million in sales I am losing right now.”
Stated differently: Would you invest $80,000 to $130,000 to generate enough quotable leads, consistently and reliably, to create $2M to $5M in sales?

And let me just add this real quick: If you like the numbers, but you’re just too small to afford it—like, you’re a $1M business or a startup—well, you have two options: 1) Go get a business loan to grow your business and let’s get to work… or 2) find some other way to grow and come back later. We’ll still be here—we’re not going anywhere.

Look, your website is almost certainly underperforming right now, and we will prove it to you on the website audit. You will probably have to FIRE YOUR WEBSITE. We’ll talk more about that at the end of the podcast.

My First Bold Claim

The truth is that most web development companies and SEO companies are terrible. They SUCK. You pay money, you don’t get results. I know this because I have seen thousands of website audits, and they average 27 out of 100. That’s what I call SUCK. There’s a reason that everyone HATES the SEO industry.

My Second Bold Claim

We have figured it out. Everybody always wants to blame Google’s algorithm when SEO doesn’t work. That’s a cop out. The algorithm does not constantly change and conspire against you. The things that matter in the algorithm stay the same year after year after year… and you can consistently win by knowing and working WITH the algorithm.

Functioning of Websites

So let’s jump right in with a few foundational things you need to know.

The first one is that Google does not rank websites. I’m serious. Instead, Google ranks web PAGES.
It makes sense once you understand it: When somebody types their search terms into the Google search bar, google looks at two things: First, WHERE specifically, are you wanting this thing… geographically speaking… and Second… what is it you are looking for, exactly? Google assumes that WHERE you are searching is wherever your IP address is—unless you tell it otherwise… and it knows WHAT you want by simply looking at your search terms.

We call this combination of WHERE and WHAT you are searching for a Geo-Keyword Pair.

Memorize that term—you’re going to hear it a lot: Geo-Keyword Pair.

Geo-Keyword Pairs

So here’s what Google does: When somebody enters a search term, Google looks for PAGES on the internet that are as precise of a match as possible for the Geo-Keyword Pair. So your job is to make sure that your website has PAGES that are optimized for all of the geo-keyword pairs that are important to your company.

That’s why Google doesn’t show you bathroom remodeling companies in Florida if you live in San Diego… or for Car Washes in San Diego if you are searching for bathroom remodeling. The very first and most important thing to Google is WHERE is the person who is searching… and WHAT is it that they are searching for?

So here’s the super simple version of how it SEO really works: Create pages on your site that are optimized for specific geographic areas… and specific keywords… geo-keyword pairs… and Google will recognize that those pages are a potential match for what people are searching for.

Here’s an example: Let’s say you sell bathroom remodeling in the San Diego area.

So you build a website with a bunch of pages that talk about… you guessed it… bathroom remodeling.
But here’s the problem. There are multiple kinds of bathroom remodeling under the umbrella of “bathroom remodeling”.

For instance: tub to shower conversion, shower remodeling, shower to tub conversion, bathtub remodeling, walk in tubs, and step through bathtub inserts—just to name SIX.

And there are lots of different specific geographic areas under the umbrella of “San Diego.”
Like: Chula Vista, Clairemont, El Cajon, Escondido, La Meas, Lakeside, Mission Valley, Oceanside, Poway, San Diego itself, San Marcos, Santee, Spring Valley, And Vista… just to name 14, alphabetically.

So if you take those 14 geos…. And those 6 bathroom remodeling categories… you have a grand total of… 84 geo-keyword pairs.

You might have far MORE than 84 geo-keyword pairs if you sell a lot of products, and if you service lots of cities. In Dallas-Fort Worth area, for example, there are over 200 incorporated cities. So, if you sold windows, roofing, siding, gutters, bathrooms, kitchens, and insulation… 7 products… x 200 cities… that’s well that’s well over 1,000 geo-keyword pairs.

Let’s stick with the San Diego example. If you build a beautiful, new 50-page website, it is almost certainly NOT optimized for all of those 84 geo-keyword pairs. You will absolutely be out-competed by websites that have specific pages created to target the geo-keyword pair “Chula Vista Tub-To-Shower Conversion.”

Why? Because Google doesn’t rank websites—it ranks web PAGES… and the more precisely optimized a page is for a geo-keyword pair, the more likely it is for Google to put the optimized page higher in the rankings. Why? Because it’s more likely to be exactly WHERE and WHAT the person was searching for.
That means that you should ADD additional pages to your site, over time, that are optimized for specific Geo-Keywork pairs.

Which leads us to our next foundational concept.

By way of review: the first concept was that Google ranks web PAGES, not web SITES. The second concept is that Google matches searches with Pages as precisely as possible based on Geo-Keyword Pairs.

SEO

Now for the third foundation concept which is that your website and your SEO are not two different things. Nope: Your website and your SEO are the same thing. All SEO is doing is adding highly optimized pages over time so that you give your website more chances to have a precise match for what people are searching for.

Kinds of Pages

Generally speaking, there are three kinds of pages on a contractor website: Core pages, Service Area Pages, and Blog Pages.

The core pages are the ones that that you can find on the main navigation of your website. The pages exist, primarily, to allow people to navigate around your website to see stuff they want to see. The home page is a core page, and so are the sections like Services, Why Us, Resources, Reputation, About Us, and Contact. Normally these sections have dropdown menus with additional choices for other core pages. For our discussion, just know that the pages accessible from your main navigation are your core pages. The main job of these pages is to convert web visitors to leads—not do drive traffic. These pages CAN drive traffic—and they often do. But it’s not their MAIN job.

Driving traffic is the main job of Service Area pages and blog pages.

So let’s talk about Service Area Pages. Service Area pages are essentially hyper-localized SERVICE pages for your site, and they are a hyper-important part of your SEO.

To maximize visitors to the site, you would want to create Service Area pages for each set of geo-keyword pairs. Remember in our example, there were 14 cities, and 6 specific products, for a total of 84 geo-keyword pairs. So you would need Service Area pages for Chula Vista Tub-To-Shower Conversions. And Escondido Bathtub Remodeling. Hyper specific pages. These Service AREA pages are not part of the main navigation of the website… instead, they are put in a specific Service Area directory. The San Diego example I’ve been using is for a site called Shugarmansbath.com… go look it up. That’s Shugarmans bath with an SH at the beginning. You will see on that site at the top right a button that says “Service Area Pages,” then if you click on that, you will see a Service Areas Directory page… that shows the 14 different areas they service. If you click on one of the areas… Chula Vista, for example, you will go to what we call a MAIN Service Area page… which then has links to SIX individual service area pages for Chula Vista… one for each of the six services they sell… showers, bathtubs, walk-in-tubs, etc.

BOOM—service area pages.

Now let me be super-duper clear: These pages DO NOT exist so that people who are on this website can click on the service areas button…. and then see if this company does work in their area. That is NOT why these pages exist. The pages exist so that if somebody is sitting in Chula Vista California, and they search Google for the specific term “tub to shower conversion”… Google will see that geo-keyword pair… then it will see this Service Area page that is indexed… and go “ding ding ding ding ding” that’s a precise match!

You can test this by going to an incognito window on your browser and Googling “Tub to shower conversion chula vista California.” It’s important to use an incognito tab so that Google doesn’t look at your browser history—if you’ve already been on the Shugarmansbath.com website, Google will bias search results to your history. But Google those terms and you SHOULD see that specific service area page show up very high in the rankings. I just did it is the second organic result. It might be different by the time you try it, but try it—that page should be very near the top of organic results.
You can also do this to test your website. Go to an incognito page, type in keywords that are important to your business… along with the name of a town that you service… and see what pops up in the organic results. Not sponsored, or google guaranteed… but organic results. You will almost certainly see service area pages for SOMEBODY you are competing against in your area… and hopefully, from your site, too!

Remember—Google doesn’t search websites, it ranks web PAGES. That’s why this specific service area page shows up for that specific geo-keyword search… and not the site’s home page… or even the site’s core page for tub-to-shower conversion. For SEO, the more precise, the better.
So that’s Service Area pages… and we also already talked about core pages. The third kind of pages on websites are blog pages.

Blog pages come in a few different flavors… identity-based blogs, case study blogs, and product blogs… for right now, I only want to talk about product blogs. Like Service Area pages, product blog pages are optimized for geo-keyword pairs… so that they show up in search results.

For instance, if you use an incognito browser tab and Google “walk in bathtubs Chula Vista California,” you should see a result for a Shugarman’s bath blog near the top of the organic results. I am seeing it 5th in organic on the test I just ran… a blog called “Should You Install A Walk In Tub in Your Chula Vista Home” and then another blog is showing up 8th in organic… called “Can a walk in tub installation in a Chula Vista home leak?” Most SEO companies TOTALLY screw this up—they spend time, effort, and YOUR money to create interesting blogs… then they FAIL to use the geo-indicators. Then Google has no idea WHERE the blog is relevant… so it doesn’t show up in the search results. Total waste of money.

So here’s how it works, big picture: You build a website of about 40 to 50 core pages… that’s your main website… then SEO’s job is to simply make the website bigger over time by adding more pages… most of which are geo-keyword optimized—Service area and blog pages. So if you start with a 50-page website, then add 100 pages a year to your site through SEO… after a year you would have 150 pages… then 250 pages after 2 years… 350 after 3 years… and so and and so forth.

The more pages you have, the better your chances. Here’s an analogy that will be very helpful to understanding this:

The War Analogy

Think of your website and SEO like fighting a war. You don’t just “fight the entire war all at once,” You fight specific battles within the wars. My grandfather is 100 years old this year… and he fought in WW2… but specifically, he fought in the Pacific Theater against Japan… and more specifically, he fought in the battle of Midway, and then in the battle of Iwo Jima. These were strategic locations… battles… within the larger war… that required the strategic deployment of troops and equipment.
For SEO purposes, the “battles” are geo-keyword pairs. You are fighting against other competitors’ pages on their websites for traffic from specific geos and specific keywords. So think about the PAGES that you create that optimized for geo-keyword pairs like troops being put into that battle. The more troops you have… and the better equipped those troops are… the more likely you are to win.

So let’s go back to those 84 geo-keyword pairs from our example—remember, 14 cities in and around San Diego… then the six different categories of bathroom remodeling?

Here’s what you have to do: You have to strategically determine WHICH of the 84 geo-keyword pairs… are most important to you… then second most important… then third most important… and so forth all the way down to the 84th most important geo keyword pair.

This is something that we help our client-partners figure out: What do you want to sell… and where do you want to sell it… so we can create a content plan that strategically inserts troops into the most important battles first. Then we start creating and deploying that content. Putting troops into battles.

What kind of troops? Service Area pages and product blog pages. These are the pages that drive TRAFFIC. Get it?

The more troops you have in more battles, the more likely you are to win. BUT—and this is a big old BUT… Each troop that is built and deployed must be optimized at an elite level… or they could actually HURT your chances of ranking. That means that is possible that you could actually be paying real money to an SEO company to do work that is hurting you. Here’s why: If you create a troop that you put into battle, that is not optimized at an elite level, then Google will look at that page, see that it sucks for a variety of reasons to be discussed shortly, and it will not show it to people.

We see this all the time. Well, sometimes. About half the time we audit a site, it just has those 30 or 50 or whatever core pages, and nothing else. No geo-keyword optimized Service Area pages or blog pages… and inevitably that site is getting killed by slightly more competent competitors. You can’t win a battle if you have no troops! The other half of the time, the Service Area pages and blog pages exist, but they… how shall I say this? They freaking suck… they are done wrong, they are coded wrong, they are optimized wrong… and/or they have generic, uninspiring content… and Google looks at those pages and goes nope. They get buried.

It would be like a troop of 10-year old boy scouts showing up at Iwo Jima with pop guns and fire crackers… instead of my grandfather and his 70,000 bad ass marine buddies showing up locked an loaded with M1 carbines, Thompson submachine guns, flamethrowers, bazookas, and mortars. Just showing up isn’t enough; you have to be loaded for bear.

Here’s what I mean by properly optimized:

First, they have to send the proper geo-keyword SIGNALS to Google… so that Google can easily discern WHERE the page is relevant… and WHAT they page is about… geo-keyword optimized.

We’ll show this to you in more detail during your audit review call, but let me give you a quick idea of what I’m talking about. This is a bit nerdy—but it’s critical that you know this and your site does this:

THE SIGNALS

The first signal is the URL of the page on your site. Every page on your site has a unique URL… and that URL for Service Area and Blog pages should contain a specific geo keyword pair.

For example:

Shugarmansbath.com… /service-areas/chula-vista/full-shower-remodeling

Or Shugarmansbath.com… /blog/how-to-choose-the-right-materials-for-your-new-Chula-Vista-bathroom

Seems simple, and a little obvious when I point it out. Truth is, many SEO companies—even if they create these pages in the first place, don’t use the proper URL protocols.

The second signal is the name and Alt text on the page. Assuming the page has an image—and it should—the web designer can designate the name of that image file, and the name should indicate the geo-keyword pair.

For instance, a good name for a photo of an image would be: tub-to-shower-conversion-chula-vista-ca-shugarmans-bath.jpg. See how much “Velcro” we’re giving Google to stick onto there?

But I’m looking at an image on a different website that we didn’t’ create… and the image name is the default file name the camera assigned it when it took the picture: 434333-1.jpg. Google has no idea what that is… or WHERE it is relevant. No Geo-keyword pair.

The third signal is what we call H1 and H2 tags. Long story short, these are codes that are on your web pages that tells Google what the headers of each page are. H literally stands for header, and the number tells Google what level of header it is. So H1 is the first level header, and H2 is a second level header.

Google specifically relies on the H1 and H2s to know WHAT the page is about, and WHERE the page is relevant. Sound familiar? That’s right—the H1s and H2s should contain the geo-keyword pairs.

The problem is it’s very common for these H1 and H2’s to be messed up. Sometimes, they don’t exist, and other times, they exist, but are not coded properly, which means Google can’t tell what’s on the page. And sometimes they exist and they are coded right, but they don’t contain… wait for it… the geo-keyword pair information.

Here is a proper H1: Transform Your Chula Vista, CA, Home’s Bathroom From Dull To Stunning With A Tub-To-Shower Conversion

Now imagine a page that doesn’t have the geo-indicator in the URL or the H1? That’s a formula for YOU ARE SCREWED.

After that, fourth signal, which is obvious… is that the geo-keyword pair should appear in the actual text of the page. Not too many times—that looks weird and is a turn-off to readers. But about 4 or 5 times on a page with 800 to 1000 words. Enough to let Google know.

The fifth and final signal is for Service area pages only, and it’s a map of the city you are optimizing for. Specifically, a Google map.

So by way of review, the five signals that should be geo-keyword optimized are the page URL, the image name and alt text, the H1 and H2s, the content of the page itself, and the map. Great. Simple. Easy to understand. And the pages on your site are almost certainly not properly optimized, which is why your leads are going to your competitors.

Okay, so now you know that you need to have troops in the battle… service area pages and blog pages. And you know that those pages need to be optimized, using the five geo-keyword signals I just explained to you.

There are two more major things you need to be concerned about: The quality of the content on your pages—or how ENGAGING they are to humans… and then your Google Business Profile, which determines how many leads you will get from the map section.

Let’s talk about engaging content for a minute:

Google measures how long people spend on your site’s pages… and it measures how many additional pages people click through to. This is what is called “dwell time;” the longer people spend on a page and on the site… the more engaged they must be with the content.

Simple enough, right?

Well, yes. Except… most website and SEO companies are dreadfully bad at creating interesting, relevant, and engaging content… because they don’t have any actual marketing chops. They’re a bunch of nerds, not marketing people. Think about all the times in your career when you’ve built a new website: You sit down with the web development nerds… they show you a bunch of cool sites… they focus in on how great the site is going to look… and then inevitably, at some point of the conversation, they lob this grenade over to you:

“So, what do you want the website to SAY?” As if YOU know what a website should say.

Level 10 Contractor is different, because first and foremost, we are a marketing company. We know how to write content that in interesting, relevant, and ENGAGING. People love this, because they get the information they want and need when making a massive buying decision. And Google likes it, because people staying longer on your site is proof that people like it.

One of the key principles that allows us to excel at creating amazing content is called IDENTITY.
Identity is communicating with power, precision and passion… who you are, how you’re different, why you’re better than your competitors, and what people can expect when they do business with you. It’s telling your story; it’s building a case for you.

We conduct an Identity Consultation with all our clients utilizing what we call the 5 Pillars of Identity… or you can think of them as 5 categories of Identity, which are as follows:

Your Products

Your Workmanship

Bedside Manner

Core Values

Community and Culture

The idea is to find specific points within each of the categories where your company really competes well. For example… under the “Bedside Manner” pillar, you might have a real competitive advantage in “No Sales Pressure.” You would then create content for your site—both core pages AND blog pages—that help people understand the “no sales pressure” concept. You do this by telling stories… and by making comparisons to other companies, pointing out how you’re different and better. Other possible identity points under bedside manner could be no pricing games, worker appearance, professionalism, and communication. For workmanship, identity points could include no cutting corners, attention to detail, quality materials, worker training… and more.

Each of the five pillars has 10 to 13 possible identity points; we help our clients flesh out 2 or 3 or 4 from each category that we focus on.

If you want to learn more about identity—and you really should—please check the show notes of this episode for links to podcasts dedicated to that topic. It’s hugely important, and it’s a major advantage to having Level 10 build your website and write your SEO content. I am not doing this concept of Engaging Content and Identity justice right now—we are just too time constrained. But hear me loud and clear: Integrating Identity and engaging content into your entire website is a major key to long-term success in generating 200 to 500 quotable leads a month.

GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE

The last major thing we’re going to check on your website is the Google Business Profile. This is actually a directory that Google runs that shows up on the search engine results page in the map section, or what some people call the “3-pack” because they are generally 3 results visible without clicking through to see the others.

It’s not that hard for your site to show up in the map section in the city your physical address is located in. That’s because Google will bias the map results toward companies with a physical location. But assuming you only have one physical location… but you service multiple different cities, there is still a way to show up there. You consistently post geo-keyword optimized content to your Google business Profile, and Google then says, “oh look, they do this stuff in that area,” and you can show up in the map section. This content can be service area pages or product blogs… or it can be photos, videos, and customer reviews. Just make sure it’s geo-keyword optimized, or it won’t do you any good.
Most SEO companies don’t do this, because they don’t actually HAVE good geo-keyword optimized content to post…. So you never show up in the maps section except MAYBE in the one solitary town where your physical address happens to be, and you wonder why you never get leads from there.

We will audit your GBP and see how often it is being updated, and to see whether or not you’re posting geo-keyword optimized content to it.

The Website Audit Itself

Now let’s talk about what to expect when you meet with us to discuss your website audit. The meeting will take about an hour, assuming you’ve listened to this podcast, which obviously you are doing right now. Prior to the meeting, my SEO staff at Level 10 Contractor is going to perform the audit on your website, and the results will be put onto a Google sheet.

The call will be conducted via Zoom, and it’s important that you are on a desktop or laptop computer—not a phone or a tablet, because we will be sharing our screen with you so you can see the audit sheet. We’ll also be showing you examples of things that are being done right or wrong on YOUR site, as well good examples from other sites. If you try to do this from your phone it’s nearly impossible to see everything very well. We will record the call so you can have it available for future reference… or if you want to share it with somebody else in your company.

On the Zoom, you will be meeting with one of our SEO experts, who will walk you through the audit sheet. The Google sheet has multiple tabs at the bottom. The default tab is the web audit scoring sheet… then there is a tab for a website quote, SEO plans, Sample Sites, Resources, and more. If you’d like to see a sample of this sheet, just check the show notes for a link. It will be helpful to check it out before the call, but not essential.

The scoring sheet shows your overall score… which is the average of your score on 4 separate sections:
Section 1, Troops—checking to see if you even have the right kinds and numbers of troops in the battles you want to fight to even have a chance.

Section 2, Signals—checking to see if the pages you do have are sending the FIVE signals we discussed a few moments ago—URL, image name, H1s and H2s, content, and maps.

Section 3, Engagement—checking to see if the content is well written, identity oriented, and if it builds a good case that tells your story.

Section 4, GBP—checking to see if your GBP is properly updated and optimized.

Each section gets a score from 1 to 100, then we average those out to get an overall score.

Wrapping Up The Audit

Okay, let’s go ahead and wrap this up. After we walk you through your site audit, you will probably be wondering what to do next. That’s going to completely depend on how you scored on the audit.

If it sounds like this entire web audit is just a thinly disguised sales pitch to get you to buy a new website and do your SEO with us… well, I would say that it’s not really all that thinly disguised. Remember the discussion at the beginning of the podcast about “Firing Your Website?” The point was that most companies have websites that are significantly hurting your chances of even being found in search in the first place… signals and ranking… and converting traffic that you do get… so why on earth would you NOT want to know that, and fix it?

If you see a cariologist about chest pain, is it a thinly disguised sales pitch to get you into bypass surgery? I mean, if you need bypass surgery, don’t you want to know that and actually get it done? If your site scores 27 like the average site we audit—this is an emergency situation. Your site is LOSING you far more money than it will cost to fix it.

Actually, I’m going to change that word, fix. In most cases, your site cannot be fixed—it’s beyond repair. It is going to need to be replaced.

How Much Does It Cost?

So yes, there is a high percentage chance that the Level 10 representative on the audit review zoom call is going to tell you that you need a new site… and we will quote it out for you, in most cases, right there on the spot using a quoting tool that’s found on the “quote” tab at the bottom of the audit sheet.

Actually, your project will be broken into two parts—building the new site, and then also doing the ongoing SEO—which is adding the geo-keyword optimized pages on an ongoing basis… taking your 40 or 50 core page website and growing it to 100 then 200 then eventually 500 pages over time, like we discussed earlier.

So there is a quote to build the new website, and a quote to do the ongoing SEO. Related—but separate quotes.

For a typical 40 to 50 core page website, it’s going to be about $20 to $25,000, give or take.

Some people hear that number and say “sounds about right,” while others hear it and freak out. I acknowledge that $20,000 for a 40 to 50-core page website is probably a lot compared to what you have paid before… and compared to what you can surely get somebody to build a new site for you.

But consider everything we have talked about today—there is a reason I’ve gone into ALL THIS DETAIL… I need you to understand what really goes into the process. You can easily hire somebody who will buy a really nice looking $100 WordPress template, copy and paste your content from your existing site to your new site… and charge you maybe $2 to $10,000. But all you’re doing is trading one turd for another—albeit probably nicer looking—turd. If your inclination is to go hire somebody to do it and they are charging you less than $10,000… trust me, just keep your money and deal with your existing site. I hate to see people waste money trading turds for turds. Your problem won’t be fixed either way, so save your money.

It costs that much because the amount of people, systems, and expertise that go into creating an elite caliber, identity-based website like we do here at level 10 is extraordinary. There are multiple copywriters involved… thin theme builders, page coders, proofreaders, code auditors, SEO experts… and of course project managers. It’s like building a 5,000 foot custom home from scratch, starting with now plans, and making it exactly the way you want it, and making sure that it’s the as efficient, safe, and aesthetically pleasing as possible. So yes, it costs money to do it the right way.

If you decide to move forward, we will ask you to put a $5,000 deposit to hold your start date… which is usually 1 to 2 months out depending on our backlog. Then you can either choose to prepay, and get a 15% discount… or a 2-pay, which means you pay half the balance on the start day, and half when the site launches. If you do this, we offer a 10% discount. Or you can choose 12-pay, which means you make 12 equal monthly payments for the remaining balance after the deposit. There is no discount offered for the 12-pay plan… because we just became your bank!

The other part of the project is Ongoing SEO…. And we have plans that range from $4,900 a month to $20,000 a month—the only difference in the plans being the QUANTITY of content you want us to add to your site each month. Or in other words, how many TROOPS we put into battle. The more troops, the higher the price. Our base plan that is appropriate for about half the companies we talk to is called Level 10, and it includes 100 troops per year.

Above that we have levels called Turbo, Nuclear, and Infinity… which includes 180, 350, and 660 troops per year, respectively. If you want to dominate faster… or if your business covers a lot of geographic territory, you might want to opt for a bigger plan. Remember: the more troops you have in more battles, the faster and more thoroughly you will win.

So by now I am sure you are wondering HOW MANY LEADS you can expect from Level 10’s SEO.

Fair question.

Here’s the answer, from worst-case scenario to best-case scenario. All of these are based on how many quotable leads (ie, REAL leads) you can expect to get per 100 pages of content added. 

Bear Case: 25 quotable leads organic per month 

Base Case: 50 quotable organic leads per month 

Bull Case: 75 quotable organic leads per month 

Hyper-Bull Case: 100+ organic quotable leads
 
That’s only considering organic leads and Google Business Profile (map section) and NOT paid leads from PPC or Google Guaranteed.

This is based on our base level… Level 10 SEO… which is 100 pages (or troops) per year.

Run the numbers, they will blow you away:

That Level 10 package will cost you about $60,000 a year–I know, a lot of money, right?

But even in the Bear Case, that will result in 300 leads per year (25 per month x 12 months). If you set 60% of them, and close 30% of those… at an average sale of $15,000… that’s $810,000 in revenue off an investment of what… $80,000? That’s 10X… AND that’s the bear case… AND that’s just the revenue of the first year.

Because guess what? The following year, those same 100 pages will deliver ANOTHER 300 quotable leads. 

Cost of these leads? NOTHING. You already paid for them!  Year 3–300 free quotable leads. Year 4–same. And so on. 

And that’s the Bear case.

In the Base Case, you’d be getting 600 quotable leads a year for the initial $60,000 investment. And revenue of $1.6M a year. EVERY YEAR.

When you do this for multiple years, it starts to add up very quickly. Our biggest clients are on the Infinity packages… 660 troops per year. Their average sale is $17,000, and they close 35% of leads they sit: That works out to $7 million a year in sales on the BEAR case… and $14M a year in the base case.

To be clear: That’s $240,000 a year, for $7 to $14M a year in revenue… EVERY YEAR. Run that out 5 years and here’s how stupid the numbers get: After 5 years they would have paid $1.25M in SEO costs TOTAL… and at the BASE case, that’s just under 4,000 leads a year… times 5 years… is 20,000 leads a year… which is $70 million a year in revenue. Recurring. That’s how a $100,000,000 a year company gets to $500,000,000 in 5 years. Or at least a big part of how they get there.

But maybe you’re not 100 million in sales. Who cares. Start smaller. It works exactly the same—the only difference is the number of troops you’re putting in battle every year.

But holy cow man… even a million or two million dollar return on a 60 or 80,000 investment. That plays.

And let me assure you, these numbers are real.

We have a roofing client-partner in Texas that we delivered 514 organic quotable leads in 90 days.

An exterior remodeling company with 276 organic quotable leads in one month.

An electric company on our smallest SEO plan generated 121 organic quotable leads last month, and 110 the month before that.

A bathroom remodeling company in California that has been with us for 3 years is averaging well over 200 quotable organic leads a month.

We’ll show you the lead reports from their client dashboards when we meet with you.

We can do the same thing for you.

Obviously, you are under no obligation to do business with us at all, just because we audit your stie and meet with you to discuss it. At least I hope that is obvious. But if you do decide to move forward, we would be honored to have you as a Client-Partner.

We would put you on our website build calendar for the soonest available start date—again, usually about 1 to 2 months out… but we would start your SEO services right away… and post the content we create to your existing website while we are building the new one. It’s better to get that great new geo-keyword optimized content online as soon as possible so that Google can index it than it is to wait. It won’t perform as well as it will once we port it over to your killer new Level 10 site… but it’s better than waiting.

As for timing, here’s what you can expect.

The site build normally takes about 4 to 5 months from start to launch. So we’re talking as much as 6 months from the time you put a deposit to hold your start date before the site actually launches. So you would pay the $5,000 deposit now… and the first month of SEO as soon as we can schedule the onboarding meeting—usually a week or so. Then you would continue to pay the ongoing SEO monthly management fee… and then either 2-pay or 12-pay for the site when the project starts.

And that’s it! Over time your website grows from 50 pages to 150, to 250 to 350 to 500 pages to 1000 pages to where it becomes invincible and unstoppable. Because anything that people are searching for and any place that people are searching that’s within your service area is going to be a precise match. The content is going to be strong. It’s going to be executed from a technology standpoint at an elite level.

Google’s going to love this website and you are going to literally dominate. And I mean dominate with a capital fricking D because you’ve got, again, let’s say, two, three years down the road, a 685-page website with all of these amazing pages, all these troops and all these battles and you’re strategically destroying your competitors. They are sitting there with their 74-page website with 17 blog pages and five service area pages that suck… saying, “What happened? Why am I not getting organic traffic? I guess organic traffic just isn’t the thing. I’ll have to go spend my money on bla bla bla.”

It’s bull crap and it’s nonsense.

Concluding Statement

We look forward to talking to you on your own personal website audit review call. Our SEO expert will go over all this with you on Zoom, and answer all your questions. It’s time to level up your website and SEO… to Level 10. Thanks so much for listening today!