Whitehot Discoverability Audit
Get Found. Get Chosen.
The Search, Social and AI diagnostic for Australian organisations that want to be found, chosen and trusted in their market.
Get a free SnapshotThe SEO audit, transformed for the AI era
Your customers find you three ways: they search Google and the marketplaces, scroll social feeds, and ask AI. We measure how you show up in all of them, then hand you what we believe is the best playbook on the market: proprietary methods, premium commercial search, social and AI data, every recommendation costed and prioritised. This is hard-core analysis: human intelligence plus frontier intelligence working in concert to deliver you an enormous advantage in winning the visitors you pay for and the ones you don’t.
A real Snapshot, de-identified.
Start free, or commission the full audit.
The Discoverability SnapshotFREE
Two pages. Three specific things we found on your website, and what each is worth in dollars. Who AI recommends when people search for what you do. And how your social audience stacks up next to your search traffic. Real analysis by our team, not an automated scan: everything dated, so you can check it for yourself.
All we need is your domain, and an email to send it to.
Whitehot Discoverability Audit$2,750
The complete plan to win your category. We name the searches your competitors are winning that you should own, the AI answers where they get recommended and you don’t, and what every gap is worth in dollars. Then we hand you the costed, prioritised playbook to take that ground: built for your team to run, and built to turn visibility into enquiries.
Fully credited against your first engagement, on any Whitehot service.
Help whenever you need it
Our team will drop everything to make sure you can win your category and defend your business. We can help with improving your content, advertising online or rolling out the tech you need to stay competitive.
What a discoverability audit measures.
A discoverability audit measures how an organisation shows up across the three surfaces buyers now use: search rankings and marketplace listings, AI-generated answers, and social proof.
Found / Search
We’ve transformed the SEO audit, building on a baseline of rankings, technical health, content gaps and what people search for: adding your marketplace and shopping presence, the demand you’re missing valued in dollars at Google Ads rates, and a playbook for competing in local and global markets.
From a real audit: demand by service line, volumes and cost per click.
Chosen / AI
Google’s AI Overviews and AI assistants answer buyers directly, and they name names. We capture live, dated evidence of who the AI recommended on your money queries, your AI visibility measured, and map the pattern behind who gets cited. This is answer engine optimisation (AEO), often called AI SEO or GEO, and here it’s core to the audit, not an add-on. AI agents choosing suppliers on a buyer’s behalf is the next front; the groundwork is the same.
From a real audit: who Google’s AI names on each money query.
Trusted / Social
For many organisations the social audience is bigger than the search one, sometimes many times bigger, and it deserves the same measurement. We benchmark your channels against your rivals’ (same method, same window), value your audience’s engagement at advertising rates so it stops being a vanity number, read what competitors are running in the ad libraries, and measure the record beyond your own site, because AI answers draw on it when they decide who to recommend.
From a real audit: your channels scored against your rivals’.
Excerpts from a real Discoverability Audit, de-identified. Yours is built on your data.
From evidence to action plan.
All in one report.
A complete website audit and more: every figure sourced and dated, bound into a single document your own team can act on.
Real analysis
Hundreds of evidence rows behind the report, every figure sourced and dated, every claim traced to one. If a claim can't survive our own verification pass, it doesn't ship. We show our working.
Win unpaid search
What the unpaid search you could realistically win is worth per year, in dollars, at what those clicks cost in Google Ads. Conservative, with the method stated.
Get AI to choose you
Who Google's AI cited on your commercial queries, captured live and dated: where competitors are the answer, and the pattern behind the citations you can win.
Win the marketplaces
Your products on Google Shopping and Amazon: who owns the listings your buyers see, which sellers compete on your brand terms, and the marketplace shelf space you could claim.
Competitor benchmark
Your real rivals measured the same way, in the same index, on the same day, with the gaps you can close named.
Keyword opportunities
Fifteen to twenty-five ranked opportunities with search demand, difficulty and intent, each with current ranking and recommended content type.
The technical SEO audit
Severity-sorted on-page issues with specific fixes, and a Pass, Warning or Fail checklist your web team can action without an agency.
Content gaps
Topics your competitors rank for that you don't cover, with format, priority and effort estimates. Quick wins separated from multi-day investments.
Your audience, valued
Your social audience beside your search traffic, and its engagement valued at advertising rates, so a large following stops pricing at zero next to a keyword footprint. Engagement-based, never follower counts.
Social media competitor analysis
Your channels benchmarked against your rivals', same method, same window, plus what they're running in the Meta, TikTok, Google and LinkedIn ad libraries: formats, offers and messages, captured and dated.
A prioritised action plan
Quick wins this week; strategic moves this quarter. Ranked by value against effort, not a wish-list.
Opportunity our reports mapped…
Every recommendation in the audit is paired with an estimated monthly traffic opportunity and the equivalent annual Google Ads spend you’d need to buy that same traffic. Three examples from past reports, anonymised by category, spanning enterprise B2B through local SMB. Conservative ranges, at Google Ads rates.
An enterprise Microsoft Dynamics 365 partner in Melbourne
Strong Microsoft designations and named client portfolio, but ranking for only 19 keywords (mostly brand). Organic traffic declining 7% month-on-month. Missing thousands of high-intent category searches.
Opportunity identified: monthly visits
545–1,500
Google Ads equivalent / year
$78,480–$216,000
Sample line items
- 90-day content sprint (8–12 technical posts)200–500/mo$28,800–$72,000
- Industry-publication link building and partner-directory syndication80–250/mo$11,520–$36,000
- Rewrite service and solution page titles with location modifiers80–180/mo$11,520–$25,920
- Sector-page optimisation (public service, financial services, etc.)60–150/mo$8,640–$21,600
Based on AU enterprise Microsoft-services CPC of $12–$15 mid-range.
A Mornington Peninsula bakery
Four-page Squarespace site, no blog, generic homepage title, missing meta descriptions, untitled hero-image screenshots.
Opportunity identified: monthly visits
510–1,030
Google Ads equivalent / year
$6,120–$24,720
Sample line items
- Homepage title and meta optimisation40–80/mo$480–$1,920
- Add a Menu page describing the bread40–80/mo$480–$1,920
- Fix image file names and add alt text20–50/mo$240–$1,200
- Blog content (6–12 posts over 12 months)200–400/mo$2,400–$9,600
Based on average CPC of $1.00–$2.00 for bakery keywords in the region.
A truck aerodynamics manufacturer selling into Australia and the US
Thirty-five years reducing truck fuel costs, but ~298 organic visits a month with an ad-value equivalent of just $38: the flagship product page drew 10 visits a month, and the US pages weren't targeting the terms American fleet buyers actually search.
Opportunity identified: monthly visits
390–990
Google Ads equivalent / year
$14,040–$35,640
Sample line items
- Truck-model-specific product pages100–300/mo$3,600–$10,800
- Blog content targeting the terms buyers search80–200/mo$2,880–$7,200
- International metadata and hreflang for the US pages80–200/mo$2,880–$7,200
- Homepage title and meta descriptions30–60/mo$1,080–$2,160
Based on automotive-parts CPC of $2.00–$4.00, the category benchmark in the report.
Estimates are conservative and based on observed keyword competition, search volume, and benchmark cost-per-click rates at the time of the audit. Actual results depend on implementation quality and competitive movement.
…and case studies where we delivered
We give you the ultimate playbook to success.
A specialty food importer we work with earned a listing on Page 1 of Google for a term searched 110,000 times a month within weeks of a new page going live in a fiercely contested grocery category.
Getting there is a project; holding it is the discipline, and that’s the ongoing work. Whitehot will help you all the way.
Built for your team to run.
Backed by ours.
At Whitehot, we aim to delight you with our service and help you achieve real results. Everything we recommend is designed so your own team can action it, and we support you all the way. When you want extra capability, or initiatives delivered fast, our Melbourne-based Search and Social practice steps in alongside your team: the same people who run SEO and SEM, social strategy, generative engine optimisation and agent-ready infrastructure for Australian organisations.
The findings usually reach past SEO, too. Reading your whole public presence surfaces the website platform at end of life, the AI tools your competitors already use, the tracking and compliance gaps hiding in plain sight. Most agencies can only point at those. Whitehot works across AI, marketing, technology and transformation, so the firm that finds the problem is the firm that can fix it, and your audit credit applies to that work as much as to SEO.
And discoverability is not a one-off project. Search results, AI answers and social feeds move every month, and so do your competitors. Through Always-On Visibility, our monitoring and execution retainer, our clients get ongoing reporting and fresh opportunities month after month: rankings, AI citations and audience growth tracked, and the plan carried forward, so you stay competitive, found, chosen and trusted in your market.
Questions we’re asked.
The basics
What is an SEO audit?
An SEO audit examines how well a website can be found in search: rankings, technical health, content and competitors. In 2026, buyers are also answered by AI, influenced by social proof, and shopping the marketplaces before they ever see a ranking, so our audit measures all of it together. That's why we call it a Discoverability Audit: an SEO audit and an AI SEO audit in one.
What is a SERP?
The search engine results page: everything Google shows when someone searches. Ads at the top, the AI Overview, the map pack, then the organic results. Twenty years ago a SERP was ten blue links; today the AI answer and the map often decide the click before anyone scrolls. The audit measures where you appear across the whole SERP, not just the organic line.
What is answer engine optimisation (AEO)?
Optimising to be the answer, not just a result. When Google's AI Overview, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity answers a buyer's question directly, it cites and recommends a handful of sources. AEO is the work of becoming one of them: structured content, clear entity signals, and the authority trail AI systems trust. It overlaps with generative engine optimisation (GEO), and both are core to the audit, not add-ons.
What is generative engine optimisation (GEO)?
Being the source AI answers cite and recommend, also known as answer engine optimisation (AEO) or LLM SEO. Google's AI Overviews and other AI assistants build their answers from specific pages. We capture whether yours are among them, and map the pattern behind the pages that win.
Isn't search just Google?
Less every year. Google still carries about 88% of Australian searches (Statcounter, June 2026), so it leads the audit, but one search in eight now happens somewhere else: Bing is at 9% and growing on the back of Copilot, product buyers go straight to Amazon and Google Shopping, and AI assistants answer buyers in ways traffic trackers can't even see. A Google-only view flatters your position. We measure the whole board.
Is SEO dead?
No, but it outgrew its name. Rankings still decide most clicks, and the AI answers that sit above them are built from pages that rank and get cited, so the craft matters more, not less. What died is the 2019 version: chasing ten blue links and calling it done. Winning now means being found in search and the marketplaces, chosen by AI answers, and trusted on social, all at once. That's the audit.
Do you still offer a free SEO audit?
Yes, as the free Discoverability Snapshot: a two-page SEO audit snapshot with three named, checkable findings and a dated capture of who Google's AI recommended in your category. Real analysis by our team, not an automated scan. The comprehensive audit is now a commissioned engagement, and anyone who requested an audit under our previous offer receives it on the original terms.
Is the Snapshot really free?
Yes. Two pages, three real findings, no obligation. It's how we demonstrate the work and show you the standard before you spend a dollar.
How much does an SEO audit cost?
The full Whitehot Discoverability Audit is A$2,750, fixed, and the fee is fully credited against your first engagement with us, on any Whitehot service. Most clients put it toward our Search and Social practice (SEO and SEM, social strategy, generative engine optimisation and agent-ready infrastructure) or the Always-On Visibility retainer, but it applies equally across our AI, technology and transformation work. When we go on to do the work together, the diagnostic has paid for itself. For context: in Australia, automated scans are free, typical agency SEO audits run roughly $1,500 to $5,000, and comprehensive strategic diagnostics sit well above that. Ours is scoped to your organisation, your service lines, markets and competitors, at one price. The Snapshot is free and shows you the standard before you spend anything.
Can ChatGPT do an SEO audit?
It can scan, and it's genuinely useful for ideas, but it can't do this. The Discoverability Audit is the product of months of continuous development, refined iteration after iteration on real engagements. Every audit runs premium commercial data across search, marketplaces, social and AI answers, with an analyst and frontier AI working in concert, and takes a full working day to produce, including a verification pass every figure must survive before it ships. Ask a chatbot the same question and you get plausible generalities built from no live data and checked by nobody. The audit also leaves something a chat never will: a dated evidence base for your business that powers our ongoing monitoring, re-audits and validation. Use ChatGPT for brainstorming; use evidence for decisions.
What makes this better than other SEO audits?
Most SEO audits, and the new wave of AI SEO tools, are automated scans: a crawler's checklist with no judgement attached. Ours is analyst work with the working shown: hundreds of evidence rows behind every report, each figure sourced and dated, and every claim put through a separate verification pass before it ships. It covers what the others don't in one diagnostic: search, the marketplaces, social benchmarked against your rivals, and who the AI answers recommend. Built with proprietary methods developed with frontier AI, every recommendation costed and prioritised so your own team can run it, and the A$2,750 fee is credited against your first engagement. We believe it's the best on the market, and the free Snapshot exists so you can judge that before spending anything.
Winning your category
How do we get to Page 1 of Google?
By picking fights you can win. The audit finds the terms where demand, difficulty and your existing authority line up, then the playbook sets out the pages to build, the content to write and the technical fixes to make, ranked by value against effort. That is how a specialty food importer we work with earned a Page 1 listing for a term searched 110,000 times a month, within weeks of a new page going live. Nobody can honestly guarantee rankings; what we guarantee is that every recommendation is costed, evidenced and built to be actioned.
How do we get recommended by AI assistants?
AI answers cite sources they can read and trust, so we work the problem from both ends. The audit captures who the AI recommends in your category today and the pattern behind those citations: the structure, the entity signals, the authority trail. Then we work with your team to build the same signals into your pages, and our monthly tracking watches your citations as the answers shift. Prospects are already asking chatbots to recommend suppliers. The goal is that the answer is you.
How do we get found on Google Maps?
Local searches with buying intent usually show the map pack first, and your Google Business Profile decides whether you are in it. The audit reviews your profile and the local signals that drive map visibility: your reviews and ratings beside your competitors', your categories, and the consistency between your listing and your site. Then it flags the fixes, most of which your own team can make in an afternoon.
How do we win on social against bigger competitors?
You don't need the biggest following; you need the working one. The audit benchmarks your channels against your rivals' over the same window, values your audience's engagement at advertising rates, and reads what competitors are running in the ad libraries. From there the playbook is concrete: the formats earning engagement in your category, the channels worth your effort, and the content your team can sustain. We help you run it, and the monthly tracking shows what's moving.
Do you cover marketplaces like Amazon and Google Shopping?
For product businesses, yes: an ecommerce SEO audit is built in. The audit maps who owns the listings your buyers actually see on Google Shopping and Amazon, which sellers compete on your brand terms, and the marketplace shelf space you could claim, with the same sourced, dated evidence as the search side.
Do you do social media audits?
Yes, as part of the whole. The Discoverability Audit benchmarks your social channels against your competitors', values your audience's engagement at advertising rates, and shows what rivals are running in the ad libraries: a social media report grounded in the same sourced, dated evidence as the search side. We measure social with search and AI together, because your buyers don't experience them separately.
Our social following is bigger than our search traffic. Is this for us?
Especially so. That asymmetry is precisely what the audit measures: what your audience is worth at ad rates, whether your content still reaches it, and how it feeds, or fails to feed, the search results and AI answers where buyers choose. For some clients the social finding leads the whole report.
Working with us
How long does an SEO audit take?
Both land within 48 hours of your request. The Snapshot needs only your domain. The full Discoverability Audit starts with a quick conversation about the target markets and competitors you want covered, then the report follows inside the same 48 hours.
Do you need access to our website or accounts?
No. The audit runs on public data. If you later grant read-only Google Search Console access (added by email address; we never ask for passwords), the modelled numbers become measured ones.
We already run our own SEO or have an agency. Is this for us?
Often especially so. The Snapshot is a free second opinion against live data, and our SEO audit services are built to hand off cleanly: the Audit is an independent, evidence-backed read your team or existing agency can execute. Most of its recommendations are written to be run in-house.
Do you implement the plan, or just hand us the report?
Whichever your team needs. Every recommendation is written so your own people can run it, and many clients do exactly that. When you want it delivered for you, or delivered faster, our Search and Social practice executes the plan alongside your team, the wider firm covers the website, AI and technology work the findings often surface, and your audit fee is credited against that engagement. Either way, we stay with you all the way.
What happens after the audit?
Most clients run the quick wins in-house immediately. For the strategic programme, and for holding the positions once won, Always-On Visibility, our monitoring and execution retainer, tracks your rankings, AI citations and audience growth month after month and carries the plan forward.
What if the audit finds problems beyond SEO?
It usually does. Reading a business's whole public presence surfaces more than rankings: website platforms at end of life, missing analytics and tracking, AI tools your competitors are already using, compliance gaps sitting in public view. The report flags them honestly, and because Whitehot works across AI, marketing, technology and transformation, the firm that finds the problem can also fix it: rebuild the site, integrate the tools, close the gaps. Your audit credit applies to that work too.
Start with the Snapshot. Ready when you are.
Tell us your domain. We’ll send you two pages that show you where you stand on three fronts, and what the full audit would map.
Prefer to start with a conversation? Get in touch and we’ll scope the full Discoverability Audit together.