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Choose the right test before you judge a website or brand. This map helps owners and teams see what each audit checks and what a pass means. Start with the question you need answered, then open that test’s guide.
Next, explore SEO Audits by Dennis Yu, or How to QA a Personal Brand Website.
CANONICAL · DEFINITIVE ARTICLE
How we audit
This is the one public master for how BlitzMetrics audits. Not a case study. Not Quick Audit. Not a fourth 100-point rubric. When someone asks “how do we audit?” this page is the answer every example, personal-brand packet, and weekly sweep should link up to.
One map. Several exams. Match the exam to the subject, report each score on its own line, and never average them. That is the whole system. The definitive-article guide is why a leaf must not become a second trunk.
80PERSON-SITE PASS LINE
7SEO & GROWTH COMPONENTS
10BRAND AUTHORITY ROWS
1PERSON @ID ON THE HOMEPAGE
1 · MATCHExam to subject
2 · SCOREEach exam alone
3 · LINK UPLeaves → this page
4 · IMPLEMENTSkills + wp.py
The one idea
Match the exam to the subject. Report each exam separately. Never average them. A plumber’s Google Business Profile is not scored with the ten-row Brand Authority sheet. An executive yourname.com is not scored with the Quick Audit factory cap. Website QA is pass/fail per check, not a third 100.
Decision tree
- If Googlebot HTML differs from a human on the homepage — stop. That is a security cloak incident, not an SEO task.
- Person / entity home (
yourname.com, no local-service GBP): run Brand Authority + SEO & Growth + Website QA + entity plumbing. Local 12% is the entity overlay, not a missing GBP. - Local-service business (GBP, NAP, quote/call): start with Quick Audit, then SEO & Growth with Local as GBP.
- Our fleet / “is this still the site we published?”: security audit (read-only) plus SEO & Growth.
If you are about to invent a new 100-point scale because a trap appeared, stop. Date the trap in the skill that missed it. Link here. If you are writing a client example, link here. Do not plant a second trunk. That is the SEO Tree rule: leaves feed the branch; the branch is this page.
The exams (link up — do not copy)
| Exam | Pass | Public master |
|---|---|---|
| SEO & Growth (7 components / 100) | 80 on a person-site | dennisyu.com/seo-audits/ |
| Brand Authority (10 rows × /10; headline = sum) | 80 | Skill personal-brand-audit. June packet is a worked example: George Leith (June 2026) — the headline 58 did not equal the table (48). Sum the cells. |
| Website QA (checklist) | Every row pass / fail / N/A / UNKNOWN | /website-qa-audit/ |
| Entity / Knowledge Panel | One Person @id; Wikidata for this person | /knowledge-panel/ |
| Security | Cloak identical; baseline holds | LSS security audit |
| Quick Audit | GBP product, not 80 | /quickaudit/ |
Older local-service skin (do not compete): /website-audit-checklist/. Weekly fleet cadence (not the person-site exam): weekly AI agent SEO audits.
Worked examples (leaves)
Case studies prove the map. They are not a second map. The full published SEO & Growth list lives on the exam hub, not duplicated here: SEO Audits by Dennis Yu. Named leaves that should already point at this page:
- Person-site packet: George Leith personal brand audit (June 2026 HTML is the example; headline must equal the ten cells).
- Live site under that packet: georgeleith.com (20 Aug 2026 re-audit: Brand 54, pretty sitemaps restored, three Person @ids remain).
- GBP product (not the person-site exam): Quick Audit.
- Method siblings (still link up): AI business audit, human vs AI Quick Audit, 15-minute plumber.
If you publish another audit, put a link to https://blitzmetrics.com/how-we-audit/ in the first screen. That is requirement 4 of the definitive article SOP: link every example into the hub.
Traps that have actually bitten us
- robots.txt
Sitemap:URL — fetch that exact URL and every child<loc>./sitemap.xmlis not a substitute for/sitemap_index.xml. Pretty Rank Math URLs can 404 while/?sitemap=1is XML. Flush: Rank Math RESTsaveModulesitemap off, then on. Do not blame NitroPack until/wp/v2/pluginssays it is active. - UNKNOWN is not 0. A component you did not check (Ahrefs DR, GSC queries) is labelled UNKNOWN.
- Site Kit
GT-is not “GA4 missing.” Asc-domain:property is not “no Search Console.” - Three Person @ids on one homepage is an On-Page fail even if each block validates. Rank Math export
knowledgegraph_type=personis not the live graph. - Locked third-person bio is N/A on the first-person Website QA check — do not stealth-rewrite an exec who ratified the copy.
- Elementor: PATCH
_elementor_datadoes not change the frontend untilDELETE /elementor/v1/cache. - Short URL vandalism: Rank Math rule 186 still 301s
/seo-auditand/auditto Quick Audit (created 3 Apr 2026, 710 hits). Quick Audit already owns/quickaudit. The short URLs for this article should be/seo-auditand/audit. REST writes to Rank MathupdateRedirection/updateSettingsare WAF 403 on this host — change rule 186 in wp-admin (Redirections) until that is open.
How to implement
- Read this page. If a row exists, you found the master.
- Install the skills: paste
DealCon-Skills/how-we-audit.md, or uploadReady-to-Install/how-we-audit.zip(and the exam zips next to it) in Claude → Settings → Skills. - Act with WordPress application passwords (
wp.py), not a paste for a human. After you claim a fix, GET the live URL as Chrome and as Googlebot.
Do not add the scores together. Brand 54 and SEO ~62 is two fails, not a blended 58. The June George HTML said 58 while its own table summed to 48 — that is unreproducible.
Short URL, course, related canon
Intended short URLs on this host: /seo-audit and /audit → this page. Quick Audit stays at /quickaudit. The seven-component list stays at dennisyu.com/seo-audits/.
Done-for-you / product CTA (not the definition): run a Quick Audit for a GBP local business. Person-site work uses the skills above, not that form.
Related definitive articles: Canonical directory · How to write a definitive article · SEO Tree (how content links to its main topic) · Knowledge Panel.
FAQ
Is this a 100-point score? No. It is the map of which exam to run. Each exam already has a pass line.
Is Quick Audit the SEO audit? No. Quick Audit is GBP-first. Person sites use SEO & Growth (80) + Brand Authority (80) + Website QA + entity plumbing.
Where do I list every client SEO audit we published? dennisyu.com/seo-audits/. Those URLs are leaves. They link here.
What if a new trap appears? Date it in the skill that missed it. Then add a line on this page if the public map was unclear. Do not invent exam four.
Edition of this map: CANON-2026.1 companion · 20 Aug 2026. Concept directory: /canonical/. If you are writing a case study, link up. Do not plant a second trunk.
Dennis Yu
Dennis Yu is the CEO of Local Service Spotlight, a platform that amplifies the reputations of contractors and local service businesses using the Content Factory process. He is a former search engine engineer who has spent a billion dollars on Google and Facebook ads for Nike, Quiznos, Ashley Furniture, Red Bull, State Farm, and other brands.
Dennis has achieved 25% of his goal of creating a million digital marketing jobs by partnering with universities, professional organizations, and agencies. Through Local Service Spotlight, he teaches the Dollar a Day strategy and Content Factory training to help local service businesses enhance their existing local reputation and make the phone ring.
Dennis coaches young adult agency owners serving plumbers, AC technicians, landscapers, roofers, electricians, and believes there should be a standard in measuring local marketing efforts, much like doctors and plumbers must be certified. He has appeared on 353 podcasts with 619 credited episodes — see the full list of his podcast appearances.