WordPress Site Audit — $2,200 CAD, five business days, fixed scope. The first paid step toward a serious site. A senior set of eyes on the things that decide whether your site earns its keep: performance, SEO, security, code quality, and the path a buyer takes from search to conversion. Written report, recorded walkthrough, debrief call with your team.
Recent senior WordPress work: Sherwin-Williams · M.L. Campbell, a Sherwin-Williams operating company · Sayerlack · one of Canada’s largest news networks during a 2011–2012 platform migration
Book the audit — $2,200 Talk first — 20-minute call
The problem you’re solving
Your site is live, money is moving through it, and something is not right. Maybe rankings have slipped and your SEO consultant says “it’s a technical issue.” Maybe the next quarter’s roadmap calls for a $50,000 rebuild and you need to know whether you are about to spend that money on the wrong problem.
Most WordPress audits sold in this market are sales calls dressed up as deliverables. They are a thin checklist run against a free tool, designed to surface findings that conveniently match the auditor’s retainer offer. This is not that.
What you get
Six artifacts, every audit, every time: a written report (PDF, 8–14 pages), a prioritised top-five fix list, a recorded walkthrough, a 45-minute live debrief call with up to four of your team, a 30-day Shadow plugin install, and a written “what it would cost to fix this” scope appended to the report.
The full deliverable list, the day-by-day timeline, the 12 checks I run, and the FAQ that defends the fixed price live on the canonical service page: /services/wordpress-audit-deep/. That is where you book.
What this audit is not
- Not implementation. The audit ships a fix list, not the fixes themselves. Implementation is a separate engagement at the senior-developer rate.
- Not a sales pitch. The report does not invent findings to manufacture a retainer. Sometimes the honest answer is “your site is in good shape, spend your money on content.”
- Not a multi-site enterprise audit. Newsroom networks, multi-school LMS deployments, and franchise systems are quoted separately.
- Not a security incident response. If your site is currently compromised, this is the wrong engagement.
Who this is for
- Fit. Operating WordPress sites generating revenue, leads, or measurable engagement. Performance has plateaued, conversion has dropped, or a redesign is on the calendar and you need a defensible baseline first.
- Fit. Media, education, and government teams whose audit document needs to survive a procurement or accreditation review.
- Fit. In-house teams who can implement the fixes themselves and need an outside pair of eyes to surface what the team has stopped seeing.
- Not fit. Sites with fewer than ten indexed pages. Audit findings need a site that exists at scale to be meaningful.
- Not fit. Buyers who need the price below $2,200. The audit does not discount; the right next step is the free 20-minute discovery call to see whether a smaller engagement makes sense.
- Not fit. Anyone looking for a free audit. The free version is the published checklist on the blog, the interactive tool, and the discovery call. The paid version is what you get when I run it on your site.
Why work with me on this specifically
- WordPress development since 2007. Audit-class engagements have been part of the work since well before “Core Web Vitals” was a phrase.
- Engagements with Sherwin-Williams and M.L. Campbell (a Sherwin-Williams operating company), Sayerlack, prior portfolio work for one of Canada’s largest news networks during the 2011–2012 platform migration, and prior work with Canadian government and political organisations.
- MA Candidate in Learning and Technology, Royal Roads University. Author of practical WordPress and SEO articles. Speaker at WordCamp Toronto.
- Day job: Training and Development Specialist at Sherwin-Williams. Audit work happens outside that scope, on independent client engagements.
This is absolute gem of a presentation by Chris Ross which proves yet again that you can still earn a decent wage by providing VALUE to people for free. awesome job Mr. Ross.
Lorne Fade, 9thsphere.com — on a WordCamp Toronto talk, March 2012.
The testimonial above is from a public speaking engagement, not a paid audit. The audit is a newly named offer; the first audit-engagement case study will publish on the blog with the buyer’s permission once the first audit ships.
Common questions
Why $2,200 and not “starting at” something lower?
Because the deliverable is fixed. The same six artifacts ship every time. “Starting at” pricing is what consultants use when the scope is undefined and the price is a negotiation; my scope is defined and my price is not a negotiation.
Is this a path to a longer engagement?
Sometimes. The audit ends with a written “what it would cost to fix this” scope. Roughly a third of audit clients move into a longer engagement. The other two-thirds take the report to their internal team and execute themselves, which is also a fine outcome.
Can I get a free audit instead?
The free version is the published audit checklist on the blog and the 20-minute discovery call. The paid version is what you get when I run the framework on your site, with my eyes, my tools, and my judgment. Both are available; they are different products.
What access do you need?
A temporary WordPress administrator account, read-only access to Google Search Console and GA4. Hosting and DNS access are not required. The administrator account is revoked at the end of the engagement.
I have multiple sites — does this work?
The published audit covers one WordPress install. For newsroom networks, multi-school LMS deployments, or brand portfolios, scope and price are quoted separately. The discovery call is the right first step.
The audit ladder — $500 / $1,000 / $2,200
The audit you book on this page is the deep-dive tier at $2,200 CAD — the 30–50 page report, procurement/board-ready, with the six artifacts described above. It sits at the top of a four-tier ladder so you book the depth that fits the situation:
- Free 20-minute discovery call: Honest read on whether an audit is the right next step, and which tier fits.
- Pre-check audit ($500): A 2-page report on a single template or symptom. Right when the scope is narrow and the answer is needed fast.
- Mid-tier audit ($1,000): A 10–15 page report covering crawl, indexation, Core Web Vitals, schema, internal linking. The fix list is ranked and actionable.
- Deep-dive audit ($2,200): The 30–50 page report this page describes — full architecture, redirect-map review, migration-risk assessment, procurement-ready documentation.
Every audit dollar credits forward. If the deep-dive surfaces work that routes to a build engagement, the $2,200 is applied against the build invoice. If it routes to an SEO retainer, the $2,200 is applied against the retainer. You never pay for the same diagnostic twice.
When you are ready
WordPress Site Audit — $2,200 CAD, five business days, complete written report, recorded walkthrough, and a debrief call with your team. The full deliverables and timeline live on the canonical service page; book there or take the discovery call first.
See the full audit and book — $2,200 Or take the 20-minute discovery call
