Review Your Existing Website

Maple Street CPA has made an important decision. It wants more established small-business clients who need monthly accounting, financial reports and ongoing advisory conversations.

Now the team looks at its website with that goal in mind.

The homepage opens with Reliable Accounting and Tax Solutions. The words are broad enough to describe many accounting firms, but they don't tell a business owner much about Maple Street's ongoing service. The website also has 15 short tax articles. And there isn't a published page dedicated to monthly accounting and advisory.

It's tempting to start writing a new page straight away. But imagine renovating an office before checking which rooms are already there. You could spend money building something you didn't need, while overlooking the problem that matters most.

A useful website review asks three questions:

1. Is the message clear? Can someone recognise the work your firm offers and who it's for?
2. Are the right pages there? Can someone find enough information about your priority service?
3. Can Google find important published pages? Are there problems that could prevent them from appearing in Google Search?

We can answer some of these by reading the website. Others need a proper check rather than a guess.

Picture an owner of a growing business in Charlotte. They want a CPA firm that can prepare regular financial reports and discuss what the figures mean. They arrive at Maple Street's homepage.

They see that Maple Street does accounting and tax work. But they still need to know whether it provides ongoing reporting and advisory support, who the service suits, and how a new client would get started.

The problem isn't that the homepage needs to contain every detail. A homepage should introduce the firm and guide people to more specific information. A dedicated service page, when the firm has one, can explain one service properly: what's included, who it's for, what happens next and how to enquire.

Maple Street doesn't yet have that dedicated advisory page. That is a missing piece of useful information, not evidence that Google is penalising the website.

For your own firm, read your homepage as someone unfamiliar with your practice would. Look for the service you chose in Lesson 2, or pick a genuine service you want to focus on now. Can you recognise it quickly? Is there a clear way to learn more or get in touch?

A website review doesn't begin with a long technical report. Start with a short list of the pages you can actually open.

Here is what Maple Street has established so far. Open each item to see what it means for the review.

Notice the difference between what we saw and what still needs checking. We know that Maple Street has no published monthly advisory page. We don't yet know whether all its other published pages are easy to find, which of them Google has indexed, or what actual enquiries they attract.

That distinction matters. If another existing page already covers your chosen service well, improving it might be more useful than creating a second page about the same thing. If the information is genuinely missing, you may need a dedicated page later.

For now, write down the page addresses you find, what each page is for, and where you see gaps. You don't need to create a page just because a keyword sounds promising.

A useful page can only help people through Google Search if Google can find, access and index it.

Indexing means Google has processed a page and added it to its search index so that it may appear in search results. Being indexed does not guarantee a good position, or even an appearance for a particular search.

One practical way to check a page you own is Google Search Console, a free tool for understanding your site's presence in Google Search.

Here's the first check an SEO specialist would make:

1. Open your verified property in Google Search Console.
2. Copy the full URL of an important page that is actually published, such as your homepage or a live service page.
3. Paste that URL into the inspection bar at the top.
4. Read whether Google reports “URL is on Google” or “URL is not on Google.” Open the Page indexing details to understand the reason.
5. If the report shows a problem, compare it with Test live URL to see what Google can currently access. The indexed report describes what Google knows about the page. The live test checks the current version. A successful live test doesn't confirm the page has been indexed.

If you don't have access to Search Console, that's fine. Write down which page needs checking, then ask the person who manages your website to inspect it. You can still complete the visitor and page review without the report.

What if a page isn't indexed?

Don't immediately change a setting or assume the whole website is broken. First ask: Was this page supposed to be public and findable?

• An important, published service page blocked by a noindex instruction needs investigation. Check whether the instruction is intentional before changing it.
• A private client page, internal thank-you page or a deliberately excluded duplicate may be correctly left out of Google.
• A service page that has never been published has no live URL to inspect. It is missing content, not a technical indexing failure.

Other problems can also affect important pages, including an unexpected redirect, a page that no longer loads, restricted access or Google selecting a different canonical page. You'll learn how to investigate technical problems in more detail later. For now, the important skill is to spot a serious issue early and record what needs verifying.

Google's URL Inspection guide explains the available checks. Don't rely on a quick Google search or an AI answer as proof that every page is indexed.

Some AI-powered tools use information from websites to answer questions or point people to sources. Google also uses indexed pages as possible supporting links in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Its guidance says the usual SEO foundations still apply, with no special AI-only optimisation required.

That gives Maple Street another reason to make its real services easy to understand and to check its important published pages. But an indexed page is not proof that an AI tool will mention the firm, and it tells us nothing certain about other AI platforms.

At this stage, don't chase AI recommendations. Check whether your website clearly explains the services people need and whether the published information can be discovered.

Let's say you have identified several things to improve. You don't have to fix them in the order you noticed them.

An SEO specialist would usually investigate a confirmed problem preventing an important live page from being indexed before spending time polishing that page. If there is no such problem, they would look at what most affects the firm's priority clients and services.

For Maple Street, the obvious content gap is the missing monthly advisory page. But the team should first finish checking what other pages exist and confirm the status of important published pages. Then it can decide whether to improve an existing page, plan a new one, or address a technical issue.

Try the decision below.

The best review doesn't claim to know more than the evidence shows. It separates a genuine problem, a possible problem and a sensible next action.

Use your saved goal and service if you have them. You can also start by choosing one service your firm genuinely offers. You may have picked business tax, bookkeeping, payroll or something different from Maple Street. Review your site for your own service, not theirs.

You need only a first, practical review. Look at what people can see, note what you're unsure about, and choose up to three next actions. You can return and update these findings after checking Search Console or speaking to the person who maintains your site.

If your firm hasn't launched a website yet, focus on what your future homepage and service information need to explain. There's no published URL to inspect until the site goes live.

Maple Street can now distinguish a broad homepage message, a missing advisory page and possible search-access issues that still need checking. It hasn't published new pages or claimed an indexing problem it hasn't confirmed.

For your practice, a short, honest website review gives you something much more useful than a guess: a list of what is clear, what is missing and what deserves attention first.

Next: Lesson 4, Plan Your Website Around What Clients Search For. We'll use your findings to decide which existing pages should be improved and whether any genuinely new pages are needed.