Free Website Checks for Indianapolis Businesses Compared

Each check answers a different question, and the table pairs every question with its tool. Find the row that sounds like your complaint and start there.

A search that pairs a service with a place gets answered by two separate systems, and each one has its own free check. Say someone types “dog groomer Broad Ripple” or “roof repair Fishers.” The map results at the top come from Business Profiles, and Google's help page on improving your local ranking names distance as one of the main factors in them, meaning how far the business is from the searcher or from the place typed into the search. The ordinary results under the map come from web pages.

That split explains why a shop near Castleton can have a spotless listing and still lose the map for a searcher standing in Fountain Square. No website fix moves your pin. Your site competes in the regular results, and there it helps when the page for that area says something true and specific about it. Beech Grove, Lawrence, Southport and Speedway sit inside Marion County but govern themselves. If you serve them, we'd name each one on the page.

Our website scan, powered by Jev, is the free check for the words on your pages. The first scan of a site is free up to 100 pages, and it reads the home page first, then the pages that sell, like services, towns, about and contact, with articles after those. Jev, a fast AI model from TypeSafe, answers 44 set questions about each page. The questions cover buyer answers, proof, local detail, AI answers, conversion, search fit and voice. Code separately counts 26 technical facts per page, including title and description length, whether there's one H1, business schema, tap to call links, whether the words load in the server HTML and the reading level.

Findings come from two sources. A finding counted by code is a fact about the HTML. The rest are Jev's answers to questions about the page. We'd check those against what you know about your business, and so should you. A yes or no finding needs Jev to be at least 80% sure of the problem and a scored one needs at least 50% confidence. Weaker answers go to a “Worth a look” list. You enter an email so the report link can be sent to you, and the report comes as a PDF and a CSV. It follows each site's robots.txt rules and stops when it hits a bot check. For the model itself, see what Jev is.

What it catches on neighborhood and suburb pages

The local questions are where the Jev Website Scanner earns its keep for an Indianapolis business with area pages, and several of them only apply to pages written for a town. One asks whether the page carries detail that's true of that place and nowhere else. Another is a swap test: replace “Carmel” with “Fishers” everywhere on the page and see whether it still reads as accurate. If it does, the page is a template with a city name dropped in, and the scanner flags it. Others look for jobs you've done there, reviews from local customers and local permit rules.

There's also a check for leftover town names, the Broad Ripple mention still sitting on your Mass Ave page because both pages started from the same draft. It's hard to spot by reading your own site, and the finding quotes the sentence it's about. When you run the Jev Website Scanner on your site, the report comes with a CSV, so you can sort your area pages by these findings.

The free SEO, AEO and GEO audit is a separate tool, and it's the one to run when you suspect the problem is technical. It inspects a page's public HTML, crawl directives, images, links and answer structure, then lets you review the evidence and export the report. Reach for it when a finding counted by code points at something structural, or when Search Console says a page isn't indexed.

We look at crawl directives early, since one stray rule can keep a good page out of search. Google's introduction to robots.txt explains that the file tells crawlers which URLs they can access, and that keeping a page out of Google takes a noindex rule or password protection. If you've never turned audit findings into a to-do list, how to use a free website audit walks through it.

Google's PageSpeed Insights is the free check for how fast a single URL loads, and it reports mobile and desktop separately. Google's About PageSpeed Insights page explains that each report carries two kinds of data. Lab data comes from a simulated load and helps you find the cause of a slow page. Field data summarizes what real Chrome users experienced over the previous 28 days, and a page passes the Core Web Vitals assessment when all three metrics are Good at the 75th percentile. A page with modest traffic may not have enough visits for field data, and in that case the lab result is all you'll see.

Test the pages people land on. Start with the home page and the service page your Business Profile links to, and run the mobile tab first, since the person searching “furnace repair Castleton” at 9 p.m. may be on a phone in a cold kitchen.

Google Search Console shows Google's own record of your website, so it answers two questions: whether a page is indexed and which searches it appeared in. You'll need to verify that you own the site first. After that, the URL Inspection tool shows whether a specific URL is in Google's index, and you can request indexing for a new or changed page. Google's help page adds that a request doesn't guarantee the page will be indexed. The Page indexing report covers the whole site, grouped by the reason a URL was left out.

The Performance report is where the Indianapolis detail shows up. It lists the queries your site appeared for, with the impressions and clicks each one brought. Filter the query list for the neighborhood and suburb names you serve, such as Broad Ripple, Irvington, Mass Ave, Carmel or Fishers. A query that pairs your service with one of those names and shows plenty of impressions with few clicks points to a page that's close and failing to earn the click. That's a good first page to scan. When you change it, comparing SEO changes in Search Console shows how to read the before and after honestly.

Your Business Profile is the check for the map results. Read it the way a customer would. Make sure the hours match the ones you keep, the phone number matches the one on your site, the primary category describes your main service, and a service area business lists the areas it really covers. Google's local ranking page tells businesses to keep that information complete and accurate, and it says plainly that there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google. Anyone offering to sell you a map position is offering something Google says it doesn't sell. The Business Profile optimization guide covers each field in order.

Start with Search Console, because a page Google hasn't indexed won't show up in search whatever else you fix. Then work down the list.

1. Search Console. Inspect your home page and top service page, and fix any indexing problem first.
2. Google Business Profile. Read every field and correct anything that's out of date, starting with hours, phone and categories.
3. Jev Website Scanner. Scan the site and sort the findings by page. Look first at Jev's findings on the pages that bring in revenue, and at the local findings on any neighborhood or suburb pages.
4. Free audit. Run it on the pages the scanner or Search Console flagged, to confirm or rule out a technical cause.
5. PageSpeed Insights. Test the mobile version of the pages people land on most.

Write down what each check found and the date. After you change something, run it again, and the dated list will show whether the change did anything. The other checks cost nothing to repeat, and a second Jev scan of the same site is the $99 audit.

None of them can tell you whether the phone rang. A page can pass every check and still bring in no work. Pair the checks with your own records of calls, form fills and booked jobs by month, and where each came from. Those records turn a pile of findings into a decision about which page to fix first.

If you'd rather have someone read the reports with you, Trojan Digital Marketing is an Indianapolis based agency that works with businesses across central Indiana and the United States, and the Indianapolis market page covers how we approach local work here.