The Domain Audit • Specialty 6 of 13

Your domain configuration is invisible until it breaks something. When it does, it can silently throttle every other thing on your site.

We audit HTTPS, redirects, DNS hygiene, SSL chain, security headers, and domain age signals. The boring layer that quietly determines whether the rest of your work compounds or evaporates.

See pricing

Why domain configuration sets the floor on everything

Wrong redirects double your speed problem. Mixed content kills trust signals. A bad SSL chain blocks crawlers entirely.

Domain-layer issues are usually the result of compounding small decisions made years ago by different vendors. Redirect chains lengthen as platforms migrate. SSL certs renew but the intermediate chain breaks. HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 stays disabled because nobody flipped the switch.

Most of these are quick fixes once identified. The cost is in not knowing they exist. Some sites are pristine. Some have five layers of legacy redirects firing on every request.

What nobody has told you

"Your hosting vendor probably has not audited your redirect chain since the last platform migration. Each migration adds redirects. Almost no one removes the old ones."

"SSL certificate auto-renewal works most of the time. When it breaks, nobody notices for hours."

"Security headers are simple to add and almost never are. The browser will not warn the visitor; it just downgrades trust silently."

"Your domain might be configured cleanly. It might be bleeding from old wounds. The scan takes 30 seconds."

The five failures we find on almost every dealer site

On most dealer sites in this area, you almost certainly have at least three of these.

HIGH

Long HTTP-to-HTTPS redirect chain

HTTP requests bouncing through 3+ redirects before resolving to the canonical HTTPS URL. Each hop adds latency and dilutes link equity.

How we fix it: Single 301 from HTTP root to HTTPS canonical, eliminate intermediate hops.

HIGH

Mixed content on HTTPS pages

HTTPS pages loading images, scripts, or iframes over HTTP. Browsers either block them or downgrade the lock icon, which kills trust.

How we fix it: Audit all asset references, force HTTPS for embedded content, update CMS asset URLs.

MEDIUM

Missing security headers

Missing or misconfigured Strict-Transport-Security, Content-Security-Policy, X-Content-Type-Options, Referrer-Policy. These headers are quick wins and Google notices their absence.

How we fix it: Deploy security headers at the edge, validate via securityheaders.com, monitor for regressions.

MEDIUM

Wildcard or misissued SSL certificate

Wildcard certs covering more subdomains than necessary, or certs missing the intermediate chain that breaks for older browsers and crawlers.

How we fix it: Per-domain certs from a major CA, full intermediate chain, OCSP stapling enabled.

LOW

DNS records pointing to dead infrastructure

MX records pointing to old mail servers. CNAMEs to subdomains that no longer exist. SPF records that have not been updated since the last vendor change.

How we fix it: DNS audit, prune dead records, validate SPF/DKIM/DMARC for deliverability.

Inside the full Domain Audit

DNS, SSL, redirects, headers. The full domain-layer health check.

Transport security

• SSL certificate validity and chain
• TLS version support
• OCSP stapling
• HSTS deployment

Redirect topology

• HTTP-to-HTTPS chain
• WWW vs non-WWW canonical
• Trailing slash consistency
• Legacy URL redirect cleanup

Security headers

• Strict-Transport-Security
• Content-Security-Policy
• X-Content-Type-Options
• Referrer-Policy + Permissions-Policy

DNS hygiene

• A / AAAA / CNAME accuracy
• MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC for email
• TTL appropriateness
• Dead record detection

SAMPLE AUDIT OUTPUT

Grade: Fair

Fair. Significant gaps

Redirect hops (HTTP→HTTPS) 4 hops
Mixed content warnings 8 assets
Security headers (of 6) 1 / 6
SSL chain Valid

Avg. extra latency from redirects

~480 ms

Top fix: Collapse redirect chain to one hop. Estimated lift: Saves ~360 ms.

Illustrative sample. Not your site.

What happens when you fix it

Fixing this is not a website redesign. It is a series of specific, surgical changes.

DIAGNOSIS

We give you the report

48 hours. Every finding, ranked by impact and effort, with platform-specific instructions for your CMS. You can hand it to your web vendor and they can implement most of it.

IMPLEMENTATION (OPTIONAL)

We do the work

If your vendor cannot or will not, we install the fixes ourselves. Most live in Google Tag Manager, the head of the page, or as a CDN-level configuration. Live in 7 to 14 days.

VERIFICATION

We re-run the scan

30 days after the fixes go live, we re-run the audit and confirm the lift. Site Health Score increase, category-level pass, downstream impact verified.

What the data says.

Latency

from extra redirect hops compounds with Core Web Vitals issues. Two slow layers multiply.

Headers

are the cheapest trust signal you can deploy. Most sites still ship with one or none.

Mixed content

is more common than vendors admit, especially after blog migrations and CMS updates.

The Proof

How a multi-rooftop group saved 380ms per request by collapsing redirects.

A 6-rooftop dealer group had inherited four different redirect rules across three platform migrations. Every HTTP request bounced through 4 hops before resolving.

We collapsed the chain to a single 301, deployed HSTS, fixed mixed content on legacy blog assets, and added the full set of security headers at the CDN edge.

Time to first byte dropped 380ms across all rooftops. Their security headers grade went from F to A. CDN cache hit rate improved because there was less redirect noise to cache around.

4 → 1

Redirect hops

-380ms

TTFB improvement

F → A

Security headers grade

6 rooftops

Deployed simultaneously

Pricing

Three options. No retainer. No negotiation.

Pay once for the diagnosis. Pay once for the fixes. Or pay once and get both.

DIAGNOSIS

$997

Full Diagnostic

•Comprehensive site audit across all 14 specialty areas
•Search Console authenticated review
•Platform-specific fix instructions
•Priority-ranked master fix list
•Estimated impact and effort per fix
•Refundable if we do not find 3 surprises
•48-hour delivery

FIXES ONLY

$6,497

Fix Sprint

•Bring your own audit report
•We implement your top 5 priority fixes
•Schema, speed, and structural fixes
•Live within 30 days
•No code changes required from your vendor

BEST VALUE DIAGNOSIS + EVERY FIX

$6,997

Full Treatment

•Full Diagnostic included ($997 value)
•We implement every fix on the priority list, not just 5
•Schema, speed, and structural fixes
•Live within 7 to 14 days
•90 days of regression monitoring after launch
•We handle your web vendor directly

$500 more than the Fix Sprint. Includes the $997 diagnostic and the complete fix list.

Domain Audit-specific questions dealers ask.

Answered straight.

Does this cover SEO migrations?

We audit the redirect map. We do not run the migration itself. If you are mid-migration, we can validate the redirect plan before you cut over.

Will this break my email?

No. We audit DNS but only recommend changes after validating that mail flow is preserved.

How often should I run a domain audit?

After any platform migration, vendor change, or SSL renewal anomaly. Otherwise annually.

What if my CDN is misconfigured?

We flag CDN-layer issues separately. Most have one-line fixes once identified.

Is HTTP/3 worth enabling?

Usually yes for dealer sites. The latency improvement is real on mobile networks. Most CDNs support it with one toggle.

Do I need to involve my hosting vendor?

For some fixes yes (DNS, SSL renewal). For most (headers, redirects), the changes happen at the CDN layer or in tag manager.

Will this fix my Google ranking?

It removes a class of silent throttles on ranking. Combined with other audits, the compound effect is meaningful.

While we are at it

Domain Audit is rarely the only thing wrong. Three areas dealers usually pair with this one.

Find out if your domain configuration is helping or hurting.

30-second scan. We test DNS, SSL, redirects, and HTTP headers and report misconfigurations.