Practical templates and real-world examples make it faster to build a technical SEO audit scoring rubric that your team will actually use. This page walks through a reusable template, explains how to adapt it to different site types, and provides sample scores to illustrate how the rubric behaves in practice.
The template is organized into categories, each containing measurable criteria. Categories should reflect the realities of technical SEO and the priorities of your organization. A recommended starting set of categories is:
Crawlability and robots configuration
Indexability and canonical strategy
Site architecture and internal linking
Page performance and Core Web Vitals
Mobile usability
Security and HTTPS
Structured data and metadata
Every row in the template represents a single criterion. Suggested columns are:
Category
Criterion description
Measurement method (tool/metric)
Scoring scale (e.g., 0–2 or 0–3)
Weight (numeric multiplier)
Observed value / notes
Calculated weighted score
Choose a scale that balances granularity with ease of use. A three-point scale (0 = fail, 1 = partial, 2 = pass) is compact and works well for most teams. A four-point or five-point scale can be used if you need more nuance, but it also increases subjectivity and review time.
Here are concrete examples you can include as rows in your template:
Crawlable by default: 0 if entire site blocked by robots.txt, 1 if critical sections blocked, 2 if no blocking issues.
HTTP status codes: 0 if >5% of indexed URLs return 4xx/5xx, 1 if 1–5% affected, 2 if <1% affected.
Canonical consistency: 0 if conflicting canonicals exist, 1 if inconsistent but functional, 2 if canonicals are correct and uniform.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): 0 if site fails Core Web Vitals for >50% of key pages, 1 if borderline, 2 if within thresholds.
Mobile viewport & usability: 0 if failing mobile-friendly checks on primary templates, 1 if minor issues, 2 if mobile ready.
Not all criteria are equal. Apply weights to favor items that are critical to search visibility or business KPIs. For example, crawlability and canonicalization might have higher weights for indexing-critical sites, while Core Web Vitals could be more heavily weighted for high-traffic consumer sites.
Imagine a product category page audit with these simplified results using a 0–2 scale and weights:
Crawlability (weight 3): score 2 -> weighted 6
Core Web Vitals (weight 2): score 1 -> weighted 2
Canonicalization (weight 3): score 0 -> weighted 0
Structured data (weight 1): score 1 -> weighted 1
Sum weighted scores = 9. Sum max possible = (3*2)+(2*2)+(3*2)+(1*2) = 18. Normalized score = 9/18 * 100 = 50. This indicates medium risk and a need to prioritize canonical issues first due to their high weight.
Adapt category weights and included criteria based on site type. For e-commerce prioritize product schema and pagination; for news sites emphasize crawl budgets and freshness; for SaaS focus on dynamic rendering and API-powered pages. Document assumptions so the rubric is transparent and repeatable.
Technical SEO evolves. Version your template, document changes, and run calibration sessions so different auditors score consistently. Keep a changelog that records why weights or criteria changed (e.g., algorithm updates, new business objectives).
Include a library of scored sample pages in your documentation so new auditors can practice and compare results. Pair samples with explanations of edge cases and borderline judgments to reduce subjectivity.
Download a base template, run a pilot audit on a representative subset of pages, review scoring consistency across reviewers, and refine weights based on observed business impact. The template will mature as you apply it to more audits and aggregate results across the site.