How long does this checklist take?

About an hour with a phone, PageSpeed Insights and Search Console. Most checks are a single look; the speed and indexing ones take a few minutes each.

Which checks matter most?

The first screen and speed. A visitor who cannot call in the first screen, or who waits four seconds for it, never reaches the rest.

Where do the percentages come from?

RankMeHi study of 662 Orange County business websites. Crawl 25 to 26 Sep 2026; PageSpeed Insights, mobile, 26 Sep 2026. Each figure is the share of local business sites in that study that failed the check.

Can you run it for me?

Yes, free. The audit covers every item here and comes back in writing with the fixes in order.

Checklist · free to use

The lead-ready website checklist: 24 checks before a site goes live.

The list we run on every site we build, in the order a visitor meets them: the first screen, speed, trust, Google, AI and tracking. Each check comes with a free test.

Run it for me, free See the data behind it

24
checks, in the order a visitor meets them
RankMeHi pre-launch QA
59%
pass four basics: HTTPS, mobile viewport, tap-to-call, and a form or booking
RankMeHi study of 662 Orange County business websites. Crawl 25 to 26 Sep 2026; PageSpeed Insights, mobile, 26 Sep 2026.
20%
also have LocalBusiness schema and a Lighthouse score of 50+
RankMeHi study of 662 Orange County business websites. Crawl 25 to 26 Sep 2026; PageSpeed Insights, mobile, 26 Sep 2026.

0 of 24 checked

1 of 6 · judged by The person

The first screen on a phone

Tap-to-call number visible without scrollingTest: Open the homepage on your phone. Can you call with one tap before you scroll?26% of local sites have no tap-to-call link at all.
The service and the area in the headlineTest: Read only the H1. Does it say what you do and where?
One short quote form or booking buttonTest: Count the fields. Name, phone, the job and a photo is enough.25% have no form or booking on the homepage.
No pop-up, slider or video blocking the pageTest: Load the page on mobile data. Is the first thing you see the offer?
How we fix this: Conversion rate optimization →

2 of 6 · judged by The person and Google

Speed

Main content under 2.5 s on a phoneTest: PageSpeed Insights, mobile tab, Largest Contentful Paint.79% of local sites take more than 4 s.
Page weight under 1.5 MBTest: PageSpeed "Total size" or the browser network tab.The median local homepage weighs 2.6 MB.
Images resized and served as WebP or AVIFTest: Right-click an image, open it: is it wider than 2,000 px?
Third-party scripts load after the page, or on clickTest: Count chat widgets, trackers and builders that load before you touch the page.54% of the bytes on the median page are third-party.
How we fix this: Web development →

3 of 6 · judged by The person

Trust

Licence, insurance or credentials on every service pageTest: Open any service page: can you find the licence number?
Real photos of real jobs, with the areaTest: Are the photos stock? Customers can tell.
Reviews with names and dates, linked to the sourceTest: Click a review. Does it lead to Google or another public profile?
A current copyright year and recent contentTest: Scroll to the footer.28% of sites still show 2024 or earlier.
How we fix this: Web design →

4 of 6 · judged by Google

Readable by Google

One H1 per page that names the serviceTest: View source and search for "<h1".22% have no H1 at all.
A unique title and meta description per pageTest: Search Google for site:yourdomain.com and read the results.25% have no meta description.
One page per service and per area you want to rank forTest: List your top five jobs. Does each have its own page?
Pages indexed in Search ConsoleTest: Search Console, Pages report: anything "crawled, currently not indexed"?
How we fix this: SEO services →

5 of 6 · judged by AI

Readable by AI assistants

AI crawlers allowed at the firewall and in robots.txtTest: Ask your host whether GPTBot and ClaudeBot are blocked.14% of sites refused a request from an AI crawler.
All text in the HTML, readable without JavaScriptTest: View source: is your service text there, or only after scripts run?
LocalBusiness schema with name, address, phone and areaTest: Google Rich Results Test on the homepage.Only 42% carry LocalBusiness schema.
Specifics an assistant can quote: prices, areas, hoursTest: Could someone answer "how much" and "where" from the page alone?
How we fix this: AI search optimization →

6 of 6 · judged by You

Tracking

Analytics installed and receiving dataTest: Open the analytics real-time view and load your own page.39% run no analytics at all.
Calls tracked with a number per sourceTest: Can you say which calls came from the website last month?
Every form submission logged with the page it came fromTest: Submit a test enquiry. Where does it land, and does it say which page?
A monthly count of real enquiries, spam removedTest: Last month: how many enquiries, how many were real jobs?
How we fix this: Pay-per-lead websites →

Questions

About the checklist.

: About an hour with a phone, PageSpeed Insights and Search Console. Most checks are a single look; the speed and indexing ones take a few minutes each.
: The first screen and speed. A visitor who cannot call in the first screen, or who waits four seconds for it, never reaches the rest.
: RankMeHi study of 662 Orange County business websites. Crawl 25 to 26 Sep 2026; PageSpeed Insights, mobile, 26 Sep 2026. Each figure is the share of local business sites in that study that failed the check.
: Yes, free. The audit covers every item here and comes back in writing with the fixes in order.