Run a Complete SEO Audit on Your Massage Therapy Website — In Under Two Hours

An SEO audit is a structured review of your website against the factors Google uses to decide whether to show your site to people searching for massage therapy in your area. It is not a single score or a one-click report — it is a diagnostic process across five distinct categories.

• Technical health: Can Google crawl and index your pages? Is the site fast enough on mobile? Are there broken links, duplicate content, or crawl errors?
• On-page optimization: Do your title tags, headings, and page copy reflect what your ideal clients are actually searching for?
• Local signals: Is your Google Business Profile complete and consistent with your website? Do your citations across directories match exactly?
• Off-page authority: What sites link to yours, and do those links add credibility or raise red flags?
• Compliance and trust signals: Does your site content comply with state massage board advertising rules and FTC health claim restrictions? Is your privacy policy present and current?

Most massage therapy websites have issues in at least three of these categories. The audit process does not tell you everything is broken — it tells you which specific problems are worth fixing and in what order.

A note on scope: This guide is educational content for general reference. Regulatory requirements — including state massage board advertising rules, FTC guidelines, and HIPAA applicability — vary by state and practice type. Verify current rules with your licensing authority and a qualified compliance professional before making changes to your website copy or data practices.

If you have recently redesigned your site, added new service pages, or noticed a drop in phone calls from Google, this is the right time to run through each category below.

Technical issues prevent Google from properly reading your site. Until they are resolved, on-page improvements have limited impact. Work through this section first.

Page Speed and Core Web Vitals

Google uses page speed as a ranking factor, and mobile users — who represent the majority of local search traffic — are especially sensitive to slow load times. Use Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool (pagespeed.web.dev) to test your homepage and your most important service page. Look at the mobile score specifically. Scores below 50 indicate meaningful ranking risk. Common culprits on massage therapy sites include uncompressed images, unused plugins on WordPress installs, and slow hosting plans.

Mobile Usability

Open your site on your phone and navigate as a client would. Can you read the text without zooming? Does the booking button work easily with a thumb? Is the phone number tappable? Google Search Console's Mobile Usability report flags specific issues by page — check it and resolve any errors before moving on.

Crawlability and Index Status

Type site:yourdomain.com into Google. The number of results tells you roughly how many of your pages Google has indexed. If you have 20 pages on your site and Google shows 3, something is blocking the crawler — often a misconfigured robots.txt file or a noindex tag left in place after a site migration.

Broken Links and Redirect Chains

Free tools like Screaming Frog (up to 500 URLs) or Ahrefs Webmaster Tools can identify broken internal links and redirect chains. A redirect chain — where page A redirects to page B which redirects to page C — dilutes the authority passed through those links. Clean chains down to a single redirect wherever possible.

Fix every technical error you find before optimizing content. A technically sound site amplifies every other improvement you make.

On-page SEO is about making sure each page on your site clearly communicates its topic to both Google and your visitors. For a massage therapy practice, this comes down to four elements.

Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Every page should have a unique title tag that includes the service and location. A generic title like "Services – Harmony Massage" wastes one of the strongest signals Google uses. A stronger version: "Deep Tissue Massage in Austin, TX | Harmony Massage". Use a browser plugin like SEO META in 1 CLICK to audit every page's title tag without needing technical access.

Service Pages

Each core modality you offer — Swedish massage, deep tissue, prenatal massage, sports massage — should have its own dedicated page. A single catch-all "Services" page cannot rank for multiple specific queries. Each service page needs a clear heading, a description of who the service is for, how sessions work, and a location reference. Industry benchmarks suggest 300-500 words of original content per service page is a reasonable floor for competitive local markets.

Heading Structure

Check that each page has exactly one H1 that includes the primary keyword, followed by logical H2 and H3 subheadings. Use your browser's developer tools (right-click → Inspect) or a free plugin to view heading structure without editing the page.

Health Claims in Body Copy

This is where many massage therapists unknowingly create compliance risk. Phrases like "treats chronic pain," "cures anxiety," or "heals injuries" may conflict with FTC health claim guidelines and state massage board advertising rules. Review your service page copy and replace outcome claims with accurate, experience-based descriptions. (This is educational guidance — verify applicable rules with your state licensing board and a qualified compliance professional.)

On-page work is largely DIY-friendly. Most practitioners can update title tags and service page copy without a developer.

Local SEO is what determines whether your practice appears in the Google Map Pack — the three-business block that appears above organic results for location-based searches. Two elements dominate this category: your Google Business Profile and your citation consistency.

Google Business Profile Audit

Log in to your GBP dashboard and check each of the following:

• Business name: Matches your website and legal business name exactly — no keyword stuffing like "Austin Best Massage – Deep Tissue Specialist."
• Categories: Primary category should be "Massage Therapist" for most solo practitioners. Add relevant secondary categories where applicable.
• Services list: Each core modality should be listed individually with a description.
• Photos: At least 10 photos — interior, exterior, and practitioner photos — with file names and alt text that include relevant keywords before upload.
• Hours and phone number: Match your website footer exactly, character for character.

NAP Consistency Across Directories

NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone — the three data points Google cross-references across the web to verify a business is real and located where it claims. Even small inconsistencies ("St." vs "Street", a missing suite number, an old phone number on Yelp) create conflicting signals that suppress local rankings.

Search your business name on Whitespark or BrightLocal's citation finder to see where you are listed and whether the data matches. Correct any mismatches directly, starting with the highest-authority directories: Google, Yelp, Facebook, Healthgrades, and your state massage board directory.

Schema Markup

LocalBusiness schema markup — structured data embedded in your site's code — tells Google your business type, address, hours, and service area in a format it can read directly. Use Google's Rich Results Test to check whether your site already has schema in place, and whether it validates correctly.

Not every issue carries equal weight. Use this scorecard to triage your findings from the steps above. Rate each area on a simple 1–3 scale after completing your audit:

• 1 — Critical: Actively blocking rankings or creating compliance risk. Fix within the week.
• 2 — Important: Limiting your visibility in competitive searches. Fix within the month.
• 3 — Optimization: Incremental gains available. Schedule for next quarter.

Quick Reference: Common Issues by Category

• Technical — Mobile score below 50: Critical. Slows crawling and hurts UX-based ranking signals.
• Technical — Pages not indexed: Critical. Google cannot rank what it cannot find.
• On-page — No location in title tags: Critical for local visibility.
• On-page — Missing service pages: Important. Each missing page is a ranking opportunity left on the table.
• On-page — Prohibited health claims in copy: Critical. Compliance risk, not just SEO risk.
• Local — NAP mismatches across directories: Important. Compounds over time if ignored.
• Local — GBP missing services or photos: Important. Directly affects Map Pack appearance.
• Off-page — Zero backlinks from local sources: Important. Links from local businesses, associations, and publications build trust signals.
• Off-page — Spammy or irrelevant backlinks: Critical. A disavow may be needed.

After scoring, most massage therapy practices find that technical and local issues dominate the Critical column. On-page work often falls in the Important tier — meaningful, but not the first fire to put out.

If your Critical column has more than three items, that is typically where a professional audit adds value — not because the work is mysterious, but because fixing technical errors without understanding their root cause often creates new ones.

One of the most useful outputs of a self-audit is understanding where the skill ceiling is. Not everything requires outside help, but some categories carry real risk if handled incorrectly.

DIY-Friendly Fixes

Most massage therapists with basic WordPress or Squarespace access can handle:

• Updating title tags and meta descriptions
• Adding or rewriting service pages
• Uploading optimized photos to GBP
• Correcting NAP mismatches on major directories
• Removing prohibited health claims from body copy
• Adding a privacy policy and ensuring contact forms include appropriate disclosures

When a Specialist Adds Real Value

Some issues are technically possible to fix yourself but create compounding problems if done wrong:

• Site migrations and redirect structures: A botched redirect after a domain change can wipe out years of accumulated authority.
• Schema markup implementation: Incorrect structured data can trigger rich result penalties rather than enhancements.
• Disavowing toxic backlinks: Submitting an incorrect disavow file to Google can remove links that are actually helping you.
• Technical crawl error diagnosis: Robots.txt and noindex errors often have non-obvious root causes in site themes or plugins.

The honest benchmark: if your audit reveals only on-page and citation issues, a motivated practitioner can address most of them over a few focused weekends. If you find technical errors, backlink problems, or a site that has not been touched in three years, the time cost of self-remediation often exceeds the cost of professional help — especially when you factor in the opportunity cost of clients not finding you during that window.

If you want a second set of eyes on your audit findings, get a professional SEO audit for your massage therapy site — we will identify exactly what is holding your rankings back and give you a prioritized remediation plan.