SEO and digital marketing audit template
A digital marketing audit is a structured review of everything currently driving your marketing, scored so you can see which parts are actually broken rather than which parts feel neglected. This one covers eight areas, weighted by how much damage a gap in each causes. Score every item 0, 1 or 2, and the workbook calculates a total out of 100 with a recommended next move.
- CHECKLIST
- TEMPLATE
- XLSX
- FREE
- Best for
- Anyone inheriting a marketing setup they did not build, or reviewing one before planning next year
- Includes
- PDF checklist + Excel workbook with live scoring
- Time to use
- 60–90 minutes
Free to download and use in your own client work. No email address required.
Most audit checklists hand you two hundred yes/no questions and no way to tell which failures matter. A missing DMARC record and an unmonitored Instagram account are not the same size of problem, but a flat checklist scores them identically.
This audit is weighted. Each of the eight sections carries a share of the total based on how much damage a gap there actually causes, so the final score points at what to fix first.
Preview of the file
How the scoring works
Every item gets one of three scores. The middle option matters most — “partly in place” is where almost all real marketing setups live, and collapsing it into a pass/fail hides the problem.
| Score | Label | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Not in place | Missing entirely, or so broken it produces no value. |
| 1 | Partly in place | Exists but is incomplete, out of date, or not acted on. |
| 2 | In place | Working, current, and someone owns it. |
A section’s score is its total divided by its maximum, multiplied by the section weight. Add the eight weighted sections and you get a score out of 100.
Why the weights are not equal
If your measurement is wrong, every other section’s score is a guess — including the ones that look healthy. That is why measurement carries 20% and social carries 8%. It is not a judgement about which channel matters more commercially; it is about which failure invalidates the most other information.
| Section | Weight | Why it carries this weight |
|---|---|---|
| Measurement and analytics | 20% | If measurement is wrong, every other score is a guess. |
| Website and technical | 15% | The site is the one asset you own outright. |
| Search visibility | 15% | Organic search is usually the cheapest durable channel. |
| Paid media | 12% | Paid is where waste compounds fastest. |
| Content | 10% | Content is the raw material every channel consumes. |
| Email and CRM | 10% | The only audience you are not renting. |
| Social and community | 8% | Cheap to start, expensive to sustain badly. |
| Reporting and governance | 10% | Work that is not reviewed does not improve. |
What your score means
| Score | Band | What to do next |
|---|---|---|
| 85+ | Strong | Focus on growth and testing rather than fixing fundamentals. |
| 65+ | Solid with gaps | Fix the two lowest-scoring sections before adding new channels. |
| 40+ | Fragmented | Stop adding channels. Repair measurement and website basics first. |
| 0+ | Foundational work needed | Treat this as a setup project, not an optimisation project. |
The band matters less than the section breakdown. A score of 72 built on strong measurement and weak social is a completely different situation from a 72 built on excellent social and no working analytics — the second one is not really a 72, because you cannot trust the numbers that produced it.
Score your audit
Work down the eight sections and score each item. Be strict: “we set that up once” is a 1, not a 2 — the top score is for things that are working and have an owner.
The total, the band and your two weakest sections calculate as you go, and your scores are saved in this browser, so a 90-minute audit survives a closed tab. Nothing is sent anywhere.
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out of 100
Score the items below to see your result
Key 0 = not in place 1 = partly in place 2 = in place and owned
Measurement and analytics — 20%
If measurement is wrong, every other score is a guess.
Website and technical — 15%
The site is the one asset you own outright.
Search visibility — 15%
Organic search is usually the cheapest durable channel.
Paid media — 12%
Paid is where waste compounds fastest.
Content — 10%
Content is the raw material every channel consumes.
Email and CRM — 10%
The only audience you are not renting.
Social and community — 8%
Cheap to start, expensive to sustain badly.
Reporting and governance — 10%
Work that is not reviewed does not improve.
The five gaps I find most often
Across unfamiliar accounts, the same five items are unticked far more often than the rest. If you are short of time, check these before anything else:
| Gap | Why it keeps happening | Cost of leaving it |
|---|---|---|
| Internal and agency traffic not excluded | Nobody sets it up on day one, and it is invisible afterwards | Every traffic figure is inflated by an unknown amount |
| Analytics and ad platform conversions disagree | Both are “working”, so nobody compares them | You cannot tell which channel actually produced an outcome |
| Paid traffic landing in the organic bucket | Channel groupings are left at default | SEO looks like it is working while ad budget takes the credit |
| No written UTM convention | It feels too small to document | One campaign splits into three and cannot be merged later |
| Reports sent but not read | No named recipient and no fixed date | Work continues unchanged for months |
None of these are technically difficult. They persist because each one is somebody’s fifteen-minute job and nobody’s responsibility.
What this audit will not tell you
Worth being clear about the limits, because a score invites more confidence than it deserves:
- Whether your strategy is right. The audit checks execution, not choice of direction. A perfectly executed plan aimed at the wrong audience still fails, and would score well here.
- Whether your pricing or product is the problem. Marketing audits routinely surface issues that are commercial rather than marketing — a conversion rate is not fixable by marketing if the price is wrong.
- Whether the numbers are honest. It checks that measurement exists and is configured sensibly. It cannot detect deliberate misreporting.
- How you compare with competitors. The scoring is absolute, not relative. A 60 in an unsophisticated market may be a stronger position than an 80 in a competitive one.
Use it for sequencing work, not for judging strategy.
Turning the audit into a plan
The output of an audit is not a score, it is a decision about sequence. Two rules keep that honest:
- Fix the lowest-weighted-score section first, not the lowest raw score. A section scoring 50% at 20% weight costs you ten points; a section scoring 20% at 8% weight costs you six. The first one is the bigger problem even though the second looks worse.
- Do not add a channel while measurement is below 70%. You will not be able to tell whether the new channel worked, which means you will keep paying for it either way.
Once the audit is done, the report template gives you somewhere to put the numbers each month, and the strategy examples show what a plan built on these findings looks like.
How often to repeat it
Once a quarter is more than most setups need. Twice a year is enough for a stable business, plus one extra whenever something structural changes — a site migration, a new analytics platform, a change of agency, or a new person taking over the channel. Record the date and the score each time; the trend is more useful than any single number.