Context
A Peruvian tour operator with 17 years of experience and over 2,500 TripAdvisor reviews (Top 10% worldwide, 2025) was launching a brand-new WordPress website targeting English-speaking adventure travelers. The new domain had zero authority, no SEO foundation, and critical technical issues — while the parent brand had accumulated DA 33 over 15 years.
This case documents the pre-engagement audit methodology: how to diagnose a site, benchmark it against direct competitors, and define a prioritized action plan — before any implementation begins.
The audit methodology
Audit findings — summary
| Metric | Target site | Primary competitor |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile PageSpeed | 27 | Not audited |
| Desktop PageSpeed | 16 | Not audited |
| TBT (desktop) | 6,360ms | Not audited |
| SEO score (PSI) | 77 | Not audited |
| Domain Authority (Moz) | 12 | 43 |
| Indexable pages | 71 | 325 |
| Missing meta descriptions | 71/71 (100%) | 47/325 (14%) |
| Missing H1 tags | 50/71 (70%) | 0/325 (0%) |
| Security plugins | None | Not audited |
| SERP visibility (target queries) | 0 | Present |
Priority action plan
Why this case matters
Most SEO audits happen after a client is already engaged. This one was completed before the first meeting — as a demonstration of methodology and diagnostic capability.
The case shows how to combine stack detection, performance analysis, technical crawl, competitive benchmarking, and brand authority mapping into a coherent diagnosis. Each layer informs the next. The output is not a list of issues — it's a prioritized action plan with clear rationale.
The parent brand's 15-year authority profile (DA 33, 1,458 linking domains) represents a transferable asset that most new site strategies ignore. Identifying and planning the deliberate transfer of that authority to the new domain is one of the highest-leverage decisions in this audit.