What an SEO audit should include (and what to ignore)

Some audits are a tool printout with a logo on top. A good one is a decision document. Here is how to tell the difference, and what to expect for your money.

It should tell you what to do first

A list of 400 warnings is not an audit. A good audit ranks findings by effort and expected impact, so you can act on the top ten and ignore the long tail. If it does not rank, it has not been judged.

It should show its evidence

Every finding needs proof: the URL, the screenshot or the data. A developer should be able to look at it and agree or disagree. "Improve page speed" is not a finding. "These three templates load a 2 MB script before content appears" is.

What a thorough audit covers

• Crawling and indexing: what search engines can reach and keep.
• Site structure and internal linking.
• Page speed and mobile experience.
• On-page: titles, headings and how pages match real searches.
• Content: gaps, duplication and thin pages.
• Backlinks: who links to you, who links to competitors.
• Local and AI search visibility, where relevant.
• Tracking: can you even measure the result?

What to ignore

Many tools flag things that do not affect results: a missing meta keywords tag, a title two characters over a limit, a low "SEO score" from the tool itself. A good audit tells you which warnings are noise and says so plainly.

A good audit tells you what not to fix.

It should be yours to keep

You paid for the document. It should stand alone, so you can hand it to your team or another agency. If an audit only makes sense with a retainer attached, it is a sales pitch.

How much should one cost?

Prices vary with site size and depth. Ours are published: $750 for Essentials, $1,750 for Comprehensive and $3,000 for Strategy & Roadmap. Whatever you buy, ask what is in it before you pay.