How to Audit a Website: A Simple 10-Step Checklist for Beginners

While a website may look polished on the surface, unseen performance and security issues can cause serious problems.

A regular website audit reveals these weaknesses and allows site owners to address them promptly before it’s too late.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to audit a website, from diagnosing technical issues to refining content for search engine optimization.

What Is A Website Audit?

A website audit is a thorough review of a website’s assets to improve its performance, functionality, and the user experience.

The auditing process is a core aspect of ongoing website maintenance, pinpointing any issues that must be addressed.

In addition to comprehensively analyzing technical and search engine optimization elements, an audit also covers security and accessibility.

Site owners can then use the audit results to make informed decisions about which elements need improvement.

Essential reading: How to design a website.

Why Website Audits Are Important

The website audit process serves several functions to ensure content is accessible and that visitors can navigate the site smoothly.

Auditing a site begins before it goes live, forming an ongoing process that tracks its assets on both the front and back end.

As a critical aspect of any website project plan, website audits are essential for:

• Identifying and fixing critical technical issues, such as broken links and server errors, that negatively impact the site’s usability.
• Highlighting any bottlenecks that diminish the user experience, along with identifying visual and interactive elements requiring improvement.
• Optimizing all content for search engine results pages, leading to higher traffic and increased conversions.
• Providing clear instructions for strategic decision-making for future website development and application of resources.

By performing regularly scheduled website audits, these critical elements can be assessed and improved across the entire website.

How Often Should You Audit Your Website?

The frequency of website audits depends mainly on the site’s complexity, traffic, and activity levels, and specific industry requirements.

Here’s a general overview of audit frequency rates based on these considerations:

• Personal and small websites: For sites with relatively straightforward architecture and content, it’s recommended to audit them every six months or annually.
• Medium to large websites: In these cases, quarterly or six-monthly audits are optimal to ensure performance standards are maintained.
• E-commerce and niche industry websites: Websites with extensive content, e-commerce functionality, or industry-specific requirements should be audited monthly or quarterly.

If the audit reveals the need for significant changes, website-under-construction pages can be used to inform visitors during downtime.

Types Of Website Audits

Regardless of the type of website being managed, different approaches to auditing are needed to ensure all factors are addressed.

Before we explore the whole process, here are the common types of audits used to improve the experience for website visitors:

• Performance / Speed Audit: One of the most common audit types, a performance audit applies to the site’s overall functionality and loading speeds.
• Technical SEO Audit: The underlying architecture that drives the backend and frontend underpins a technical website audit.
• Content and SEO Audit: Page content, including text and image quality, forms the foundation of a content audit and SEO website audit.
• UX/UI Audit: Assessing the user experience across all web pages ensures navigation is intuitive and enhances visitor retention rates.
• Security Audit: Auditing a site’s design for security vulnerabilities is another vital process, particularly when handling sensitive customer data.
• Accessibility Audit: In many cases, websites must also comply with accessibility requirements to allow people with disabilities to engage with the content.

The application of these audit types can also depend on any new features introduced to the site that need to be monitored.

How to Audit a Website: A Complete Step-By-Step Guide

Whether running a personal blog or a comprehensive business website, the overall auditing process remains essentially the same.

Here’s how to audit a website in 10 steps, from general performance assessments to reviewing design elements and content quality.

Step 1: Assess Page Speed & Website Performance

The first stage of a comprehensive audit involves assessing the page speed and overall website layout performance.

Its purpose is to identify areas where elements are impeding loading times, thereby enhancing search engine optimization and the user experience.

The site’s responsiveness and stability are also covered in this stage, with tools like PageSpeed Insights streamlining the process.

Learn more: How to make a website.

Step 2: Review Technical SEO For Issues

Performing a technical audit focuses primarily on behind-the-scenes elements, such as the site’s core code and indexation.

Other aspects of website management covered in this stage include fixing broken links and 404 errors, and checking CSS and JavaScript implementation.

While SEO audit tool scores can be helpful as reference points, Google warns against relying solely on these metrics when assessing technical issues.

They recommend pairing such audit tools with content-specific assessments to ensure a thorough analysis.

Step 3: Check On-Page SEO

A website’s individual pages also need to be analyzed as part of an on-page SEO audit to ensure consistent website optimization.

Elements, including meta descriptions, internal links, and website URL structures, are all covered as part of this process.

Visual assets are also covered in this stage, including page images, embedded videos, and animated elements.

This process can be especially time-consuming for sites with high volumes of content, such as informational websites.

Step 4: Review Content Quality & Gaps

Related to the previous stage is the content audit, which assesses blog posts, consumer information, and keyword opportunities.

Integral to any online business, this stage ensures consistency of tone and style across pages and updates content for accuracy.

By refining these elements as part of a broader content strategy, underperforming areas can be fixed and new content created.

Step 5: Perform A User Experience (UX) Audit

How visitors engage with content is also covered during an audit, as is the user experience and a site’s interface.

This covers aspects such as visual design and brand elements, and incorporates a behavior analysis based on heatmaps and session recordings.

Unclear navigation can then be rectified, along with improvements to other elements, such as calls to action and data collection mechanisms.

Step 6: Review The Website’s Accessibility

Website optimization is necessary to ensure that visitors with disabilities can access and interpret information as effectively as possible.

The audit covers this by ensuring blog formats are set up for text-to-speech software and that alt text is included for visually impaired visitors.

It can also highlight areas for improvement, like choosing a new website font that enhances the legibility of the site’s content.

This stage is critical to address to ensure a website complies with recommended requirements, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Step 7: Test For Mobile Devices

A thorough website audit should also cover mobile device optimization, as mobile devices account for a large share of website users.

This stage can be streamlined with tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test and dedicated programs like Screaming Frog.

A healthy mobile website should feature a responsive design with readable assets and large touch targets for ease of interaction.

Step 8: Confirm Security Protocols

Security and user protection are vital for all sites, and especially important when handling customer data on e-commerce websites.

This stage of the audit identifies any weaknesses and vulnerabilities that may allow hackers and other cybersecurity threats to impact performance.

Vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, and compliance checks all come into play, along with reviews of access control and authentication.

Step 9: Analyze Backlink Profiles

Backlinks form a core foundation for promoting a website by enhancing its authority through links from external sources.

Toxic backlinks can be identified and their removal requested, ensuring only high-quality links from authoritative sites remain.

The process also analyzes anchor text and the distribution of links across the site, benchmarked against competitors.

It also enables informed decision-making when content marketers and SEO specialists work on backlink-building strategies.

Step 10: Verify Analytics Tool Functionality

Whether using a site to sell digital products or services, analytical tools are vital for monitoring performance and user behavior.

A comprehensive audit ensures these tools are up to date and that they track the relevant metrics for performance optimization.

It also includes updating these tools to ensure they are operating with the latest version and adding any new tools that may be helpful.

This allows future audits to be improved, so that website owners can get more out of their web analytics.

Discover more: How to start an online store.

How To Interpret Your Website Audit Results

Finalizing a website audit can result in copious amounts of data that need to be reviewed before making informed decisions.

Here’s how to interpret and prioritize these results to maximize your time and effort post-audit:

• Prioritize fixing critical errors: High-impact technical errors should be top priorities, along with performance issues flagged by Google PageSpeed Insights. In extreme cases, this may require a complete website redesign to ensure performance and functionality issues are fully resolved.
• Track and improve metrics: When conducting an audit, establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to inform future decisions. This also includes using audit data to refine these metrics and input them into Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
• Compare the results to benchmarked competitors: A thorough audit should highlight new information to compare to any websites from business rivals. This will allow you to identify areas where you’re falling behind and opportunities for improvement.

By using a robust website audit tool, you can streamline this process and focus on refining your web design where it counts.

Website Audit Costs

Just as the frequency of auditing depends on a site’s complexity and purpose, so too do costs vary based on certain factors.

Here’s a rough guide to website audit costs, along with factors worth considering when budgeting for the process:

• Small websites: For a full-site audit of a smaller website, expect to pay between $500 and $2,000.
• Medium websites: Medium-sized websites with up to 500 pages cost between $2,000 and $5,000 for a complete audit.
• Large websites: Large-scale business and e-commerce website audits cost between $5,000 and $15,000, although some may be significantly more expensive.

These ranges should also be considered alongside website hosting costs for a fuller picture of anticipated expenses.

Common Website Audit Mistakes

Overlooking audit findings can lead to significant performance issues, resulting in a loss of traffic and business revenue.

Here are some of the most common mistakes made when planning a website audit and gauging the results:

• Overlooking mobile optimization: With smartphone users accounting for a significant share of online traffic, neglecting mobile optimization can lead to a drop in search engine visibility.
• Failure to address core web vitals: Another vital factor for enhancing a site’s search results is Core Web Vitals, which can be assessed with built-in tools like Search Console CWV report.
• Ignoring localized SEO: Local business websites require optimization for listings like Google Business Profile, which can often be overlooked during SEO website audits.

By including robust auditing as part of a website launch checklist, these common pitfalls can be avoided before they cause damage.

Further reading: How much does it cost to build a website?

Best Tools & Resources For Website Audits

Implementing a robust and frequent audit is necessary for all types of businesses, and fortunately, there are plenty of tools to help.

If you’re approaching auditing for the first time or want to streamline your processes, here are some essential tools and resources:

• Free SEO audit tools: Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and Page Speed Insights are all free to use and deliver impressively detailed insights into site performance.
• Paid website audit tools: If your budget permits, you can use paid tools like Ahrefs and Semrush for rigorous auditing and detailed site insights.

You can research additional free SEO tools for small businesses that deliver optimal results based on your specific site’s requirements.

Summary

A successful website requires more than excellent design; ongoing technical evaluations are essential for optimizing performance.

Understanding how to audit a website ensures all of your site’s pages deliver the best possible experience for your visitors.

By refining your audit checklist to align with your site’s requirements, you can deliver content that your target audience appreciates.