Audit deliverable template
SEO Audit Template: Evidence, Impact, Fix, Verification
Document every SEO finding in a consistent format that engineering, content, and leadership can act on.
The template is built around implementation. Each issue needs a reproducible observation, affected scope, business consequence, recommended change, and acceptance criteria.
Keep one mechanism per finding
Do not bundle unrelated title, canonical, speed, and content problems into one ticket. Atomic findings are easier to assign, test, and close.
Use examples and rules
Show representative URLs and the pattern that identifies the whole affected set. This prevents a team from fixing only the examples.
Write acceptance criteria
Describe the expected response, directive, markup, rendered state, or metric after the change. Include both a positive and a negative test where relevant.
Questions & answers
How often should I repeat this process?
Repeat it after major releases or migrations and on a regular cadence for pages that drive leads or revenue. Monthly is useful for active sites; quarterly may be enough for small, stable sites.
Which issue should I fix first?
Prioritize blockers that prevent crawling, indexing, rendering, or conversion. Then work from high-value pages and broadly repeated template issues down to isolated cosmetic improvements.