Decision Ladder
Audit the journey from search click to conversion — the UX layer classic SEO ignores.
Sites are usually optimized page by page, so visitors get stranded between learning about a topic and actually buying, with no path forward. The Decision Ladder audits whether your whole site moves people through Orient, Choose, Prove, Rate and Act.
The Decision Ladder (Orient → Choose → Prove → Rate → Act) audits whether your navigation, internal links, pages and articles actually guide a visitor to convert — a proprietary UX and conversion framework.
What you get
Beyond rankings
Ranking is only half the job — the Decision Ladder checks whether your pages actually move a visitor from problem to action.
Four lenses
Menu, internal-link cluster, page layout and article content are each audited against the five decision stages.
Included on every plan
The full conversion-flow audit ships at every tier — no upsell.
Inside Decision Ladder
Four-dimension Decision Ladder audit
The same Orient to Choose to Prove to Rate to Act ladder is checked across four layers of the site: Menu, Cluster, Page and Article. Each URL is assigned a ladder stage from its slug first, then its title and H1, and every dimension is scored only on checks that have real crawl evidence. Where evidence is not captured, the check is marked insufficient instead of being passed or failed dishonestly.
- Stage assigned per URL from slug then title/H1
- Menu, Cluster, Page and Article dimensions
- Scored on measured checks only
- Site-wide funnel shape across the five stages
Internal-link flow analysis
The Cluster dimension is fully measured from your internal link graph, classifying every internal link as forward, backward or lateral along the ladder. It surfaces the share of links that advance the decision, samples backward links that push visitors back up the ladder, and lists dead-end pages that offer no next step. With no link graph captured, this gates as insufficient rather than reporting fake dead-ends.
- Forward vs backward vs lateral link share
- Backward-link samples that regress the journey
- Dead-end pages with no outgoing internal link
- Article next-step link coverage
Menu before-and-after simulation
Your live global navigation is reconstructed from the link graph by treating high-frequency site-wide links as the real menu, then compared against a Decision-Ladder-optimal menu built into action, conversion, context and trust zones. Sections are ranked by real signals: search demand from clicks and impressions, internal-link authority and page count. The before-and-after diff flags conversion leaks, where a real pricing or contact section exists on the site but is missing from the primary nav.
- Live nav rebuilt from link-frequency
- Sections ranked by real search demand and authority
- Missing decisive Rate/Act stages in the menu
- Conversion leaks and menu noise to reorganize
What you can see
Concrete signals this system surfaces — measured, never fabricated.
From signal to action
Crawl and stage
Every internal HTML page is crawled and assigned a ladder stage from its slug, title and H1.
Map the graph
The internal link graph is analyzed for forward, backward and dead-end flow along the ladder.
Score four layers
Menu, Cluster, Page and Article are scored against the shared criteria on measured evidence only.
Get the fixes
Each unmet criterion returns why it failed plus the before-and-after menu and next steps.
What's included
Built for how you work
See whether the blog, services, pricing and contact journey actually connects instead of leaving visitors stranded.
Audit a client's site structure against one repeatable decision-ladder framework and show exactly which stages are missing.
Find money and action pages that exist on the site but are not linked from the primary navigation.
Built to be trusted
Common questions
What is the Decision Ladder?
It is the five-stage buyer journey of Orient, Choose, Prove, Rate and Act that a visitor moves through from first learning about a topic to taking action.
How does it know a page's stage?
It reads the top-level slug first as the strongest intent signal, then falls back to the title and H1, and it can also map search queries to the same ladder.
What if my site has no internal link graph?
The Cluster and Article checks report insufficient rather than inventing dead-ends, so you never see a fabricated flow score.
Does it read my actual navigation menu?
It reconstructs the live menu from the link graph and infers sections from top-level slugs; reading the literal nav labels is flagged as a later capture, never faked.
Decision Ladder, and the whole platform behind it.
Request your invite to start, or see exactly what's included at each tier.