Do you need access to my website to run these checks?

No. All twenty five automatic checks read information your website already publishes to anyone who visits it. I do not log in, I do not change anything, and I do not need a password. If you later want your analytics reviewed, that is a separate permission you give and can withdraw.

How long does a paid audit take?

Forty eight hours from payment. The automatic checks take about a minute. The rest of the time is me reading the results, doing the five manual checks, and writing the report in plain English.

The Vitals is R2,800. That is the full amount payable. I am not a registered VAT vendor, so no VAT is added. Every finding in the report also carries a fixed price to fix it, so you know the total before you decide anything.

What if my website is fine?

If the audit does not find at least five specific, fixable issues worth acting on, I refund the fee in full. In practice that has not happened, but the promise is there so you are not paying to be told everything is fine.

The Digital Doctor

What exactly is checked in a paid website audit?

Q: How is this different from a free website checker?

A free checker gives you a score and a list. This gives you a price against every finding, an honest note on which ones you can do yourself, and evidence. The five manual checks are the difference: a tool cannot submit a test enquiry through your form and confirm it arrived, and it cannot screenshot what ChatGPT said when asked to recommend a business like yours.

Twenty five checks run automatically on your homepage and your domain, and five more are done by hand. The automatic ones cover speed, how people contact you, how you appear in Google, whether AI assistants can recommend you, your security settings, and the dates your certificate and domain expire. The manual ones include submitting a real test enquiry through your form and asking ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity to recommend a business like yours. It is R2,800 and takes 48 hours.

Below is every check by name, and what each one tells you. Nothing is withheld: if you want to work through this list yourself instead of paying me, the list is the same one I use.

What are the 26 automatic checks?

They are grouped by the question they answer rather than by how technical they are, because that is how a business owner thinks about a website. Each one is scored out of ten in the report, with what I checked, what I found, why it matters and what to do.

Can people find you, and does the listing make them click?

Six checks on how your business appears in a search result, before anyone has reached your website at all.

The name Google shows for your site: Your title is the clickable blue line. Too long and Google cuts it off mid word. Too short and it wastes the space.
The description underneath it: Two lines of free advertising. Leave it blank and Google writes its own from whatever text it finds.
Your main page heading: Whether the page states what the business does, once and clearly, rather than leaving a visitor to work it out.
Descriptions on your images: Google cannot see pictures. The description is what tells it what is in them, and what a blind visitor hears instead.
Business details a machine can read: The hidden summary that puts your details in the panel beside search results.
Whether Google knows which address is the real one: The same page is usually reachable four ways. Without a canonical tag those versions compete with each other.

Can AI assistants recommend you?

One scored check, plus the manual work behind it. More people now ask an assistant for a recommendation than scroll a page of results, and an assistant can only name a business whose pages state plainly what it does and what it costs.

Whether AI assistants can recommend you: Scored out of ten from four things: machine readable business details, questions answered in the words people ask them, an FAQ marked up so it can be quoted, and whether your prices, hours and town appear as text rather than inside a picture.

Does the site work on a phone, and how fast?

Roughly three in four South African visitors arrive on a phone.

How fast your site loads on a phone: Measured by Google on a simulated mid range Android on a normal mobile connection, not on your fibre line.
Whether the page jumps around while loading: Buttons that move under the thumb are why people tap the wrong thing and leave.
Whether your site is built for phones: Without the right setting a phone shows the desktop layout shrunk down, and prices need pinching to read.
What your homepage actually weighs: Every image, script and stylesheet measured file by file, then priced in what it costs a visitor in prepaid data.

Can somebody actually contact you?

The last step before an enquiry, and the one most often broken. Two checks automatically, and a real test enquiry by hand.

How easily someone can contact you: Phone, WhatsApp, email and enquiry form. How many taps it takes to reach a human, and whether there is more than one way.
The pages people look for before buying: A real contact page and an about page. Buyers open both before they enquire, especially for a business they have not used.

Does the site look trustworthy?

Five checks on the things a buyer notices without being able to name them.

The padlock in the address bar: Whether the site is served securely, and whether someone typing the address without https still lands somewhere safe.
How your link looks when someone shares it: The picture and text WhatsApp pulls in. Missing, and a shared link arrives looking like spam.
The small icon on your browser tab: Absent, it is the difference between looking established and looking half built.
Insecure files on a secure page: Anything still loading over http, which browsers block and which quietly breaks the padlock.
Links to your social pages: Whether the site connects to the places people go to check a business is real.

Is anything about to break?

Four checks on dates and settings that take a business offline without warning, and that almost nobody tracks.

When your security certificate expires: The exact date. When it lapses every visitor meets a full page warning, and it happens when nobody is watching.
Whether someone can send email pretending to be you: SPF, DKIM and DMARC. These are what stop an invoice going out in your name with somebody else’s banking details on it.
Whether your domain can receive email: Mail records in place, so an enquiry sent to you does not silently bounce.
Whether your website software is current: A published version number is an invitation. An old one is a known way in.

Are you meeting your obligations?

Three checks that matter more than people expect, and one of them carries a fine.

Your privacy and cookie obligations: POPIA applies to any South African business collecting a name and an email on a form. A privacy policy that exists, and consent before tracking.
Protective settings on your server: The security headers that stop a page being framed or hijacked. The cheapest security improvement available.
Whether the site works with a screen reader: A declared page language and labelled form fields. The two failures that lock people out entirely.

Can you see what is happening?

One check, and it decides whether every other decision is informed or a guess.

Whether you can see who visits you: Analytics installed and reporting, or the business is deciding on feel.

What are the five checks you do by hand?

These are the ones a scanner cannot do honestly, and they are the reason the report reads as a person’s work rather than a tool’s output.

I submit a real test enquiry through your contact form and confirm it arrives. This is the check that most often finds something, and no tool can do it.
I check your Google Business Profile: whether it is claimed, the categories, the hours, the photos and how recent they are.
I count your reviews, your rating and how often you reply, then do the same for your three closest competitors.
I ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity for a business like yours, several different ways, and screenshot the answers. That includes who they named instead of you.
I check where you appear in the local map results for the two search terms your customers would actually type.

How is this different from a free website checker?

A free checker gives you a score and a list of problems. So does mine, and you can run it right now without giving me an email address. The difference in the paid audit is what comes after the list.

Every finding carries a fixed price to fix it, and an honest note on whether you can do it yourself. Some you can: writing your own page titles takes an afternoon and I will tell you so rather than quote you for it. The report also totals the whole list, separates out the part you could handle, and shows what is left if you did those yourself.

And the five manual checks produce evidence. A screenshot of ChatGPT naming three of your competitors and not you is a different conversation from a score out of a hundred.

Do you need access to my website?

No. Every automatic check reads what your website already publishes to anybody who visits. I do not log in, I do not change anything, and I never ask for a password. If you later want your Google Analytics or Search Console reviewed, that is separate: you invite me as a user on your own account, you can see exactly what access I have, and you can remove it whenever you like.

What does it cost, and what if you find nothing?

The Vitals is R2,800. That is the full amount payable. I am not a registered VAT vendor so no VAT is added to it, and the price does not change based on how big your site is.

If the audit does not find at least five specific, fixable issues worth acting on, I refund the fee in full. That promise exists so you are not paying to be told everything is fine.

What is not included?

The Vitals looks at your homepage and your domain. It does not crawl the rest of your site, it does not review your social media or your advertising, and it does not include any of the fixes. Those are the Full Body Scan, which checks fifty one things across every page and adds social, advertising, email and reviews by hand.

It is also not a security assessment. There is a separate Security Check-Up for that, which looks at what an attacker can already see about your business.

See some of this on your own site first

Ten of these checks run free, instantly, on your homepage. No sign up, and the score and the findings are shown in full whether or not you give me an email address.

Run the free check