When doing an SEO Audit I run through a set of pre-defined questions. Over the past months, I have curated an Excel template to conduct an SEO audit. I use it as a checklist to document my findings and it is the basis to cluster my optimization ideas.
The template has 4 customizeable columns: For rating, observations, resulting task tasks, and an estimated ranking impact. Ready to fill out for your client. See below:
But it has also a cheat sheet on where to find the specific information:
The template has the following sections:
- Tech SEO
- On-page SEO
- E-E-A-T
- Off-page SEO
Which questions are addressed in the technical SEO audit?
Below is an excerpt of the question I cover in the tech SEO part of audit.
- Do you have a sitemap in robots.txt linked?
- Does the sitemap reflect the valid URLs from your site?
- Are some odd sites indexed on Google?
- Are there crawl errors?
- Do you have an easy-to-understand URL structure?
Which questions are addressed in the on-page part of the SEO audit?
Below is an excerpt of the question I cover in the on-page SEO part of audit.
- Targeted keyword: What is the search volume? Do you have sufficient domain authority to be competitive for this keyword?
- Does the article meet the search intent? (Transactional, Informational, Navigational or Commercial)
- Is it easy to find information in your article? E.g., Is the content easily scannable? Do you structure the content in headings? Do you provide a table of contents?
E-E-A-T Audit: What do you tackle?
Below is an excerpt of the questions I address in the E-E-A-T part of the audit.
- Do you have an about us page?
- Do you have about schema implemented on the about us page?
- Does the about us page showcase expertise by mentioning the background of the employees?
- Do you show the location and phone number?
What Off-page factors do you look at in the SEO audit?
Below is an excerpt of the questions I tackle in the off-page SEO part of audit.
- Does your website have backlinks?
- Does your website have backlinks to 404s?
- What authority do those backlinks have?
- Does your website have toxic backlinks?
How to use this SEO Audit template
- Download the SEO Audit template for free.
- Change the logo and style to your liking.
- Follow the template, step-by-step. For more details on each line, make sure to check out the gray area where I give you instructions.
- Save and share with your client.
- If you can, buy me a coffee: buymeacoffee.com/corinaburri
- Otherwise, please share some love on socials.
Are you more of the Google Spreadsheet type of person? Don’t worry, got you covered. On this page I link to the Google Spreadsheet version of the SEO audit. If you are looking to deep dive on your content, I also have recently published my content audit template for free.
Do you prefer to outsource the SEO Audit work? For CHF 5400.00 I will do the SEO audit for you and present the findings to your team. Contact me on the contact page or on Linkedin.
I stumbled upon this post and found it to be a great resource. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Corina Burri,
Thank you for your help. I looked for SEO Audit templates everywhere, and most people wanted me to pay for them. You gave me a free template and helpful notes. This helped me a lot.
Thanks again, Larusan