An SEO audit is only useful when it answers a specific question. “Is the site crawlable and indexable the way we think it is?” is a different project from “Which pages should we keep, refresh, merge, or kill?” and both are different from “Is this traffic drop a manual action, algorithmic suppression, or something we broke in a release?” Bundling all of that into one generic pass usually produces a long report and a short list of things anyone will actually fix.
That is why we publish six audit types. A technical SEO audit digs into crawl paths, index bloat, canonicals, redirects, JavaScript rendering, and Core Web Vitals. A content audit scores demand, quality, cannibalization, and decay so editors get keep, refresh, merge, or remove decisions. A backlink audit separates toxic risk from noise and maps competitor gaps. A site migration audit covers staging, launch, and post-launch verification so a redesign does not erase organic traffic. A penalty and recovery audit builds an evidence trail when Search Console or the ranking pattern looks like suppression. An ecommerce SEO audit focuses on facets, product and category templates, variants, and crawl budget waste on large catalogues.
Every engagement still follows the same product shape: an executive summary, a prioritised findings register scored by impact and effort, per-issue evidence and fix paths, and ticket-ready specs. You can see that structure on What you get. Timelines and access requirements live on How we work. Quotes are always custom. Site size, stack, and how much historical data you can share change the effort, so we do not publish a rate card.
Many clients start with one primary audit and add a second pass only if the first register proves the need. A technical audit often surfaces content or internal-linking work. A recovery audit may hand off into technical and backlink cleanup. We will not invent a six-audit package when one focused diagnosis is enough.
Choosing a type is usually easier than people expect once you name the symptom. If engineers keep fixing redirects while rankings still slide, you may need content or recovery work, not another crawl. If a redesign is three months out, start with a migration plan before you rewrite category copy. If referring-domain quality looks suspicious after a past agency engagement, a backlink audit should come before you spend another quarter on template polish. The cards below describe each type in more detail. If you are unsure, say so on the contact form and we will recommend a scope before we quote.
Who buys these audits varies. In-house SEO leads use them to brief engineering and content without spending weeks assembling evidence themselves. Founders use them when organic revenue matters and they need a clear build order. Agencies use them as a specialist second opinion before taking on a large account, or when a client needs a neutral register they can share with multiple vendors. In every case the useful output is the same: a prioritised diagnosis, not a vague list of SEO ideas.