State the scope and evidence
The audit should name the properties, environments, date, tools, crawl settings, account access, exclusions, and known limitations. Findings should identify the affected URL or template and include enough evidence for another practitioner to reproduce the result.
- List every data source and access level.
- Preserve representative response, markup, or screenshot evidence.
- Separate sampled findings from sitewide conclusions.
- Record crawl and rendering limits.
Prioritize by impact, confidence, and effort
Severity labels should reflect likely user and search impact, confidence in the diagnosis, affected scale, implementation risk, and dependency order. A missing optional tag should not outrank an intermittent 404 on revenue pages.
- Identify blockers and prerequisites.
- Group template-level issues instead of repeating URLs.
- Mark uncertain findings for verification.
- Provide a short first-work list for the client.
Include implementation and validation notes
A useful recommendation tells the delivery team what should change, where ownership sits, what can go wrong, and how to confirm the result. The audit should not prescribe code outside the provider's evidence or the client's technology context.
- Name likely implementation owners.
- Provide platform-specific notes only when verified.
- Include rollback or staging needs for risky changes.
- Define the post-change test and expected evidence.
Deliver agency-ready communication
White-label output should match agreed branding and terminology while preserving accuracy and limitations. Give the agency an internal technical appendix and a client-facing summary when those audiences need different detail.
- Explain findings in plain language.
- Avoid fabricated benchmarks and guaranteed outcomes.
- Provide editable source files where contracted.
- Schedule a handoff for questions and scope decisions.
Official references
- Google: Do you need an SEO?: Google lists questions for vetting SEO providers, including providers selling AEO or GEO services.
- Google: Optimizing for generative AI features: Google explains RAG, query fan-out, measurement, agentic experiences, and why ordinary SEO fundamentals still apply.
FAQ
How long should a technical SEO audit be?
Long enough to explain material findings and next steps. Page count is not a quality measure; evidence, prioritization, and implementability matter more.
Should an audit include every scanner warning?
It should review relevant warnings, verify them, group repeated patterns, and exclude or clearly label noise that does not justify action.
Does an audit include implementation?
Only when the scope says so. Diagnosis, implementation planning, deployment, and validation should be priced and owned explicitly.
Keep the Next Step Small
Use the related guides to confirm what the page needs. Ask for support only when the change reaches code, templates, or server settings you do not want to guess at.
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