A Step-by-Step SEO Audit Framework Built Specifically for Brewery Websites

This guide is written for taproom owners, brewery marketing leads, and operations managers who want to understand where their website stands in search — without waiting for an agency to tell them. You do not need technical expertise to complete most of these checks. You need about two hours, a notepad, and willingness to look honestly at what you find.

The audit covers six domains:

• Technical health — page speed, mobile rendering, indexability, and crawl errors
• On-page content — title tags, headers, keyword targeting, and page structure
• Google Business Profile — completeness, category accuracy, post frequency, and review signals
• Local citations — consistency across Untappd, BeerAdvocate, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and general directories
• Review profile — volume, recency, response rate, and sentiment
• Schema markup — structured data for your menu, events, hours, and business type

What this audit does not cover: paid advertising, social media performance, or email marketing. Those are separate disciplines. This guide focuses entirely on organic search — the traffic channel that compounds over time without a media spend behind it.

By the end, you will have a scored assessment of each domain and a prioritized list of what to fix first. If you find the list is longer than you can realistically tackle alongside running a brewery, that is useful information too.

Technical SEO is the foundation. If Google cannot crawl and render your pages correctly, no amount of well-written content will compensate. Run through these checks before anything else.

Page Speed

Use Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool (pagespeed.web.dev) and enter your homepage URL. Look at your Core Web Vitals scores — specifically Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Brewery sites frequently fail here because of large, uncompressed hero images and autoplay video. A score below 50 on mobile is a significant problem. A score below 70 on desktop warrants attention.

Mobile Rendering

Open your site on a real phone — not a browser's mobile preview. Tap your navigation, check that your menu PDF loads, and try to find your taproom hours without pinching. In our experience, brewery sites built more than three years ago frequently have mobile rendering issues that the desktop version hides completely.

Indexability

Go to Google and search site:yourdomain.com. The number of results tells you how many pages Google has indexed. If key pages are missing — your menu, events, or about page — they may be blocked by a robots.txt rule or a noindex tag added by a developer who meant to apply it only during staging.

Crawl Errors

If you have Google Search Console set up (and if you do not, that is your first fix), check the Coverage report for any pages marked as errors or excluded. Broken internal links and redirect chains are common on brewery sites that have gone through a redesign.

Score this section: 0 critical issues = strong. 1-2 issues = moderate. 3+ issues = critical priority.

On-page SEO determines whether Google understands what each page is about and whether it matches the searches your customers are running. For a brewery, the most important pages to audit are your homepage, taproom page, beer menu, events page, and any pages targeting location-specific searches.

Title Tags

Every page should have a unique title tag that includes the page's primary keyword and your brewery name. A common mistake: using only the brewery name as the title tag on every page. Google sees ten pages that all say "Riverbend Brewing Co." and learns almost nothing about what each page covers.

Check your title tags by right-clicking any page and selecting "View Page Source," then searching for <title>. Or use a free tool like Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs) to crawl your entire site at once.

Header Structure

Each page should have one H1 that describes the page's topic. Supporting H2s and H3s break the content into sections Google can interpret. A taproom page with no H1, or with an H1 that says "Welcome" and nothing else, is a missed opportunity to signal relevance for searches like "craft brewery taproom in [city]".

Keyword Targeting

Think about the three or four searches a new customer might run to find you: "brewery near [city]", "craft beer taproom [neighborhood]", "[city] IPA brewery". Are those phrases present — naturally, not stuffed — in your page copy? Many brewery sites have beautiful copy that mentions almost no searchable terms because it was written for aesthetics, not discoverability.

Thin Content Pages

Events pages and beer menu pages often have very little text because the information is presented in a graphic or PDF. Google cannot read PDFs or images. If your menu exists only as a downloadable file, you have a gap worth fixing.

Score this section: All pages have unique, keyword-relevant titles and H1s, with readable text content = strong. Gaps on 1-2 key pages = moderate. Homepage or taproom page missing basic on-page signals = critical priority.

For most taprooms, local search is the highest-value SEO channel. Customers searching "brewery near me" or "craft brewery open now" are ready to visit — often within hours. This section diagnoses how well your local search presence is set up to capture that intent.

Google Business Profile Completeness

Log into your GBP dashboard and work through this checklist:

• Business name matches your legal/marketing name exactly (no keyword stuffing)
• Primary category is set to "Brewery" — not "Bar" or "Restaurant"
• Secondary categories cover your actual offerings (e.g., "Beer Garden", "Event Venue" if applicable)
• Hours are accurate and include special hours for holidays and taproom events
• Menu link points to a live, text-based menu page — not a PDF
• At least one Google Post published in the last 14 days
• Photos include interior, exterior, beer pours, and food (if served) — added within the last 90 days

Citation Consistency

Your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) must match exactly across every directory listing. Pull your listings on Untappd, BeerAdvocate, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Facebook, and Apple Maps. A discrepancy as small as "St." vs "Street" in an address can create conflicting signals. In our experience working with taprooms, NAP inconsistencies are present on nearly every brewery site we audit — and they are fixable within a week.

Untappd Optimization

Untappd is the beer-specific citation platform with real local SEO weight for breweries. Confirm your Untappd venue profile is claimed, your beer list is current, and your location data is accurate. Breweries that keep their Untappd profiles active tend to show stronger brand signals in local search, particularly for beer-specific queries.

Score this section: GBP fully complete, NAP consistent across all major directories = strong. GBP gaps or 1-2 citation mismatches = moderate. GBP unclaimed or major category errors = critical priority.

For a deeper breakdown of local optimization tactics, see our brewery SEO resource hub.

Reviews and schema markup are the two areas where independent breweries most consistently leave competitive ground on the table. Neither requires ongoing content creation — they are structural improvements that pay dividends in local rankings and click-through rates.

Review Profile Audit

Check your Google reviews across four dimensions:

• Volume: Industry benchmarks suggest breweries with strong local rankings typically have a meaningful review base relative to their market size. If nearby competitors have significantly more reviews, that gap matters.
• Recency: Google weights recent reviews. If your most recent review is from eight months ago, your review velocity has stalled. A taproom open six days a week should be earning new reviews regularly.
• Response rate: Are you responding to reviews — both positive and negative? Unanswered reviews, especially negative ones, are a visible trust signal for both Google and potential customers.
• Sentiment: What themes appear in negative reviews? Service speed, parking, and noise level are common for taprooms. Recurring themes signal operational issues that also affect customer decisions at the search stage.

Schema Markup Check

Schema markup is structured data embedded in your site's code that helps Google understand specific details about your business. For breweries, the most valuable schema types are:

• LocalBusiness / BreweryOrRestaurant — confirms your location, hours, and contact details in a machine-readable format
• Menu schema — marks up your beer list so Google can display it in search results
• Event schema — marks up taproom events so they can appear in Google's event results

To check whether your site has schema markup, paste your URL into Google's Rich Results Test tool (search.google.com/test/rich-results). Many brewery sites have no schema at all — which is a meaningful gap given how few competitors have implemented it correctly.

Score this section: Active review velocity, 90%+ response rate, and valid schema on key page types = strong. Slow review velocity or no schema = moderate. No owner responses or completely absent schema = critical priority.

After working through each section, you should have a rough assessment for each of the four domains: Technical, On-Page, Local/GBP, and Reviews/Schema. Use this framework to prioritize your next actions.

Priority Classification

• Critical (fix within 30 days): Google cannot properly crawl or index your site; GBP is unclaimed or has wrong category; NAP data is severely inconsistent across major directories; no schema markup of any kind; zero owner responses to negative reviews.
• Moderate (address within 60-90 days): Title tags are present but not keyword-relevant; some citation inconsistencies on secondary directories; review velocity has slowed but base is adequate; schema exists but is incomplete.
• Optimization (ongoing): Content depth on key pages could be expanded; GBP posts need more consistent frequency; event schema could be added for individual taproom events; internal linking between your beer menu and taproom pages could be strengthened.

A Note on DIY vs. Professional Remediation

Some audit findings are genuinely DIY-friendly: claiming a directory listing, updating hours, responding to reviews, and adding keyword phrases to existing page copy are all tasks a motivated owner or marketing lead can complete. Others — fixing Core Web Vitals issues, implementing structured data, resolving crawl errors in Search Console, or rebuilding page structure — typically require development or SEO expertise to execute correctly without creating new problems.

If your audit surfaces more than three critical-priority gaps, or if your technical section reveals issues you do not have the background to resolve, the time investment of DIY remediation often exceeds what professional help would cost over the same period. Our brewery SEO experts work specifically with taprooms and production breweries — if you want a second set of eyes on what your audit uncovered, we offer a get a professional brewery SEO audit as a starting point with no obligation to continue.

Re-Audit Cadence

Run this audit every six months at minimum. Brewery websites change frequently — new seasonal beers, updated hours, added events — and each change is an opportunity to either strengthen or inadvertently damage your search presence. Treat the audit as a regular operational check, not a one-time project.