Audit method: titles, H1s, links, indexability, thin city pages

A useful audit is short. Walk every important URL through five checks before you write recommendations. (1) Title: unique, names the job the page can finish (“Used CR-Vs in Frederick | Northfield Motors”), not “Home” or “Inventory.” (2) H1: visible, matches the title’s job, not “Welcome to the Family.” (3) Internal links: homepage and guides must reach SRPs and live VDPs with human-readable anchors — not a footer keyword pile. (4) Indexability: can Google fetch it? Check assumed robots, noindex, canonical, and whether the inventory grid is a crawlable URL or a client-only filter. (5) Thin city pages: “Used cars in Urbana,” “Used cars in Walkersville,” “Used cars in Baltimore” with 80 spun words and no unique inventory — those are doorways, not local SEO. After the five checks, write 10 changes ranked by impact on booked appointments, not by how “SEO” they sound.

Assume: homepage, a /inventory grid, weak vehicle pages, a contact form buried in the footer. Ranked by appointment impact (not by “best practice” trivia): (1) Unique crawlable VDP per live vehicle — price, VIN, booking CTA. (2) SRP titles/H1s that name the filter (Used SUVs Frederick), not “Inventory.” (3) Remove accidental noindex / blocked /inventory if that is how cars are found. (4) Appointment path above the fold on VDP and SRP — not footer-only. (5) Internal links from home and any guide to the CR-V / under-$16k SRPs. (6) NAP on the site matches GBP (next lesson). (7) Kill or noindex thin city doorways outside commuting distance. (8) Financing page title + next step that can book, not only “apply.” (9) Trade-in page whose first field is not SSN. (10) Image weight / title-length cleanup — useful, lower than a missing VDP. Label each row observed (you can see it on the assumed path), inferred (from the brief), or unknown (you would need Search Console). Do not write “we are #7.”