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The scope tab. Your domain, your page count, and the five to ten URLs that actually drive revenue. Every judgement call downstream is made against that list, so the audit stays focused on pages that matter.
Free Template
The SEO Audit Template that tells you what to fix first
Most SEO audits produce a list. This one produces a decision. Work through 120 checkpoints across seven sections, score each one as you go, and finish with a ranked fix list you can take straight into a sprint planning meeting — or into a conversation with your leadership team.
Get the TemplateFree · Google Sheets + Excel · No credit card, no trial
- Weighted scoring, not a flat checklist
- Auto-generated priority fix list
- Includes AI search visibility
- Format
- Google Sheets + Excel
- Sections
- 7 audit areas
- Checkpoints
- 120 scored items
- Time to complete
- 2–4 hours
What's inside
Six tabs. Two you fill in.
The file is a single workbook. You only ever type in two of its tabs — the rest calculate, rank, and summarize on their own.
The Audit Checklist
120 checkpoints across 7 sections. Each one has a plain-language pass condition, a severity weight, and a notes column. Mark Pass, Fail, or N/A from the dropdown — the scoring does the rest.
The Scorecard
A weighted score out of 100 for each of the seven sections plus an overall site health score. Because the weights are set by impact, a failed canonical tag costs you more than a missing alt attribute — the way it should.
The Priority Fix List
Every failed checkpoint sorted by impact against effort, so the top of the list is genuinely where to start. This is the tab you screenshot for the stakeholder deck.
The Executive Summary
A one-page view built for someone who will never open the checklist tab: overall score, the three biggest problems in a sentence each, and what you need in order to fix them.
The Re-Audit Log
Run the audit again in 90 days and the log tracks each section score over time — turning a one-off project into the trend line that proves your work is landing.
The framework
The seven sections of the audit
Here is the entire structure of the audit, in the order the template walks you through it. Each section builds on the one before it — there is no point in polishing title tags on pages Google has not been allowed to crawl.
01Highest weight
Crawl & Indexation
Whether search engines can reach your pages, and whether they have decided to keep them. Failures here make every other fix irrelevant, which is why this section carries the most weight and comes first.
- robots.txt exists and returns a 200 status
- robots.txt does not block anything you want ranked
- No staging-era "Disallow: /" left in place
- The sitemap lists only canonical, indexable, 200-status URLs
- Indexed page count matches the number of pages you meant to rank
- No revenue page carries a noindex tag or X-Robots-Tag
02High weight
Site Architecture & Internal Links
How authority moves through the site and how quickly anything important can be reached. Most sites lose more ranking potential here than anywhere else, and almost nobody audits it properly.
- Every revenue page is within three clicks of the homepage
- No orphan pages
- Primary navigation is crawlable HTML links
- No redirect loops
- Internal anchor text is descriptive
- Priority pages receive more internal links than low-value pages
03High weight
Technical Health & Rendering
Speed, stability, and whether your content actually exists in the HTML crawlers receive. Client-side rendering problems are the most common cause of a site that looks fine to you and invisible to search.
- LCP passes on mobile
- Body content appears in view-source, not only after JavaScript
- Internal links exist in the raw HTML
- Mobile shows the same substantive content as desktop
- HTTPS is enforced sitewide with a valid certificate
- CLS passes on mobile
04High weight
On-Page & Content Quality
Whether each page makes an unambiguous claim about what it is for, and whether it actually satisfies the person who lands on it. This is where the checklist stops being mechanical and starts asking harder questions.
- The H1 states what the page is about and matches intent
- Title tags are unique across the site
- No two pages target the same primary query
- Content depth is comparable to what currently ranks
- The page answers its primary question in the first 100 words
- Content is genuinely original
05Medium weight
Keyword & SERP Performance
What you currently rank for versus what you meant to rank for. The gap between those two lists is usually the fastest revenue in the entire audit, and closing it costs nothing.
- Every priority page has one documented target keyword
- A keyword-to-URL map exists and is current
- Search intent matches page format
- No two URLs swap positions for the same query
- Striking-distance keywords have been identified
- High-impression, low-CTR pages flagged for rewrite
06Medium weight
Off-Page & Authority
An honest read on how much authority you have, where it came from, and whether any of it is a liability. Deliberately the shortest section — for most in-house teams this is the least actionable area, and treating it as the main event is a common and expensive mistake.
- Google Business Profile is claimed, complete, and active
- Referring domain count benchmarked against top competitors
- Obvious spam or paid-link patterns have been identified
- Links lost in the past 12 months reviewed for reclamation
- Name, address, and phone are consistent across directories
- Reviews are being earned steadily
07Growing weight
AI Search & Answer Engine Visibility
Whether AI systems can read, understand, and cite you. Nearly every SEO audit template still in circulation was written before this mattered. These are the checks genuinely worth running — the speculative parts are deliberately left out.
- Content is fully extractable with JavaScript disabled
- The direct answer sits in the first 100 words
- Question-style headings used where intent is a question
- Key facts appear as text, not only in images or charts
- Organization schema includes sameAs links to real profiles
- Entity naming is consistent everywhere
How to use it
From blank sheet to ranked fix list
The template is designed to be finished in one sitting for a small site, or split across a week for a large one. Either way the process is the same five steps.
Make your copy and set the scope
Open the workbook, make a copy, and fill in the scope tab: the domain, the number of pages, and the five to ten URLs that actually drive revenue. Everything downstream weights against that list, so the audit stays focused on pages that matter rather than every blog post you have ever published.
Pull your data first
Before you score anything, gather Search Console performance and indexing data, an analytics export, and a crawl of the site. The checklist tells you exactly which report each section needs. Collecting it up front is the difference between a two-hour audit and a two-day one.
Work top to bottom, section by section
Start at Crawl & Indexation and do not skip ahead. Mark each checkpoint Pass, Fail, or N/A and leave a short note on every failure — the note becomes the ticket description later, so writing it once saves you writing it twice.
Read the priority list, not the checklist
Once scoring is complete, the priority tab sorts every failure by impact against effort. Take the top ten. That is your next quarter. The remaining items are real, but they are not what is holding the site back, and treating them as equal is how audits die in a spreadsheet.
Re-run it in 90 days
Run the audit again and paste the new scores into the Re-Audit Log as values, so the history sticks. The trend line across sections is what turns an audit into a case for continued investment — and it is far more persuasive to a CFO than a ranking screenshot.
Download the SEO Audit Template + Checklist
One file, yours to copy and reuse on every site you touch. Tell us who you are and it unlocks immediately.
- Format: Google Sheets + Excel
- Sections: 7 audit areas
- Checkpoints: 120 scored items
- Time to complete: 2–4 hours
Get the Template
Instant access — plus a copy sent to your inbox.
Who it's for
Built for the person holding the number
This template was built for the person who owns the traffic number but does not have an SEO team behind them — the one who has to both do the audit and defend the resulting roadmap to someone holding the budget.
It will earn its keep if you are:
- An in-house marketer who inherited a website nobody has properly audited, and needs a defensible starting point rather than a vendor opinion
- A marketing manager briefing an agency who wants to walk into the kickoff already knowing what is wrong, so the first 90 days are spent fixing rather than discovering
- A founder or solo operator who is doing SEO themselves and needs a process that ends in a decision instead of an anxiety spiral
- A consultant or freelancer who wants a repeatable, client-ready audit deliverable that does not require rebuilding a spreadsheet for every engagement
You do not need a technical background. Every checkpoint states its pass condition in plain language and names the free tool that answers it, so nothing in the audit requires a paid platform subscription to complete.
If you are an experienced SEO, the structure will be familiar — but the weighting model and the AI visibility section are worth a look, and the executive summary tab will save you an hour of deck-building on your next client report.
Questions
Before you download
What is an SEO audit template?
An SEO audit template is a structured document that walks you through every area of a website that affects search performance, so nothing gets missed and results stay consistent between audits. This one covers seven sections and 120 checkpoints — crawling and indexation, site architecture, technical health, on-page content, keyword performance, authority, and AI search visibility — and scores each area rather than simply listing findings.
Is the SEO audit template really free?
Yes. Enter your name and email and the download unlocks immediately, with a copy sent to your inbox as a backup. There is no trial, no card, and no drip sequence — one email with your file, and a follow-up only if you reply.
What format is the template in?
It is an Excel workbook that opens natively in Google Sheets, Excel, and Numbers. The scoring formulas work in all three. Make a copy, and it is yours to edit, rename, and reuse across as many sites as you like.
How long does an SEO audit take using this template?
Two to four hours for a site under 100 pages, assuming you gather your Search Console and crawl data before you start scoring. Larger sites take longer, but the template is built to be completed in stages — each section stands on its own, so you can do one per sitting without losing the thread.
What tools do I need to complete the audit?
Google Search Console and a crawler are the only genuine requirements, and both have free options. Each checkpoint names the free tool that answers it. Paid platforms make some steps faster, but nothing in the audit is gated behind a subscription.
Does the template cover AI search and answer engines?
Yes — section seven is dedicated to it, covering content extractability without JavaScript, answer placement, entity markup, llms.txt, AI crawler access, and measuring whether your brand actually appears in AI answers. Most audit templates still in circulation predate this entirely, which is precisely why it is included here.
How is this different from a free SEO audit tool?
Automated tools are excellent at finding machine-detectable problems and useless at judgment calls — whether your content actually satisfies the query, whether two pages are competing, whether a technical finding matters for your business. This template combines both: it tells you which tool output to pull, then asks the questions no crawler can answer, and weights the results by real-world impact.
Can I use it for client work?
Yes. Use it on client sites, rebrand the executive summary tab, and charge for the audit if you like. We only ask that you do not resell the template itself as your own product.
Want the audit done for you?
The template exists because a good audit is genuinely doable in-house. But if you would rather have it run by people who do this every week — and get a roadmap instead of a spreadsheet — that is the work we do.