How We Audited Our Own Website for SEO and GEO in Two Days: A Playbook for Startups and Small Businesses

Over the past two days at Dealintech, we pointed every tool and technique we have spent a decade developing at our own website, dealintech.com. This is not a theoretical guide. This is the exact sequence of moves we executed on our own domain, the mistakes we found, the fixes we shipped, and what a small business or startup owner can copy. Everything below is practitioner-grade. If any part is unclear, email us at hello@dealintech.com and we will walk you through it.

Why we audited our own site before offering the service to you

Dealintech has been running since 2016, and for most of that decade we worked on our own in-house brands. That gave us a laboratory. We tested SEO strategies, WordPress stacks, branding approaches, and social media systems with our own money and our own time on the line. When we decided to open the studio to startups and small businesses in 2026, we wanted our public website to reflect everything we had learned. So we ran a complete Search and Generative Engine audit on dealintech.com itself. What we found will sound familiar to any founder who has built a site and then left it alone for a few years.

What a real SEO and GEO audit actually covers in 2026

Most audit templates you will find online are stuck in 2020. They check title tags, meta descriptions, keyword density, and backlinks, then call it done. In 2026 that is only half the work. Search is now split between traditional engines like Google and Bing, and generative answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot. If your content is invisible to the second group, you are missing a growing share of buyer traffic. Our audit covered both halves.

On the classic SEO side we checked indexation in Google Search Console, Core Web Vitals, schema markup coverage, internal linking architecture, and on-page signals for every page. On the GEO side we checked whether the site had a llms.txt file, whether schema was machine-readable in ways LLMs actually use, whether content was structured in answer-first format, and whether the site showed up for any branded queries across the four major AI engines. It did not.

The eight problems we found on our own site

Problem one. Our homepage title was 150 characters long and contained the word Hyderabad three times. It was a Yoast title template accidentally duplicated across versions. Every search result snippet was broken.

Problem two. We had a phone number scattered across ten pages, including a global header button and a footer widget. Phone-first contact signals do not match the way startups and international clients want to reach a digital studio. Most small business buyers prefer email or WhatsApp.

Problem three. Meta descriptions on several pages were missing entirely, leaving Google to auto-generate weak snippets. On others they were stuffed with keywords and made no sense to a human reader.

Problem four. Three of our existing blog posts contained em dashes. LLMs have been trained to associate heavy em dash use with machine-written content, which can suppress citations. Cleaning this up is a quick win most agencies will not even notice.

Problem five. We had zero llms.txt file. Any LLM crawler looking for a compact summary of the site had to reconstruct one from the full HTML, which is slow and error-prone.

Problem six. Schema markup was partial. Some pages had Organization schema, others had nothing. No Service schema, no FAQ schema on pages that answered common buyer questions.

Problem seven. Pricing was invisible. Like ninety percent of agencies, we had hidden our numbers behind a contact form. Small business buyers hate that. They want to know if you are in their budget before they send the first email.

Problem eight. No dedicated landing pages targeting the queries actual small business owners type. Things like wordpress website for small business, affordable SEO for startups, and branding for entrepreneurs.

The eight fixes we shipped

Fix one. Homepage title rewritten to Digital Marketing Studio for Startups and Small Businesses. Meta description rewritten to state exactly who we serve and how to contact us. Every other core page got the same treatment.

Fix two. Every phone number removed from the website. Global header button, footer widget, Elementor button widgets on nine pages, and the icon list on the contact page. Everything now routes to hello@dealintech.com. One universal contact, one brand voice.

Fix three. Meta descriptions rewritten for all ten core pages, each one under 160 characters, each one startup and small business facing, each one with a clear value proposition.

Fix four. Every em dash removed from blog posts. Replaced with clean hyphens or rephrased entirely. Five emdash instances across three blog posts, gone in under ten minutes using the WordPress REST API.

Fix five. llms.txt file published at https://dealintech.com/llms.txt with a structured summary of the business, our services, our pricing, and our contact email. LLM crawlers now get the executive summary in under two seconds instead of reading hundreds of kilobytes of rendered HTML.

Fix six. Schema rollout planned across Organization, Service, FAQ, LocalBusiness, and Article. This is a multi-week rollout, and we will publish the code as a separate tutorial soon.

Fix seven. Full transparent pricing page published at https://dealintech.com/pricing/. Every tier in INR and USD. No hidden fees. No get-in-touch-for-quote traps. If you cannot afford us, you know in ten seconds and you can move on.

Fix eight. Landing pages being built for the long-tail queries small business buyers actually search. You are reading the first of those.

The 15-day growth plan we are running on ourselves

We are documenting our own scale-up in public. Over the next fifteen days Team Dealintech is executing a tight content, SEO, GEO, and distribution sprint. Four cornerstone posts. Thirty LinkedIn posts. Twenty directory submissions. Two guest post pitches. Daily engagement in startup communities. A cold outreach campaign to two hundred Indian and global small businesses. Every result will be published with real numbers. No fabricated case studies. No borrowed credibility.

If you want to follow the playbook and apply it to your own site, bookmark the blog and check back. Better yet, email hello@dealintech.com and we will send you our internal checklist free, no strings. We cannot guarantee rankings, but we can promise you will spot at least five fixable issues on your own site inside an hour.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between SEO and GEO?

SEO is Search Engine Optimisation, focused on ranking your pages in Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. GEO is Generative Engine Optimisation, focused on getting your content cited inside answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot. In 2026 you need both. Traditional SEO moves searchers to your site. GEO puts your brand inside the answer even when the searcher never clicks through.

How much does it cost to audit a small business website?

At Dealintech we offer free fifteen-minute audit calls for startups and small businesses. A paid deep audit with written recommendations and a priority-ordered action plan starts at INR 10,000 or USD 129. Full implementation is priced per the scope of fixes. See our transparent pricing page for current rates.

What is an llms.txt file and do I need one?

llms.txt is a plain text file you place at the root of your domain that tells Large Language Model crawlers what your site is about, which pages matter, and how to contact you. It is the AI-era equivalent of robots.txt. If you want your startup or small business to show up inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Copilot answers, yes, you need one. Ours is live at dealintech.com/llms.txt as a reference template.

Do you work with businesses outside India?

Yes. Team Dealintech serves startups and small businesses in India, the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and anywhere founders are building in English. Pricing is published in INR and USD so you know the number instantly. Email hello@dealintech.com from any timezone and we will reply within one business day.

Do you take on large enterprises or MNCs?

No. Dealintech is built for startups, solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, and small to mid-size businesses. Large enterprises need a different operating model and we respect that. If you are a founder or a small team owner, you are exactly who we built this studio for.

Ready to audit your own site

If you want Team Dealintech to run the same audit on your WordPress site, email hello@dealintech.com with your domain and a two-line description of your business. We reply within one business day with either a free fifteen-minute call offer or a fixed-scope proposal. No sales theatre, no pressure. Builders talking to builders.