The SEO audit checklist: what a good audit covers

An SEO audit is only as good as what it finds and how clearly it says what to do. Use this checklist to judge any audit, including ours. If a report skips more than a few of these, ask why.

1. It starts with your goals

A good audit begins by asking what you want from your site: orders, calls, sign-ups. A list of problems without a goal is trivia. Look for a short section at the start that states your objectives and the pages that matter most.

2. It crawls the site and says what it can't see

The audit should list the number of URLs crawled, how, and which areas were not covered (login areas, blocked sections, JavaScript-heavy pages). If it doesn't say what it missed, you can't trust what it found.

3. Technical checks

• Status codes: broken pages, redirect chains, soft 404s
• Indexing: pages that should be indexed but aren't, and the reverse
• Canonical tags and duplicates
• Robots.txt and XML sitemap
• Page speed and Core Web Vitals on your key templates
• Mobile usability
• Structured data validity
• Rendering of JavaScript content
• HTTPS and security headers

4. Content and keyword checks

• Pages that target nothing in particular
• Several pages competing for the same query
• Thin or outdated pages worth merging or refreshing
• Missing pages for searches your customers make
• Titles and headings that match what people actually type
• Danish-language intent checked, not only translated English terms

5. Link checks

• Who links to you, and which links are valuable
• Links that look risky and what to do about them
• How your link profile compares with two or three real competitors
• Internal links: do your most important pages get enough?

6. It ranks the findings

This is the part most audits fail. A list of 140 issues is not a plan. Each finding should have a priority, an effort estimate and an expected impact. You should be able to see the first ten things to do on a single page.

7. It's readable by two audiences

One part for the decision-maker, in plain language. One part for the developer, with tickets and acceptance checks. Both should be in the same document.

8. It tells you what happens next, and what it costs

A good audit ends with next steps and doesn't assume you'll buy more from the author. It should be usable whether or not you hire them.

That's the standard we hold our own audit to. It's a fixed price from DKK 7,500, delivered in five working days for a small site, and it's yours to take anywhere.