> How to tell a useful technical SEO audit from a tool export: a clear question, evidence for each finding, a ranked plan, developer tickets, and a plain summary.
>
> Source: https://christopherabraham.com/guides/seo-audit-deliverables/ · Updated 2026-10-06 · By Christopher Abraham

# What a technical SEO audit should give you

By [Christopher Abraham](https://christopherabraham.com/about/) · Published October 6, 2026

You can buy an SEO audit for fifty dollars or fifteen thousand. The cheap ones and some of the expensive ones are the same thing: a crawler's warnings pasted into a document. This guide describes what a useful audit contains, so you can judge one before you pay for it and after you receive it.

## It starts with a question

A useful audit answers something specific. "Why did organic revenue from product pages fall 30% since May?" "What is at risk in a move to Shopify?" "Why are half the location pages not indexed?" The question decides what gets examined and how deeply. An audit with no question examines everything at the same shallow depth and concludes nothing.

**How to judge it:** the first page should restate your question. If it opens with a score out of 100, be wary.

## Findings come with evidence

Every finding should show how the auditor knows it: a screenshot of the rendered HTML missing the product description, a Search Console export showing which pages dropped, a crawl comparison, server response headers, a log excerpt. Evidence lets your developers verify the finding themselves, and it protects you from fixing things that were never broken.

**How to judge it:** pick any finding and ask, "How is this known?" The answer should already be on the page.

## Findings explain the mechanism

"Product pages have low word count" is a symptom. "Product specifications and reviews are mounted by a script that runs only when a visitor scrolls, so crawlers receive 300 words of a 3,000-word page" is a mechanism. Mechanisms tell you what to fix. Symptoms tell you to go find someone who can explain them.

## Separate problems stay separate

Traffic losses often coincide with several things at once: an algorithm update, a plugin change, a backlink spike, a redesign. A good audit treats each as its own line of inquiry and says which ones the evidence actually connects to the loss. Folding everything into one story feels satisfying and leads to fixing the wrong thing.

## Confidence is stated

Not every finding is certain. Good auditors say which conclusions are confirmed, which are likely, and which need more data, and they say what data would settle it. An audit that's equally sure of everything has probably not tested much.

## The plan is ranked

You should finish the audit knowing what to do first. That means a prioritized list, often P0 through P3, where each item has:
- the problem, in one sentence;
- the expected impact, and on which pages;
- an owner, such as your developer, your content editor, or the consultant;
- a rough effort estimate;
- dependencies, if one fix must come before another.

**How to judge it:** could your team start work Monday morning without another meeting?

## Developers get tickets they can build from

For anything that requires code, a strong audit includes developer-ready tickets: what to change, where, exact steps where possible, and acceptance criteria that say how everyone will know it's done. "Event links must be present as anchor elements in the server HTML of /events/" is testable. "Improve crawlability" isn't.

## Leadership gets a summary

A one-page plain-English summary: what's wrong, what it's costing, what it will take, and what to expect afterward. The people who approve the budget shouldn't need to read crawl data to make a decision.

## What a useful audit leaves out
- Hundreds of low-priority warnings with no ranking. Missing alt text on a footer logo isn't why traffic fell.
- Generic best-practice sections copied between clients.
- Guarantees about rankings. Nobody controls Google's decisions.
- Proprietary scores that can't be traced back to evidence.

## After delivery

The audit's value shows up when fixes ship. Ask whether the auditor will verify the fixes against the acceptance criteria, check the live site after deployment, and watch the relevant reports. An audit followed by verification turns findings into results.

## Questions to ask before you hire
1. What question will this audit answer?
2. Can I see an anonymized sample?
3. Who does the actual analysis?
4. Will findings include evidence and confidence?
5. Will developers get tickets with acceptance criteria?
6. Will you verify the fixes?

My own approach is described under [technical SEO audit](https://christopherabraham.com/services/seo-audit/). A worked example: [the scroll-gated product pages case](https://christopherabraham.com/case-studies/scroll-gated-products/).

## Sources
- [Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content)
- [Google Search Central: SEO Starter Guide](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide)
- [Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines (PDF)](https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/hsw-sqrg.pdf)

**[Christopher Abraham](https://christopherabraham.com/about/)** is an independent SEO consultant in Arlington, Virginia, Top Rated on Upwork with 100% Job Success, who writes from his own client work and checks every claim against primary sources. He has built websites since 1994 and practiced SEO since 1998. [How these pages are written](https://christopherabraham.com/about/editorial-policy/) · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisabraham) · [Upwork](https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/chrisjabraham)