The Complete Website Audit Checklist

Most site owners only think about auditing their website after something has already gone wrong: traffic drops, a page stops converting, or a customer complains that they could not complete a purchase. A regular website audit catches these problems before they cost you rankings, revenue, or a lawsuit.

The trouble is that “website audit” means different things to different teams. An SEO agency will run a very different audit than a security consultant, and neither of those covers whether your site actually works for a visitor using a screen reader.

This website audit checklist pulls all of it together into one place, so you can see the full picture of your site’s health rather than just one slice of it.

What Is a Website Audit?

A website audit is a structured review of how well your site performs across the areas that actually matter to visitors and search engines: technical performance, search visibility, content quality, usability, security, and accessibility. Rather than eyeballing the homepage and calling it done, a proper audit works through each of these areas methodically and documents what needs to change.

Think of it less as a single task and more as a recurring health check. A new site launch, a redesign, a platform migration, or even a slow, steady decline in traffic are all good reasons to run one.

The Complete Website Audit Checklist

To ensure you’re getting a complete picture of where your website stands and what needs to be improved, here are the areas you need to focus on.

Technical Health Checklist

Technical issues are often invisible to visitors right up until they cause a broken page, a slow load, or a search engine that cannot properly index your content.

• Page speed. Test your core pages on both desktop and mobile. Slow-loading pages hurt rankings and increase bounce rates.
• Mobile responsiveness. Confirm that every template renders correctly across common screen sizes, not just the homepage.
• Broken links and 404s. Crawl the site for dead internal and external links and fix or redirect them.
• Redirect chains. Look for redirects that bounce through multiple hops before landing on the final URL, and flatten them into a single redirect.
• XML sitemap. Confirm it exists, is submitted to Google Search Console, and only includes pages you actually want indexed.
• Robots.txt. Check that it is not accidentally blocking pages you want crawled.
• Core Web Vitals. Review Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint, and Cumulative Layout Shift, since these directly affect both rankings and user experience.
• HTTPS and mixed content. Confirm the entire site loads over HTTPS with no mixed-content warnings.
• Duplicate content and canonical tags. Check for pages competing against each other and confirm canonical tags point to the correct version.

SEO Checklist

Once the technical foundation is solid, the next question is whether search engines and visitors can actually find your content.

• Title tags and meta descriptions. Confirm every indexable page has a unique, descriptive title and meta description.
• Header structure. Check that each page uses a single H1 and a logical heading hierarchy beneath it.
• Keyword targeting. Review whether your top pages are actually targeting the terms your audience searches for, and whether pages are competing against each other for the same keyword.
• Internal linking. Look for orphan pages with no internal links pointing to them, and strengthen links between related content.
• Image alt text. Confirm images have descriptive alt attributes, which helps both SEO and accessibility.
• Backlink profile. Review your link profile for toxic or spammy links that could be dragging down your domain authority.
• Local SEO signals. If relevant, confirm your Google Business Profile, NAP (name, address, phone) consistency, and local schema markup are accurate.

Content Checklist

Traffic and rankings only matter if the content on the page actually does its job once someone arrives.

• Content freshness. Identify outdated pages, stale statistics, or old screenshots that need an update.
• Readability. Check that content is scannable, with short paragraphs, descriptive subheadings, and plain language where possible.
• Calls to action. Confirm every key page has a clear next step for the visitor.
• Thin or low-value pages. Flag pages with little unique content for consolidation, improvement, or removal.
• Media quality. Review images, video, and downloadable assets for relevance, quality, and file size.

User Experience (UX) Checklist

A technically sound, well-ranked page can still lose visitors if it is confusing or frustrating to use.

• Navigation clarity. Confirm menus, search, and breadcrumbs make it easy to find what a visitor is looking for.
• Conversion paths. Walk through your key user journeys, like checkout or lead-gen forms, as a first-time visitor would.
• Form usability. Check that forms clearly label fields, validate input, and explain errors in plain language.
• Consistent design. Look for inconsistent fonts, spacing, or button styles across templates, which can make a site feel unpolished or untrustworthy.
• Pop-ups and interstitials. Confirm they do not block content or make a page difficult to dismiss, especially on mobile.

Security Checklist

Security issues can undo all the traffic and conversion work above in a single incident.

• SSL certificate. Confirm it is valid, correctly configured, and not close to expiring.
• Software and plugin updates. Check your CMS, plugins, and themes for outdated versions with known vulnerabilities.
• Login protections. Review whether admin accounts use strong passwords and, ideally, multi-factor authentication.
• Backups. Confirm you have a recent, working backup and a documented restore process.
• Form and data security. Check that any form collecting personal data transmits and stores it securely.

Accessibility Checklist

Accessibility is where a lot of general website audits stop short, but it deserves the same level of scrutiny as the areas above. An inaccessible site does not just exclude visitors with disabilities, it also carries real legal exposure, since website accessibility lawsuits under the ADA have been climbing for several years running.

At a high level, an accessibility review should check for:

• Alt text on meaningful images
• Sufficient color contrast between text and backgrounds
• Full keyboard navigability, with no keyboard traps
• Descriptive link text and page titles
• Captions or transcripts for audio and video content
• Properly labeled forms with clear error messages

Accessibility is detailed enough to deserve its own deep dive, so if this section raises more questions than it answers, our WCAG checklist and ADA compliance checklist walk through the requirements level by level.

How Often Should You Audit Your Website?

There is no single right answer, but a few triggers should prompt a full audit regardless of schedule:

• Before and after a redesign or platform migration
• After a noticeable, unexplained drop in traffic or conversions
• At least once a year, even if nothing seems obviously wrong
• Any time you receive a complaint, demand letter, or legal notice related to accessibility

Smaller, focused checks, like a quick technical or accessibility scan, are worth running more often, especially on a site that publishes new content or ships new features regularly.

Tools to Help You Audit Your Website

Running every item on this checklist manually is possible, but it is slow, and some of it, particularly accessibility testing, benefits from automated scanning that flags issues a manual review might miss.

Tools like Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights cover much of the technical and SEO side.

For the accessibility piece specifically, ACE™ Scanner audits your site against WCAG criteria and gives you a prioritized list of what to fix, and the ACE™ Dashboard makes it easier to track that progress over time instead of starting from scratch with every audit.

If you would rather hand the accessibility portion off entirely, our expert audit service pairs automated scanning with manual testing from certified specialists.

And on the content side, look into tools such as Semrush and Ahrefs.

Wrapping Up

A website audit is really six smaller audits stacked together: technical, SEO, content, UX, security, and accessibility. Skipping any one of them leaves a gap, whether that gap shows up as lost rankings, a frustrated visitor, a security incident, or a lawsuit.

Use this checklist as a starting point, work through it section by section, and revisit it on a regular schedule rather than only after something breaks.

Frequently Asked Questions