What should an SEO audit include?
A useful SEO audit tells you what to fix first, why that change matters to your business and how to check that it was done. Start by agreeing on the services, areas and enquiries you care about. Otherwise, a long list of findings can leave you no closer to a decision.
What to expect in the handover
- Scope and evidence: which pages, search terms and periods were reviewed; what was checked directly; and what data was unavailable.
- Findings that explain the problem: where it appears, what supports it, and why it matters to customers or discovery.
- Decisions for important pages: which to retain, improve or combine, and what useful material needs to survive a change.
- A sequence your team can follow: the priority, owner, dependencies and completion test for each major action.
- A way to assess progress: establish the baseline and decide what to measure after the work is live.
What a real page decision looks like
In a RightView review of an automotive workshop, I recommended folding a narrow servicing page into the main service page after moving across the useful comparison and quote information. For a separate location-focused page, the evidence supported a different decision: it appeared ahead of the main service page in the location-specific result I checked. I recommended keeping it and correcting its location and access information.
Those were recommendations. This example doesn't claim either change went live or improved rankings. It shows why the report needs enough evidence for your team to understand and check each decision.
Before you buy an audit
Ask to see one sample finding. Could you hand it to your developer and get the intended change back? Could you check it yourself afterwards? If AI visibility is in scope, ask which buyer questions were tested and how the answers and sources were recorded.
See what the RightView SEO Diagnostic includes.