Technical SEO audit services: scope, deliverables, pricing

A proposal arrives with one line on it: “Technical SEO audit, three weeks.” Whether that is good value depends entirely on what sits behind the line. Technical SEO audit services range from a crawler export with comments to a multi-week investigation with server logs, rendering tests and a sprint-ready backlog, and both get called a technical audit.

This reference breaks the work into its deliverables so you can compare proposals line by line.

The deliverables at a glance

Deliverable	Question it answers	Inputs needed	Usually included?
Crawl analysis	Can crawlers reach every page that matters, without errors or loops?	A full-site crawl	Always
Indexation review	Which pages does Google index, and why not the rest?	Search Console access	Always
Rendering review	Is the content in the HTML, or only after JavaScript runs?	Crawls with and without rendering, URL Inspection	Sites built on JavaScript frameworks
Log file analysis	Where do Googlebot and other crawlers actually spend their requests?	30 or more days of server or CDN logs	Large sites; often an add-on
Performance diagnostics	Which templates fail Core Web Vitals, and why?	Field data plus lab tests	Always
Structured data review	Is markup valid, complete and consistent with the page?	Crawl extraction	Usually
International setup	Do language and country versions reference each other correctly?	Crawl of all versions	When applicable
AI crawler access	Can AI search crawlers fetch and read the pages?	robots.txt, CDN and firewall rules	Increasingly
Prioritised roadmap	What to fix first, who fixes it, how long it takes	Everything above	Always

Crawl analysis

The crawl is the raw material, not the deliverable. A good write-up states the crawl settings (user agent, JavaScript rendering on or off, URL limits, any excluded paths), then reports on status codes, redirect chains, broken internal links, duplicate titles, canonical conflicts and orphan pages. Orphans can only be found by comparing the crawl with your sitemap, Search Console or analytics, so ask whether that comparison is included.

What good looks like: issues grouped by template with a count and three to five example URLs each, not a 40,000-row spreadsheet.

Indexation review

This compares three lists: what the crawler found, what your XML sitemap declares, and what Search Console reports as indexed. Each gap gets an explanation. Pages in the sitemap but not indexed are the priority, followed by indexed pages that should not be (parameter URLs, internal search, staging hosts). Our Search Console audit walkthrough shows the reports involved.

What good looks like: every “not indexed” reason in Search Console mapped to a cause and a fix, plus a note on Google-selected canonicals that differ from yours.

Rendering review

Google says it processes JavaScript in three phases (crawling, rendering and indexing) and that pages can wait in a render queue for longer than a few seconds; it also notes that server-side rendering or pre-rendering remains a good idea because not all bots can run JavaScript (JavaScript SEO basics).

Our view: many AI crawlers read raw HTML only, so a page that relies on client-side rendering can be fine in Google and invisible to an assistant. A rendering review should compare the raw HTML with the rendered DOM for each template and list what is missing: body text, links, canonical tags, structured data. The JavaScript rendering entry covers the background.

Log file analysis

Logs show every request crawlers actually made, which no crawler simulation can. That is valuable on large sites, where wasted crawling on parameters or redirects delays discovery of new pages.

It is also the line item most often sold where it is not needed. Google says its crawl budget guidance is aimed at sites with roughly a million or more unique pages, or 10,000 or more pages that change daily (crawl budget guide), and that its Crawl Stats report, which summarises the same activity, is usually unnecessary for sites under a thousand pages (Crawl Stats report help). If a proposal charges for log analysis on a 300-page site, ask what question it will answer.

What good looks like: crawl share by section and status code, verified Googlebot requests (not spoofed user agents), and a list of URL patterns that consume crawling without earning traffic.

Performance diagnostics

Field data from real users decides whether a template passes Core Web Vitals; lab data explains why. A good deliverable names the Largest Contentful Paint element for each failing template, the scripts behind slow interactions, and the elements that shift during load, with a specific fix for each. A single Lighthouse score for the home page is not performance diagnostics.

Structured data review

The audit should validate every JSON-LD type on each template, check required properties and confirm that the markup matches what is visible on the page. It should also tell you what not to add. HowTo rich results ended in 2023 and FAQ rich results ended for all sites in May 2026, so an audit recommending them for rich results is out of date. Use the schema markup validator to spot-check its findings.

International setup and AI crawler access

For multilingual sites, the audit checks that every page in a hreflang set lists itself and all alternates, with valid codes and an x-default. For AI access, it checks robots.txt rules and CDN or firewall settings against named crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, and tests that requests using those user agents receive the page. The AI crawlers guide lists what each bot does.

Prioritised roadmap

Everything above feeds one backlog. Each item should have the issue, evidence, affected templates or URL patterns, the fix, an owner, an effort estimate and an expected impact. Grouping items into two-week sprints makes it usable straight away.

How scope drives price

Price follows hours, and hours follow the number of templates, the rendering setup and the extras. Research shows most SEO firms listed on Clutch charge $100 to $149 an hour (Clutch pricing guide); the ranges below apply that rate band and are our estimate, not published prices.

Site profile	Typical deliverables	Indicative effort	Indicative price (our view)
Brochure or small business site on a standard CMS	Crawl, indexation, performance, structured data, roadmap	8–15 hours	About $800–$2,250
Mid-size content or ecommerce site, a few thousand to 50,000 URLs	Above plus rendering review and international checks	25–50 hours	About $2,500–$7,500
Large, JavaScript-framework or multi-country site	All deliverables including logs	60–120 hours	About $6,000–$18,000
Migration audit	URL mapping, staging crawl, launch-day checks, post-launch monitoring	Varies with URL count	Usually quoted separately

Questions that separate proposals

1. Which crawler, user agent and rendering settings will you use, and will you share the configuration?
2. Do you need server logs, how many days, and what question will they answer?
3. Will you test staging before a release, or only production?
4. What format is the output: a PDF, a spreadsheet, or tickets in our tracker?
5. Is a re-crawl after fixes included?
6. What access do you need? Google says read access to Search Console is enough for an audit (Do you need an SEO?).

For the broader buying questions and red flags, see SEO audit services: what they include and what they cost.

What to do next

1. Run the free audit on one URL per template to get a baseline before talking to anyone; it is a sensible first step and shows which issues are simple fixes.
2. Crawl up to 10 pages with the website audit tool to see whether problems repeat across templates.
3. If you want a person to interpret the results, a strategist review can be requested from the audit report.
4. Use the table at the top of this page to compare proposals line by line, and ask for a sample deliverable for each line you are paying for.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a technical SEO audit and a full SEO audit?

A technical audit covers whether search engines can crawl, render and index the site, and how fast it is. A full audit adds content quality, keyword targeting and links. Many sites need the technical part first, because content work is wasted on pages that cannot be indexed.

Do I need log file analysis?

Usually only on large sites. Google aims its crawl budget guidance at sites with roughly a million or more pages, or 10,000 or more that change daily, and says its Crawl Stats report is rarely needed under a thousand pages. On a small site, Search Console data is normally enough.

Can a technical audit be done without Search Console access?

Partly. A crawl, performance tests and structured data checks work from outside. Indexing analysis, Google's chosen canonicals and field Core Web Vitals per template need Search Console, so an audit without it should say what it could not verify.

How long is a technical SEO audit valid?

The findings stay useful until the site changes significantly. A redesign, platform change, new template or large content import can introduce new problems, so plan a re-crawl after each of those rather than relying on an old report.