An SEO audit is the backbone of every effective optimisation strategy. It reveals where your website is underperforming and highlights what’s holding your rankings back. But audits can be overwhelming without a clear structure — that’s where a template comes in.

A great SEO audit doesn’t just find problems — it uncovers opportunities.

This step-by-step SEO audit template gives you a fast, actionable system for analysing your site’s health, identifying growth areas, and aligning your SEO with Google’s modern AI-driven search systems.

Why You Need an SEO Audit Template

An SEO audit template → turns → complex data into clear, prioritised insights.

Instead of checking random metrics, you’ll follow a defined structure that ensures nothing gets overlooked. Whether you’re auditing a single page or an entire domain, this system provides a repeatable framework that guides both strategy and execution.

A complete SEO audit should assess:

1. Technical Health — How well your site performs for crawlers and users.
2. On-Page SEO — Content relevance, keyword usage, and E-E-A-T.
3. Off-Page SEO — Backlinks, authority, and reputation.
4. Performance Metrics — What’s improving, what’s stagnating, and why.

For a complementary process, pair this with your Content Auditing Framework.

Consistency turns audits into intelligence.

Step 1: Technical SEO Audit

Technical SEO → ensures → your site is accessible, indexable, and fast.

✓ Crawlability and Indexation

• Check with Google Search Console’s “Pages” report.
• Review robots.txt and XML sitemap for exclusions.
• Identify crawl errors (404s, redirect loops, soft 404s).
• Ensure canonical tags are used correctly.

✓ Core Web Vitals

• Test with Google PageSpeed Insights.
• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): under 2.5s.
• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): under 0.1.
• INP (Interaction to Next Paint): under 200ms.

✓ Mobile Usability

• Confirm responsive design.
• Test mobile rendering and load speed.

✓ Structured Data and Schema

• Validate schema markup (Article, FAQ, Product, etc.).
• Use JSON-LD format.
• Test using Google’s Rich Results tool.

✓ HTTPS and Security

• Verify SSL certificate and canonical HTTPS URLs.
• Check mixed-content issues.

For AI-led crawling insights, read AI and Indexing: How Googlebot Uses Machine Learning to Prioritise Content.

A technically sound site gives your content a fighting chance to rank.

Step 2: On-Page SEO Audit

On-page SEO → aligns → your content with search intent and context.

✓ Keyword Relevance

• Ensure each page targets one clear topic or intent.
• Check keyword placement in H1, meta title, intro, and headings.
• Evaluate keyword cannibalisation across similar URLs.

✓ Content Depth and E-E-A-T

• Assess coverage of key subtopics and entities.
• Verify author attribution, publication dates, and references.
• Add first-hand experience or case studies where missing.

✓ Meta Tags

• Meta Titles: Unique, under 60 characters, keyword optimised.
• Meta Descriptions: Compelling summaries under 160 characters.
• Include primary and secondary keywords naturally.

✓ Internal Linking

• Link between related pages and topic clusters.
• Use descriptive anchor text based on entities, not generic terms.
• Ensure orphan pages are eliminated.

For optimised on-page systems, see SEO Blog Writing Framework.

On-page audits reveal how well your site speaks Google’s language.

Step 3: Off-Page SEO Audit

Off-page SEO → measures → your authority and credibility across the web.

✓ Backlink Profile Analysis

• Use Ahrefs, Semrush, or Google Search Console to review backlinks.
• Identify spammy or irrelevant links for disavow.
• Assess referring domains by topical relevance.

✓ Link Velocity and Distribution

• Review link growth trends.
• Balance branded, exact-match, and naked URLs.

✓ Brand Mentions and Citations

• Track unlinked brand mentions.
• Ensure NAP (Name, Address, Phone) consistency across platforms.

✓ Competitor Authority Gap

• Compare your domain authority and link profile against competitors.
• Identify high-authority sites linking to them but not to you.

For link-building frameworks, check Internal Linking for SEO.

Off-page audits show how trustworthy your digital footprint really is.

Step 4: Content and Topical Authority Audit

Topical authority → strengthens → long-term rankings and relevance.

✓ Content Coverage

• Map your current pages to target topics and subtopics.
• Identify missing clusters or underdeveloped areas.
• Evaluate semantic relationships between articles.

✓ Entity Optimisation

• Ensure consistent entity references across your site.
• Use structured data to connect entities to the Knowledge Graph.

✓ Content Freshness

• Identify outdated pages using low CTR or declining traffic.
• Refresh content quarterly to maintain recency signals.

✓ Duplicate and Thin Content

• Use tools like Siteliner or Screaming Frog to find near-duplicates.
• Merge or redirect redundant URLs.

For deeper semantic structuring, see Entity Optimisation for SEO.

Authority isn’t built by keywords — it’s built by clarity and coverage.

Step 5: Performance and Analytics Audit

Performance analysis → reveals → what’s working and what isn’t.

✓ Traffic Trends

• Analyse organic traffic growth using GA4.
• Segment data by landing page, country, and device.

✓ Rankings and Visibility

• Use Ahrefs or Semrush to track keyword performance.
• Identify pages losing positions and investigate causes.

✓ Engagement Metrics

• Check bounce rate, dwell time, and exit rate for intent satisfaction.

✓ Conversion Tracking

• Review goal completions and assisted conversions.
• Ensure event tracking is configured correctly in GA4.

For KPI alignment, read How to Measure SEO Content Performance (KPIs & Tools).

==You can’t improve what you don’t measure.==

Step 6: AI and Automation for SEO Audits

AI → accelerates → the audit process by automating repetitive checks.

Use tools like ChatGPT, Make, and n8n to:

• Generate audit summaries and recommendations.
• Detect duplicate metadata across large sites.
• Automate crawl report aggregation and categorisation.
• Draft remediation actions for each issue.

AI won’t replace human strategy — it refines it.

For setup examples, see Automating SEO Tasks with AI Tools (Make, n8n, ChatGPT).

Automation saves time; human judgment ensures accuracy.

Step 7: Prioritise Issues and Create an Action Plan

After identifying issues, prioritise fixes using the Impact vs. Effort Matrix:

• High Impact / Low Effort: Quick wins (meta tags, broken links).
• High Impact / High Effort: Core Web Vitals, site speed.
• Low Impact / Low Effort: Minor schema or alt text issues.
• Low Impact / High Effort: Non-critical redesigns.

Assign tasks by priority and set clear ownership for each fix.

An audit without prioritisation is just a list.

Step 8: Report and Re-Audit

Finally, summarise findings and actions in a visual report:

• Use Looker Studio or Google Sheets for dashboards.
• Highlight improvements in crawl health, visibility, and authority.
• Schedule audits every quarter to track ongoing performance.

Integrate insights with your Content Auditing Framework for continuous improvement.

The best audits never end — they evolve.

Conclusion

An SEO audit template is your roadmap for uncovering issues, prioritising actions, and accelerating results. By following a structured, repeatable system, you transform data into strategy and ensure your site remains fast, findable, and future-ready.

Next step: Conduct your next audit using this framework, then feed results into your Content Auditing Framework to close the optimisation loop.