C.A. Baldwin & Co — Site Audit — Quantised
C.A. Baldwin & Co — Site Audit
Summary
13 pages missing meta descriptions, including several product category pages; automated SEO score sits at 85/100 on both mobile and desktop.
Mobile LCP 5,452 ms (lab estimate — too little real-user traffic for Google field data). Desktop is fine at 1,804 ms — the gap is mobile front-end weight, not hosting.
Not found in the top 20 for any of five category terms tested — 'stainless steel pipe fittings', 'gas press fittings', 'plumbing fittings suppliers UK' among them. Ranks #2 for its own exact company name.
There is no working path from search or category browsing to an individual product's details — the site search overlay's results aren't clickable, and category listing pages link nowhere. This is the single most important finding in this audit.
Real specialist catalogue depth exists in the underlying data (gas press fittings, Euroflex bellows, GEBO repair clamps) but is effectively unreachable by a visitor, and even direct catalogue pages carry no item-specific description, image or spec.
Critical — fix before anything else
- 🔴There is no working path from search or category browsing to a product's details: the site search overlay's results aren't clickable, and category listing pages contain no links out to individual items. Catalogue pages do exist (found via sitemap, e.g. the six Euroflex bellows variants) but are orphaned — unreachable through any on-site navigation, and even those pages carry no item-specific description, image or spec, just generic shared links. For a buyer needing to confirm a spec before requesting a quote, there is currently no way to do that on the site.
- 🔴A separate templating bug generates 21 broken related-product links, all following the pattern /catalogue/<slug>/<slug>, concentrated on the Euroflex bellows range — a WooCommerce related-products widget outputting a malformed href.
High priority
- 🟠Category listing pages have no filters or sort options — once the navigation issue is fixed, a buyer browsing dozens of size/pressure/material variants will still need a way to narrow the list.
- 🟠Not ranking in the top 20 for any of five core category terms tested, while pipeworksuppliers.co.uk, pipesandfittingsuk.co.uk and plumbhq.uk occupy that ground.
- 🟠Mobile page speed is slow (5,452 ms LCP, lab estimate) while desktop is fine — the gap is front-end weight specific to mobile.
- 🟠13 pages are missing meta descriptions, including product category pages that should be pulling in category-search traffic.
Medium priority
- 🟡Several page titles are generic and near-duplicate (Basket, News, Specials) with no product or category context.
- 🟡No third-party review platform reinforces the existing 5-star/12-review Google Business Profile.
- 🟡Trade terms (credit account, minimum order, delivery/lead times) — the B2B equivalent of a returns policy for trust-building — should be confirmed reachable in one click from the homepage.
What's working
- ✅Real specialist depth in the underlying catalogue data — gas press fittings, stainless steel express fittings, GEBO repair clamps and a dedicated Euroflex bellows range — even though it's currently unreachable by a visitor.
- ✅A strong, established local reputation: 5-star Google Business Profile and #2 ranking for the exact company name.
- ✅Desktop performance is genuinely good: 92/100, 1.8s LCP, no flags.
- ✅robots.txt and sitemap.xml are both present and correctly configured.
Prioritised action plan
- ▸🔴 Fix the full-screen search overlay so results are clickable, and add links from category pages to individual catalogue pages; once reachable, add real per-item detail (spec, image, datasheet)
- ▸🔴 Find and fix the templating bug generating 21 broken related-product links on the Euroflex range
- ▸🟠 Add filtering and sorting to category listing pages once the linking issue is fixed
- ▸🟠 Build/optimise category pages for 'stainless steel pipe fittings', 'gas press fittings', 'plumbing fittings suppliers UK' — currently absent from the top 20
- ▸🟠 Investigate the mobile-specific front-end weight causing 5.5s LCP
- ▸🟠 Fill in 13 missing meta descriptions, prioritising category pages
- ▸🟡 Replace generic templated page titles with distinct, descriptive ones
Next steps
The product-discovery fix is the entire engagement's foundation — everything else (search visibility, mobile speed, page titles) only pays off once a buyer can actually reach and read a product page. Recommend scoping that first, then layering the SEO and performance work on top.
- Fix the product-discovery path first — nothing else in this audit matters until a buyer can actually reach a product page
- Category filtering/sorting and per-item detail the same phase, since they build on the same templates
- Then category-page SEO and mobile speed, to bring in the search traffic the fixed catalogue can now convert