Is a longer audit report a better audit report? No. Most clients stop reading after page three, and a 60-page PDF of crawler exports rarely gets acted on.
A good report is short, ordered by effort and impact, and tells a developer exactly what to change. This template is built that way. Copy the structure, fill it from your own crawl and Search Console data, and keep only the sections your site needs.
Start With a One-Page Summary
The summary is the only page some readers will open. Keep it to one page and put it first.
It needs four parts. State the scope: which domain, which date range, which tools. Then give a health verdict in one sentence, such as “Indexing is healthy; speed and duplicate titles are the main drag.” Next, list the top five fixes in priority order. Finally, name who owns each fix.
Skip scores like “SEO health: 72/100.” Tool scores differ between vendors and tell a site owner nothing about what to do next. A ranked fix list does.
Set the Scope and Data Sources
Scope stops arguments later. Write down the property you audited, the crawl date, and the data sources before any findings.
A typical source list looks like this:
- Google Search Console, the last 16 months of Performance data
- A full crawl from Screaming Frog SEO Spider, whose free version stops at 500 URLs
- PageSpeed Insights field data for the top templates
- The live
robots.txtand XML sitemap
Note the crawl settings too. If you crawled as Googlebot Smartphone with JavaScript rendering on, say so. A reader comparing your numbers to their own crawl needs to know why they differ.
Report Crawlability and Indexing Findings
Crawl and index problems come first because nothing else matters if Google cannot reach or store the page.
Diagnose in Search Console. Open Indexing > Pages and read the “Why pages aren’t indexed” table. Group URLs by reason, not by tool. The reasons that deserve a line in your report are “Crawled – currently not indexed,” “Duplicate without user-selected canonical,” “Blocked by robots.txt,” and “Soft 404.”
Show the evidence, not just the count. For a robots.txt problem, paste the offending lines:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-content/
Disallow: /*?
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xmlHere, Disallow: /wp-content/ blocks theme CSS and JavaScript that Google needs to render pages, and Disallow: /*? blocks every URL containing a query string. Each line gets its own finding, a fix, and a warning to test with the robots.txt report in Search Console before deploying.
Always state the risk. Editing robots.txt on a live site can deindex sections within days of the next crawl.
Report On-Page Findings by Template, Not by URL
Page-level problems repeat across templates, so report them that way. Listing 400 duplicate titles teaches nothing; “all product pages use the pattern Product | Brand” is one fix.
Pull the data from your crawler’s page titles, meta descriptions, H1 and canonical tabs. For each issue, give the pattern, the count, three example URLs, and the change. Google’s own SEO Starter Guide is the right citation for title and snippet advice, since it is the vendor’s documentation.
Be careful with “missing meta description.” Google often rewrites snippets anyway, so rank it low. Missing or duplicated title tags on revenue pages rank much higher. Priority labels are what make the report useful.
Include a Speed and Core Web Vitals Section
Large images are the most common slow-page cause. They also hurt real users on mobile first.
Use field data, not lab scores, as the headline. In Search Console, open Experience > Core Web Vitals and note which URL groups fail. Google’s published “good” thresholds are LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) at or under 2.5 seconds, INP (Interaction to Next Paint) at or under 200 milliseconds, and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) at or under 0.1, measured at the 75th percentile of visits.
Then run one representative URL per template through PageSpeed Insights and record the diagnosis, not the score. “Hero image is 1.8 MB and not preloaded” is a finding. “Performance 54” is not.
If you want the deeper method, the step-by-step audit guide covers how this fits into a full process.
Format Findings in a Comparison Layout
Every finding should use the same four-field layout. Consistency lets a developer scan fast and lets you reuse the template across clients.
The Finding Card
Each issue gets: what is wrong, where it was found, why it matters, and the fix. Keep each field to one or two sentences.
| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| Issue | 212 product URLs canonicalize to a different page |
| Evidence | Screaming Frog, Canonicals tab, “Canonicalised” filter |
| Impact | Google may ignore these pages in results |
| Fix | Self-referencing canonical on each product URL |
The Priority Matrix
Score each finding on two axes: impact and effort. Label them High, Medium or Low in plain words, not decimals. High impact with low effort goes at the top of the list. Low impact with high effort goes in an appendix or gets dropped.
Tool Choice for the Evidence
Search Console shows what Google sees. A crawler shows what your site serves. You need both, because they disagree often. Be honest in the report when a number comes from only one source.
Add Content and Internal Linking Checks
Content findings are judgment calls, so label them as opinion backed by data. Use Search Console’s Performance report to find pages with impressions but almost no clicks, then check whether the title matches the search intent.
For internal links, export “Inlinks” from your crawler and list important pages with fewer than three internal links pointing at them. Orphan pages, which have none, are the clearest finding. A sitemap listing a page does not replace a real link to it.
Mention thin or duplicate content only with examples. “Fourteen location pages share the same 90 words” is actionable. “Content quality could improve” is not.
A technical audit checklist is a handy companion when you need a repeatable list of what to check.
Close the Report With an Action Plan
The action plan is the second page people read, so make it a table with owners and order, not a paragraph.
Use this layout: task, owner, effort in hours, priority, and a verification step. The verification column is the one most reports forget. For each fix, say how you will confirm it worked, such as “re-crawl, then use URL Inspection to request indexing on five sample pages.”
Group tasks into three waves. Wave one is blocking issues like robots rules and noindex tags. Wave two is template fixes like titles and canonicals. Wave three is content and link work. Note that Google can take days to weeks to reprocess changes, and that results depend on the site.
What a Good Report Leaves Out
A report earns trust by what it cuts. Drop findings you cannot tie to a fix. Drop vendor “health scores.” Drop screenshots of full crawler exports; attach the CSV instead.
Keep the final document short enough that the person paying for it reads all of it. For most small and mid-size sites, that is five to ten pages plus a spreadsheet appendix.
This template is also not for everyone. A five-page brochure site does not need a priority matrix, and a one-page summary with a short list will do. Enterprise sites with millions of URLs need sampling and segmented crawls this template does not cover.
If you are still choosing software for the crawl, the list of free SEO audit tools for beginners is a reasonable place to start.
Turning the Template Into a Habit
Save the structure as a document with empty finding cards, then reuse it. Re-run the same audit every quarter on the same sources so you can compare like with like. Change only what the site’s size demands.
The aim is not a prettier PDF. It is a short list that a developer can work through in order, with a way to prove each item is done. Start with the summary, fill the cards from real data, and let the action plan do the persuading.
Be honest about what the report cannot do. It diagnoses; it does not guarantee rankings or traffic. What usually happens is that fixing blocking issues first produces the clearest gains, while polish work shows up slowly, if at all.
Frequently asked questions
What should an SEO audit report include at minimum?
At minimum: a one-page summary, scope and data sources, indexing findings, on-page issues grouped by template, speed data, and a prioritized action plan with owners. Everything else is optional depending on the site.
How long should an SEO audit report be?
Five to ten pages plus a spreadsheet appendix suits most small and mid-size sites. Longer reports get skimmed. Put raw crawler exports in an attachment, not in the report body.
Can I use a free tool to build the report?
Yes. Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights are free, and Screaming Frog’s free version crawls up to 500 URLs. That covers many small sites. Larger sites need a paid crawler or a segmented crawl.
How often should I redo the audit?
Quarterly works for most active sites, and again after a redesign, migration or CMS change. Use the same data sources each time so the results are comparable.
Should I include a health score?
I would not. Scores differ by vendor and do not tell anyone what to fix. A ranked list of fixes with a clear owner is more useful and easier to defend.
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