What should an SEO audit include? A buyer’s checklist
Neaptide · September 7, 2026 · 6 min read
Assess an SEO audit by its evidence, priorities and implementation tasks. Includes a worked issue report and questions to ask before accepting the work.
On this page
A useful SEO audit answers a practical question: what should happen to the website next, and why? You need findings you can verify, their business implications and an implementation plan. Report length and crawler warning counts do not make that decision for you.
Agree on the problem the audit will address
Preparing a migration, investigating fewer enquiries and planning a larger catalogue require different work. A migration calls for URL and content checks. An enquiry problem needs search data alongside analytics and lead handling. Catalogue planning needs an understanding of the buyer questions your pages already answer.
Define domains, languages, sections, data periods and expected outputs. Sampling a large catalogue can be sensible, but the report must explain which templates and URLs were checked and what was excluded. A claim to have checked the whole site needs to match the actual coverage.
The deliverables to ask for
- An owner-facing summary of obstacles, opportunities and immediate decisions, with evidence for significant findings.
- An issue register: affected URLs or templates, observations, implications, priority and proposed changes.
- Supporting data: exports, response examples, relevant report captures and observation dates, so someone else can check the conclusions.
- An implementation plan with owners, dependencies, effort estimates and assumptions, plus acceptance criteria and unresolved research questions.
Technical checks are one part of the audit
Technical analysis covers access, URL handling, indexing, rendered content and templates. Demand and content analysis asks whether a page serves the buyer’s search intent. Assessing commercial outcomes also requires visit and conversion data where these are collected.
Ask the specialist to connect these areas. “No implementation timeline on the page” becomes useful when the report explains why buyers need it, where the question arises and who can supply a reliable answer. “Add more text” alone does not define the job.
An issue a developer can act on
This fictional example illustrates a report format, not a Neaptide client audit. A company has renamed a service. /services/crm-setup no longer exists; /services/crm-integration describes the same service, but the navigation still links to the old address.
| Field | Example finding |
|---|---|
| Observation | The menu links to /services/crm-setup, which returns 404. The new URL returns 200. |
| Coverage | Pages using the shared menu; attach the list of checked templates. |
| Implication | Visitors cannot open the service through the menu. Search traffic impact has not been measured. |
| Change | Update the menu link. As the service has moved, add a permanent redirect from the old URL to its replacement. |
| Acceptance | The menu goes directly to the new page. The old URL redirects there without a chain. The destination works and describes the same service. |
A redirect fits this example because there is a matching replacement. Do not send every deleted URL to the homepage automatically. Check the choice of permanent redirect against Google’s URL migration guidance.
Prioritise decisions, not a tool score
Start with the routes visitors use to find a product or make an enquiry, and check how widely the problem affects them. An error in a shared page template may affect many URLs, but the number alone does not tell you how important those pages are. Then consider how certain the diagnosis is, the work needed and what must happen first. For example, decide which URLs to keep during a migration before rewriting their content.
Separate confirmed obstacles, testable hypotheses and improvements. The menu error is confirmed by the response. Whether it explains a drop in enquiries needs more evidence. The report should make that difference clear.
Access requirements and missing data
Start diagnosis with agreed read access to search and analytics reports. Website changes should follow as a defined implementation stage. Google recommends read-only Search Console access at the audit stage.
Public pages allow checks of links and some technical settings. Without account data, an auditor cannot establish which queries lost clicks, how enquiries changed or why Google chose another URL. Missing evidence should be marked as unavailable, not filled with invented metrics.
Accept the audit and move to implementation
Choose one important recommendation and ask the specialist to walk from the evidence to the acceptance test. Can they identify the URL, reproduce the problem, justify its priority and brief the person fixing it? A warning colour in a tool is not enough.
Clarify whether developer discussions and post-fix checks are included. Report delivery, a deployed fix and a change in search performance are separate milestones. Each needs its own evidence. At Neaptide, discuss the audit within an agreed search programme: share the site, business objective and recent change history.