Marine technical
SEO audit
Forty-two checks, scored and evidenced, plus the structured data written for you. A fixed-scope technical SEO audit for marinas, charter fleets, brokerages, clubs and sailing schools — run by people who actually sail.
Content cannot outrun a broken crawl
Most marine sites we inherit are not losing search traffic because their copy is weak. They are losing it because a booking engine spawns thousands of parameter URLs, a template change dropped the canonical tags, or the charter pages never had structured data in the first place.
The audit removes those constraints before anyone spends a peso on content or links. It is the first month of every engagement we run, and the reason later work compounds.
See our marine SEO & marina SEO serviceSix groups,
run in order
The groups are ordered by dependency, not preference. Anything failing in the first two groups is a blocker and goes into the current sprint.
Crawling & site access
robots.txt, sitemap generation, redirect chains, HTTPS and hostname canonicalisation — the blockers that make everything else pointless.
Indexation & duplication
Search Console coverage buckets, canonical logic, booking and filter parameters, and near-duplicate berth, boat or destination pages.
Speed, Core Web Vitals & mobile
Field-data vitals on mobile, LCP per template, image formats, third-party booking widgets, and one-handed usability at 375px.
Rendering, architecture & links
What Googlebot actually receives from your JavaScript booking app, click depth, anchor text, hub-and-spoke structure and orphan pages.
On-page & structured data
Titles, descriptions, heading hierarchy, and the marine schema markup layer: LocalBusiness, Product/Offer, BoatTrip, Course and SportsEvent.
Local, international & measurement
NAP consistency, Google Business Profile, genuine local content per venue, hreflang, consent-gated analytics and weekly rank reporting.
Marine schema
markup, written for you
Structured data is the cheapest technical win most boating websites have never taken. We work out which schema types each of your templates should carry, write the JSON-LD, validate it against the Rich Results Test and schema.org, and hand it over ready to ship — or wire it to your CMS ourselves.
Marinas, boatyards, chandleries, service yards
Marina schema markup with verified NAP, geo coordinates, opening hours and amenityFeature for fuel, lift and shore power.
Boat dealers and brokerage listings
Boat dealer schema markup for each listing: brand, condition, price, currency and availability, kept in sync with the visible page.
Charter operators and day-sail fleets
Yacht charter structured data for each itinerary, with a price range where rates are seasonal and a booking action pointing at your flow.
Sailing schools and training centres
Course schema markup per certification with one instance per intake — dates, duration, location, price and credential awarded.
Clubs, class associations and regattas
Event schema markup for race series and regattas, with entry offers, attendance mode and event status for postponements.
Every marine site
One Organization entity with a stable @id plus WebPage, BreadcrumbList and FAQPage per template, connected as a single @graph.
Deliverables
- All 42 checks scored pass / partial / fail with evidence screenshots
- Prioritised fix roadmap: blocker, sitewide, then template-level work
- Effort estimate and expected effect per finding, developer-ready
- Complete JSON-LD written for every template on your site
- Rich Results Test and schema validator output for each snippet
- Search Console, Bing Webmaster and analytics event review
- Keyword-to-page map for the clusters you should own
- Walkthrough call, then a re-check once the fixes ship
About a week
Access & crawl
Search Console, analytics and CMS access, then a full crawl and log review.
Score the 42
Every check run and evidenced, with blockers flagged the day we find them.
Write the schema
Structured data authored and validated per template, ready to paste or wire to your CMS.
Roadmap & handover
Sequenced roadmap, effort estimates, walkthrough call and a post-fix re-check.
Where this fits
Marine & maritime digital marketing
The hub the audit feeds: strategy, search, content and paid across the whole marine funnel.
OpenMarine SEO & marina SEO
Ongoing marine and marina SEO once the technical blockers from the audit are cleared.
OpenYacht & charter SEO
Charter route, brokerage and itinerary search — the templates that need BoatTrip markup.
Open42-point audit checklist
Every check written out in full, grouped and ordered so you can score your own site.
OpenMarine schema markup guide
Copy-paste JSON-LD for marinas, boat dealers, charters, courses and regattas.
OpenSailing.ph community platform case study
A national sailing platform architected around crawlable events, clubs and results.
OpenMarine technical SEO audit FAQ
What is a marine technical SEO audit?
It is a structured review of whether search engines can crawl, index, render and understand your boating website. We run 42 fixed checks across crawling, indexation, Core Web Vitals, rendering, structured data, local consistency and measurement, then turn the failures into a sequenced fix roadmap with effort estimates.
What does the audit include for schema markup?
A full structured-data review plus the actual JSON-LD. We identify which schema types each template should use — LocalBusiness for a marina, Product and Offer for brokerage listings, BoatTrip for charter itineraries, Course and CourseInstance for school intakes, SportsEvent for regattas — write the markup, validate it, and hand it over ready to ship.
How long does it take?
About a week end to end for a site under 500 URLs: half a day to run the checks, then two to three days to write the structured data and the roadmap, plus the walkthrough call. Multi-location or multi-language sites take longer, usually in the indexation and hreflang groups.
Do you fix the issues or just report them?
Both are available. The audit itself ends in a developer-ready roadmap and the finished JSON-LD, so an in-house team can implement it. If you would rather we ship the fixes, the audit rolls into our marine SEO retainer and we implement in sprints.
Will this work if our booking engine is on a different platform?
Yes, and it is one of the most valuable parts of the audit. Third-party booking engines and members' areas on subdomains are the most common source of indexation, canonical and Core Web Vitals problems on marine sites, so they are audited explicitly rather than excluded.
How is this different from a free automated SEO report?
Automated tools list symptoms without priority or context — they cannot tell whether a noindex is deliberate, whether two berth pages should be consolidated, or what schema a charter itinerary needs. The 42 checks are run by a person who sails and works on marine sites, and the output is a plan rather than a score.
Can we run the checklist ourselves first?
Absolutely, and we publish it in full. The 42-point marine technical SEO audit checklist and our marine schema markup guide contain the same checks and the same copy-paste JSON-LD we use. Run it, score yourself, and bring us the parts you would rather not do.
How much does an SEO audit cost?
It is quoted as a fixed fee after a short scoping call, because the work scales with URL count and the number of page templates rather than with hours. A single-site marine brochure or school site under 500 URLs is at the low end; a brokerage with a listing feed, a booking engine on a subdomain and multiple languages sits at the top end. You get the number, the deliverables and the timeline in writing before anything starts — no open-ended retainer to find out.
What is included in an SEO audit?
Forty-two evidenced checks across seven groups: crawling and site architecture, indexation and canonicals, Core Web Vitals and performance, JavaScript rendering, structured data, local and NAP consistency, and measurement. The deliverables are the scored checklist with evidence, the finished JSON-LD for every template, a sequenced fix roadmap with effort estimates, a walkthrough call, and a re-check once the fixes ship.
How do I choose a technical SEO agency for a marine business?
Ask for the audit output from a comparable site, not a proposal deck: you want to see the actual checks, the evidence and the JSON-LD. Then ask who runs it and whether they understand marine templates — listing feeds, berth and mooring pages, course intakes, charter itineraries and regatta calendars. An agency that has never handled a third-party booking engine on a subdomain will miss the issue that is costing you the most traffic.
Is a free SEO audit tool good enough?
Use one — they are useful for spotting obvious breakage. What they cannot do is judge intent: whether a noindex is deliberate, whether two near-identical berth pages should be consolidated or differentiated, which of forty warnings actually costs you enquiries, or what structured data a charter itinerary needs. A tool gives you a score; an audit gives you a prioritised plan.
How often should a marine site be audited?
A full technical audit once a year, plus a lighter re-check after any migration, platform change, booking-engine swap or seasonal template release. Most of the damage we find on marine sites was introduced by a well-meaning change to the booking flow or the listings feed, not by a slow decline.
Marine sites we audit and build
Live marine sites we work on, with the case studies behind them — no logos we cannot evidence.
Philippine School of YachtingCustom WordPress theme, yacht SEO programme and a bespoke course-and-charter booking engine with scheduling, instructor management and online payments — for an RYA Training Centre.
- Philippine Sailing Association
Full revamp for the national governing body of sailing: mobile-first redesign, CDN and security hardening, regatta registration CRO and a schema-backed content programme.
Sailing.phCommunity platform for Philippine sailing — regatta listings, racing results, club and venue directories, piloting with 8–10 partner clubs.
- Digital Sailors NGO
Sailing-industry content hubs: national events calendar, club directory and racing orientation guides, built on the same stack we ship to charter and rental operators.
Superyacht Academy In Asia and the Pacific Corp. (SAAP Corp)Website redesign and booking system for the Philippines' pioneer superyacht training academy — IYT-accredited and MCA-recognised. Currently in development: brand, structure and booking enquiry flow designed before build.
Accredited / affiliatedMarks belong to their owners: International Yacht Training Worldwide, Superyacht UK, British Marine, International Superyacht Society, Scuba Schools International, KJCM Maritime, Eurasian Maritime Corp.
We publish client quotes only once they are written and approved by the client, so what you see above is live, verifiable work you can open and inspect yourself.
Marine & Marina SEO Audit Checklist
Run the same technical, local and content checks we start every marine SEO engagement with.
- Technical, on-page, local, content and measurement checks in one pass
- Marine-specific: berth, charter, service-yard and destination search behaviour
- Ordered so the highest-impact fixes come first
Prefer not to give an email? Read the full checklist here — it is the same 29 checks, ungated.
Start with the audit
Tell us about your marina, fleet, club or school and we'll scope the technical audit and the fixes worth doing first.