SEO Audit Template
An SEO audit usually dies in the handover. Not because the analysis was wrong, but because it arrived as forty findings with no order, written in the vocabulary of the person who ran it. This is the report format: eight sections, an executive summary written last and read first, and five findings rather than forty.
FORMAT
DOCX
CONTAINS
8 sections
LAST UPDATED
September 2026
LICENCE
Free, unrestricted
The audit is judged on the document, by somebody who was not in the crawl.
- Why this one
The audit is judged on the document
By somebody who was not in the crawl, has no view on canonical tags, and is deciding whether to fund three months of work.
A report organised around your tools is a report organised around your convenience.
Most SEO audit reports are organised around the tools that produced them. A crawler section, a Search Console section, a Core Web Vitals section, each with its own screenshots. That structure is convenient for the person writing it and useless to the person reading it, who wants to know one thing: what is holding this back, and what should we do first.
So this report is organised around the decision instead. The summary names one constraint. Five findings get the full treatment, with evidence and a commercial consequence. Everything else goes into a table further down, where it is available without competing for attention.
- An executive summary written last and read first, in five sentences
- Five findings rather than forty, each with an evidence row
- A section on what is already working, so nobody breaks it
- A ninety-day sequence with owners outside your own team
- A section stating what you could not access or did not cover
No tool screenshots standing in place of an explanation. If a chart needs a paragraph to interpret, write the paragraph and drop the chart.
- Where this sits
Three things, three jobs
You will probably use all three on the same audit, in this order.
01
STEP ONE
Forty-two checks across indexation, architecture, product pages, technical and content. Free, and the input to everything below.
02
STEP TWO
The working file. Severity, confidence and effort scored, priority calculated, coverage recorded. Cross-discipline, so it holds more than SEO.
03
STEP THREE
This document. The client-facing deliverable, SEO only, with the findings already ranked and the argument already made.
04
OR
Five working days across six disciplines, with a ranked constraint list and a ninety-day sequence.
- The document
Eight sections, in this order
The order is the argument. The summary is written last and appears first; measurement appears last in the report and comes first in the work.
Section
What goes in it
Why it is here
1. Executive summary
Five sentences: the constraint, what it costs, the first thirty days, what you need from them, when to expect movement
The only part some people read. No jargon, no tool names, no scores.
2. Where the site stands
Ten measures with a current figure, a benchmark and a source
Every claim later refers back to this, so it goes early and it gets a source column.
3. The five findings that matter
One block each: finding, evidence, commercial consequence, recommendation, effort, expected change
Five, not forty. A finding with no evidence row belongs further down or nowhere.
4. What is already working
Best-performing templates, anything sound that should not be touched, previous work still paying
An audit listing only faults reads as a sales document, and the faults stop being believed too.
5. Full findings by area
Six tables: indexation, architecture, on-page, performance, off-site, measurement
Everything else, available without competing for attention.
6. The first ninety days
A sequence in four blocks, each with an owner and a success measure
A sequence, not a backlog. Measurement fixes go in weeks one to two regardless of severity.
7. What this did not cover
Out of scope, no access, other disciplines, excluded markets
Silence on an area is read as a clean bill of health for it.
8. Method
Crawl configuration, tools, date ranges and the known limitations of the data
Sampled and modelled data are normal. Presenting them as exact is what causes trouble.
Plus an appendix explaining the severity and effort scales, and a six-point check to run before you send it.
- What is inside
One document, eleven tables
Every table is empty and ready. The prompts are written to be deleted as you replace them.
The report
Eight sections and an appendix, with a prompt under each heading telling you what belongs there and what does not.
- A baseline table of ten measures with a source column
- A repeatable block for each of the five headline findings
- Six area tables with severity and effort columns
- A ninety-day sequence with owners and success measures
The pre-send check
Six lines at the end of the document. Run them before the report leaves your hands.
- The summary names one constraint, not five
- Every headline finding has evidence against it
- Section four is not empty
- Every ninety-day row has a named owner
Nothing is locked or styled to our brand. Rename it, restyle it, put your own logo on it and send it to a client.
- How to use it
Writing the report after the audit
Half a day if the findings are already scored. Longer if they are not, and that is the part worth doing properly.
01
Fill the baseline table first
Ten measures with a source against each. Do this before writing any prose, because the gap between indexed pages and pages receiving any organic click usually tells you what the report is about.
02
Pick the five, and be ruthless
Rank everything, take the top five, and put the rest in section five. If you cannot choose five, you have not finished analysing. Handing over forty transfers that job to somebody with less information than you.
03
Write the commercial consequence, not the technical one
Duplicate canonicals is a description. Four hundred product pages competing with each other for the same query, on a catalogue where those products carry a third of revenue, is a consequence.
04
Fill section four honestly
What is already working. It stops somebody breaking the template that carries the site during the remediation, and it is the section that makes the criticism believable.
05
Sequence the ninety days with owners outside your team
A plan where every owner is you is a plan that stalls the first time a developer is busy. Name the client-side people and agree it before the report is sent, not after.
06
Write the executive summary last
Five sentences, no jargon, one constraint. If you cannot name one constraint, the summary will name five and the client will act on none of them.
Then run the six-point check at the end of the document. It catches the things that get noticed in the meeting rather than at the desk.
- Getting it wrong
Six ways audit reports fail
None of these are analysis failures. All six happen after the work is done.
Organised around your tools
A crawler section, a Search Console section, a Vitals section. Convenient to write, useless to read, and it forces the client to do the synthesis you were paid for.
Forty findings, unranked
The client reads six and acts on none. Five findings with evidence beat forty with screenshots, every time.
Screenshots instead of sentences
A tool export is not a finding. If the chart needs a paragraph to interpret, write the paragraph and drop the chart.
Written in SEO vocabulary
Canonical, hreflang and crawl budget mean nothing to the person approving the spend. Say what it costs and what changes if it is fixed.
No section on what is working
A report of pure criticism reads as a pitch. It also risks somebody optimising away the one template carrying the organic revenue.
Silent on what you could not access
No server logs, no analytics access, staging locked. Say so. Silence is read as coverage, and the assumption surfaces later as a complaint.
If your last report had no section four and no section seven, adding both is worth more than another crawl.
DOWNLOAD
SEO Audit Report — DOCX
Eight sections with prompts you delete as you replace them, eleven tables ready to fill, a scoring appendix, and a six-point check to run before you send it. Written to produce twelve pages rather than forty.
FORMAT
DOCX document
SECTIONS
8, plus appendix
TABLES
11, ready to fill
LICENCE
Free, commercial use
No email address, no sign-up and no watermark. Rebrand it, rename it, put your own logo on it and send it to a client.
- Questions
SEO audit report FAQs
What people ask before downloading it.
How is this different from your audit workbook?
The eCommerce Audit Template is the working file: cross-discipline, scored, sorted, for the person running the audit. This is the deliverable: SEO only, written for the person receiving it. Most audits use both, in that order.
How long should an SEO audit report be?
About twelve pages. Longer than that and the executive summary becomes the whole report, because it is the only part anybody finishes. If a section needs more room it is an appendix, not a longer section.
Why only five findings?
Because an unranked list of forty transfers the prioritisation problem to somebody with less information than you have, and the predictable result is that nothing happens. The other thirty are still in section five; they are just not competing for attention.
Should I include screenshots?
Sparingly, and never instead of a sentence. A tool export is evidence, not a finding. If the chart needs a paragraph to interpret, the paragraph is the content and the chart is decoration.
Do I have to include what is working?
You do not have to, and we would. It stops somebody optimising away the template that carries your organic revenue, and a report of pure criticism reads as a pitch rather than an assessment.
Can I use this for client work?
Yes, commercially, with no attribution required. Restyle it, rebrand it, put your own logo on it. It is deliberately unstyled so that rebranding it takes minutes.
What if I could not get analytics access?
Write that in section seven. An audit with gaps stated plainly is more credible than one that implies coverage it did not have, and the gap usually turns out to be a finding in itself.
Is this eCommerce specific?
The structure works for any site. The baseline table and the area breakdown assume a catalogue, so a non-eCommerce audit would swap a few rows. The eCommerce SEO checklist is the eCommerce-specific input.
- Keep going
Related templates and checklists
TEMPLATE
The working file this report is written from: scored findings, calculated priority, recorded coverage.
CHECKLIST
Forty-two checks across indexation, architecture, product pages, technical and content.
CHECKLIST
Forty-two technical checks for the crawlability, indexation and performance sections.
Rather receive one than write one?
The free audit covers SEO alongside five other disciplines, arrives as a ranked constraint list with a ninety-day sequence, and is run by the specialists who do each discipline daily.