Burbank Plating Service Corp. — Website Discoverability Audit
Prepared for: Andy & Robert Scheer, Burbank Plating Service Corp. Site reviewed: burbankplating.com Date: May 1, 2026 Prepared by: Ops Armada LLC
1. What this audit covers
There are two questions buyers ask machines about your shop today, and they are answered by two different layers of the internet.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is how Google ranks you when a procurement officer searches "NADCAP zinc plating Los Angeles" or "AMS-QQ-P-416 cadmium plating supplier near me." It governs the blue links and the local map pack.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is how AI assistants — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity — describe your shop when an aerospace QA engineer or a Tier‑1 buyer asks "who are the qualified cadmium and zinc-nickel platers in the LA basin?" It governs the answer the assistant generates and the suppliers it names.
Done right, the same upgrade lifts both. Most of the work is invisible to your visitors and entirely invisible to your competitors — but it is exactly what Google and the AI assistants need in order to confidently surface Burbank Plating to the right buyers.
2. Headline verdict
You have built a 60‑year operating reputation, the largest cadmium/cadmium‑alternative capacity on the West Coast, NADCAP and ITAR certifications, and approval from Ford, GM, Daimler‑Chrysler, Toyota, and Nissan across all your processes. None of that comes through to the systems that route modern buyers to you.
The website was last meaningfully updated in 2015 (the footer still says so) and is functionally invisible to both modern Google ranking signals and to every major AI assistant. We confirmed this against your live site on the date above.
The single load‑bearing fix — and the reason most other items will under‑perform until this is shipped — is adding structured data (JSON-LD) describing your business, your certifications, your services, and your location. Without it, Google and AI assistants are guessing. With it, they have the facts.
3. Will my website look any different?
Short answer: almost none of this is visible to your visitors.
Think of a barcode on a product or the call-number sticker on a library book. The shopper or the reader never reads them — but the system that organizes them depends on them entirely. SEO and GEO are mostly a hidden data layer. We are adding the labels and identifiers Google and the AI assistants need in order to file Burbank Plating correctly in their index of the internet.
When this work is done your site will look much the same to a human visitor (refreshed where the visible layer is genuinely broken — see Section 6 items 6, 8, 9, and 18). Google's local pack and the AI assistants will finally have a clear, accurate, structured picture of Burbank Plating Service Corp. to show prospective buyers — the picture your reputation already deserves.
4. What's already working
| Area | Status | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 60 years of continuous operation (founded 1965) | Strong | Operating longevity is one of the highest-weight entity-credibility signals to AI assistants. |
| NADCAP and ITAR certifications claimed on every page | Present | The two table-stakes credentials for aerospace procurement. |
| Approved supplier listings for Ford, GM, Daimler-Chrysler, Toyota, Nissan — across all processes | Strong | Named-OEM approval is the single most defensible trust signal you can publish. |
| 11 named OEM spec callouts (GMW3044, WSS-M21P17, PS-4220, etc.) | Strong | Long-tail spec searches are exactly how procurement officers find a supplier; these specs are gold for landing pages. |
| Three real testimonials with full attribution | Present | Genuine third-party voices with names, titles, and companies. Most competitor sites have generic praise quotes. |
| Equipment specifics published (two 120-ft automated lines, three certified H₂ embrittlement ovens, X-ray thickness, on-site chem lab) | Present | This level of equipment transparency is rare in the segment. |
| 24-hour expedite service offered explicitly | Present | Differentiator vs. larger shops with longer queues. |
| Phone, fax, and address visible on every page | Present | Ranking signal for local SEO; trust signal for buyers. |
| Industry-association memberships (Metal Finishing Assoc. of SoCal; LA Fastener Assoc.) | Present | Signals belonging to the local supplier ecosystem. |
sales@burbankplating.com email published | Present | Real domain-bound email beats Gmail/Yahoo for B2B credibility. |
The foundation is genuine. The problem is not the business — it is that the modern systems that route buyers to suppliers cannot read what the business has to say.
5. Recommended upgrades
Impact-ranked. Each item is fixable; the load-bearing item is marked.
| # | Issue (plain English) | Fix | SEO effect | GEO effect | When we can ship |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 ⚠ LOAD-BEARING | No structured data anywhere on the site. (no JSON-LD LocalBusiness / Manufacturer / Service / Organization / FAQPage / Certification.) | Ship a single consolidated @graph JSON-LD block in the site shell containing LocalBusiness + Manufacturer + one Service per plating process + Organization (NAICS 332813) + Person for the Scheer brothers + FAQPage + Certification for each held credential. Cross-link via @id. | Unlocks rich-result eligibility, local pack ranking, and entity-graph promotion. | The single largest GEO lever — gives AI assistants a verifiable, structured fact set to cite instead of inferring from prose. | Pre-launch |
| 2 | No mobile viewport meta tag. (<meta name="viewport"> missing.) | Add <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> to every page. | Critical: Google has used mobile-first indexing since 2019. Without viewport meta, the site is treated as desktop-only and demoted on mobile result pages — where >60% of B2B research now starts. | AI assistants weight Core Web Vitals signals; a mobile-broken page is downgraded as a "low-quality source." | Pre-launch |
| 3 | No semantic H1 on the homepage. Page uses only an H3 ("Expert Metal Finishing performed to Aerospace and Automotive Standards"). | Add a true H1 with the primary positioning + key qualifier ("NADCAP-Certified Metal Finishing for Aerospace, Automotive & Defense — 60 Years in Pacoima, CA"). | H1 is the strongest on-page topic signal Google reads. Currently absent — Google is guessing what the page is about. | AI assistants use H1 as the canonical "what is this page" signal when summarizing. | Pre-launch |
| 4 | All image alt text is alt="pic". | Every image gets a descriptive, process-naming alt: "Zinc-nickel plated aerospace fastener post-bake oven." etc. | Image search ranking + alt-text contributes to body-text relevance scoring. | Screen readers, AI image-aware crawlers, and accessibility audits all treat alt="pic" as effectively empty. | Pre-launch |
| 5 | Footer copyright reads © 2015. | Update to current year + auto-bump via template variable. | Google's freshness algorithm uses copyright date as one signal of "is this site maintained." A 2015 stamp suggests an abandoned site. | AI assistants explicitly cite "last updated" cues when ranking source confidence. A decade-old stamp gets the source filtered. | Pre-launch (5-min fix) |
| 6 | No meta description on the homepage. | Write a 150–155 char description per page. Homepage: "NADCAP- and ITAR-certified metal finishing for aerospace, automotive, and defense. Zinc, cadmium, zinc-nickel, electroless nickel. Pacoima, CA. 24-hour expedite available." | Google fabricates the snippet from random body text when meta description is absent — usually unflattering. | N/A | Pre-launch |
| 7 | No robots.txt and no sitemap.xml. | Ship robots.txt with explicit Allow: blocks for AI crawlers (GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-Web, anthropic-ai, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, CCBot, Applebot-Extended). Reference sitemap. Generate sitemap.xml covering every page. | Search engines and AI crawlers have no map of your site today — they are reverse-engineering it from inbound links. | Several AI assistants honor Allow: directives explicitly; absence sometimes results in opt-out by default. | Pre-launch |
| 8 | No canonical tags + index.php / trailing-slash duplication splitting authority across multiple URLs. | Add <link rel="canonical"> to every page pointing to the clean URL. 301-redirect .php and trailing-slash variants to one canonical form. | Currently Google is splitting your homepage authority across at least three URL variants (/, /index.php, and a non-www variant). Consolidating these can lift ranking measurably with no other changes. | Reduces duplicate-source noise in AI training/retrieval. | Pre-launch |
| 9 | No Open Graph or Twitter card tags. | Add og:title, og:description, og:image, og:url, plus Twitter card equivalents. Use a single high-resolution facility photo as the share image. | N/A | When your URL is shared in email, Slack, LinkedIn, or Microsoft Teams (where procurement conversations actually happen) the link shows a broken card today. Fixing this raises click-through dramatically. | Pre-launch |
| 10 | No FAQ schema on the FAQs page — the content is already written. | Wrap each Q&A in FAQPage JSON-LD. | Unlocks FAQ-expansion in Google search results — your shop's answers appear directly under the result. | Gives AI assistants verbatim answers to lift; you become the source the AI cites for "what's the difference between zinc and cadmium plating?" | Pre-launch |
| 11 | No aggregateRating published. | Two-track: (a) Burbank claims its Google Business Profile and we then publish real aggregateRating JSON-LD. (b) Until claim, omit the field rather than fabricate. | GBP rating + review count drives the local pack — currently your shop is invisible in Google Maps relative to competitors with claimed profiles. | AI assistants weight third-party ratings heavily for trust signals. | Phase 2 (after GBP claim) |
| 12 | No sameAs cross-platform identity links. | Add sameAs: array linking to LinkedIn, ThomasNet, NDT.org, AZoM, Industrynet, Manta, and any directory profile that exists. | Helps Google bind the website entity to the company entity across the web. | The #1 signal AI engines use to confirm "this is the same business across the internet" — without it, they hedge ("a Pacoima-based plating company called Burbank Plating") instead of stating directly. | Pre-launch |
| 13 | No geo coordinates, priceRange, or image array on LocalBusiness. | Add lat/lng (≈34.2611, -118.4164 — verify via Google Maps), priceRange, hasMap linking to GBP, and 3–5 representative facility/process images. | Boosts local pack ranking for proximity queries ("plating near me"). | Coordinates let AI assistants answer "find a plater within 30 miles of LAX" deterministically. | Pre-launch |
| 14 | No Certification schema for NADCAP / ITAR / AMS / OEM specs. | Use the Schema.org Certification type (added 2024) cross-linked to the Manufacturer entity. One entry per credential; one entry per OEM spec callout you hold. | Newer rich-result type — early adopters get disproportionate visibility. | High impact: AI assistants currently cannot verify cert claims structurally and tend to hedge ("they claim NADCAP certification" rather than "they are NADCAP-certified for chemical processing"). | Pre-launch |
| 15 | No page-speed / Core Web Vitals optimization. | Audit Lighthouse against current site. Likely large gains available from image compression, caching headers, and removing legacy PHP server-rendered overhead. We will publish before/after numbers. | Core Web Vitals are a confirmed Google ranking factor since 2021. | Performance is now an explicit signal in some AI assistant retrieval systems. | Pre-launch (or rolled into rebuild) |
| 16 | No HTTPS canonicalization / HSTS. | Verify HTTPS is enforced site-wide and add Strict-Transport-Security header. | Google treats HTTPS as a ranking signal; mixed-content pages are penalized. | Modern AI crawlers may skip non-HTTPS or warn. | Pre-launch |
| 17 | WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility gaps. Color contrast, keyboard navigation, missing form labels, and absent ARIA landmarks. | Full audit + remediation. | Aerospace primes increasingly require WCAG attestation as part of supplier onboarding (it appears on supplier-portal questionnaires). | N/A | Phase 2 |
| 18 | No spec-driven landing pages. This is the single largest organic-traffic lever in this audit. | Build one dedicated landing page per NADCAP AC spec and per OEM spec you hold (e.g., /specs/ams-qq-p-416-cadmium-plating, /specs/ams-2417-zinc-nickel-plating, /specs/gmw3044-zinc-nickel). Each page: spec number in URL, H1, structured data, and 600–900 words of substantive technical content. | Aerospace and auto procurement queries are long-tail and spec-driven. "AMS 2417 zinc-nickel plating supplier Los Angeles" converts an order; "plating company near me" does not. We are confident this can deliver more qualified RFQs over time than every other item on this list combined. | Each spec page becomes a citable source for AI assistants. The first shop with a structured page on a given spec wins the AI citation. | Phase 2 (~2 weeks of focused content build) |
Content-side corrections (separate from technical SEO)
- The homepage states "over 50 years"; the About page confirms founding in 1965, which is 60 years in 2026. Recommend updating the headline number — it is a stronger trust signal at face value.
- Capacity claims are inconsistent across pages: homepage says 100,000 lbs/day; services page sums to 70,000 lbs/day across processes; about page describes two lines × 40,000 lbs/day = 80,000 lbs/day. Recommend reconciling to one published figure.
- Spec rev numbers cited are outdated:
ASTM B633-98(current rev is B633-19),AMS-QQ-P-416B(current is AMS-QQ-P-416 with no letter),ASTM B766-86(current is B766-86 R2009 / withdrawn family). Refreshing these to current revs is itself a signal that the shop is current with industry standards.
6. Suggested rollout
We propose three sessions:
Session 1 — Foundation, on the existing site (~3 hours). Items 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 16. Every fix that does not require a rebuild. Ships within a week. The site stays the same to your visitors; the underlying signals improve dramatically.
Session 2 — Showcase build & launch (Deliverable B; scope after this audit). The mock showcase site you can review at a preview URL. We rebuild on a modern stack (Next.js 15 + IBM Plex Sans + IBM Carbon-baseline industrial design). Ships items 1, 10, 13, 14, 15, 17 as part of the rebuild.
Session 3 — Spec-driven landing pages + GEO content moat (~2 weeks). Item 18. One landing page per NADCAP AC spec, per OEM spec, per geographic modifier ("Los Angeles," "Southern California," "San Fernando Valley," "near LAX"). This is the largest sustained organic-traffic lever in the audit and the single biggest GEO compound-interest investment.
7. Why both halves matter
An increasing share of Tier-1 supplier discovery now starts with an AI assistant. A junior buyer asks ChatGPT or Perplexity "who are the NADCAP-certified zinc-nickel plating suppliers within 50 miles of LAX, with capacity above 20,000 lbs/day, and OEM approval from at least one major auto prime?" — and an answer comes back in 12 seconds with three named suppliers.
Today, no AI assistant can confidently name Burbank Plating in that answer. The structured signals it would need to cite — your NADCAP scope, your AMS-QQ-P-416 cadmium qualification, your AMS 2417 zinc-nickel approval, your geo coordinates, your OEM approval roster — are absent from the site even though the underlying credentials are real. The work above puts those signals in place.
Fix once, win twice: the same upgrades that lift Google ranking also make Burbank Plating citable by every AI assistant.
8. One-sentence summary
We're not changing what your customers see — we're adding the labels and infrastructure that let Google and the AI assistants finally show your shop the way your reputation already deserves.
9. Verification flags
A few items the audit could not verify from public sources alone. We have flagged them rather than guess:
- Specific NADCAP AC scope. Your
certifications.phppage reads "Please contact us if you require any certifications from us." Before any showcase site or landing page asserts AC7108/9 (electroplating), AC7108/10 (electroless plating), AC7108/11 (conversion coating), or AC7108/12 (passivation), we need your active eAuditNet supplier ID and the cert PDF so we can publish exact scope. - AS9100 status. Not visible on the site. If held, this is a major trust signal worth publishing.
- Google Business Profile review count and rating. Not visible in public search snippets. Recommend claiming the GBP via the manager-verification flow; this also unlocks the
aggregateRatingJSON-LD field. - Capacity figures. Reconcile to one number (see Section 5 content corrections).
- Aerospace prime approvals. Auto-OEM approvals (Ford/GM/Daimler-Chrysler/Toyota/Nissan) are confirmed and on-page. Public sources do not surface explicit Boeing/Lockheed/Northrop/Pratt PSL listings for Burbank specifically. If any of these are held, please share — they are the single highest-leverage trust elements we can publish.
Prepared by Ops Armada LLC — May 1, 2026. Findings verified against the live site on the date above. Site contents may change; the audit is accurate as of that fetch.