How To Do a Website Audit

If you’ve been wondering how to do a website audit, you’re in the right place. A website audit is a full health check for your online presence, helping you uncover what’s working well, what’s holding you back, and where the biggest opportunities lie.

From site speed and mobile responsiveness to SEO, content, and user experience, an audit digs deep into the elements that influence performance.

The Website Audit Checklist

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The result? Clear, actionable insights you can use to attract more visitors, keep them engaged, and convert them into loyal customers.

Think of it as the digital equivalent of an MOT – not just identifying problems, but ensuring your site is running at peak performance.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to do a website audit step-by-step, highlight the areas that matter most, and show you how to turn your findings into a plan for a faster, smarter, and more effective site.

What Is a Website Audit (And Why Does It Matter)?

A website audit is a data-driven review of your site’s overall health, covering technical performance, SEO, content quality, user experience, and more.

It’s your chance to take a clear, objective look at how your site is actually performing, not just how it looks on the surface.

At its core, a website audit helps you answer critical questions like:

• Is my website fast, secure, and easy to navigate?
• Are my pages properly optimised for search engines?
• Is the content engaging, accurate, and aligned with my business goals?
• Is the user journey smooth, intuitive, and designed to convert?

Why it matters:

• Identifies hidden technical issues that may be slowing your site down or damaging SEO.
• Boosts search engine rankings by making sure every page meets best-practice optimisation standards.
• Improves user experience so visitors stay longer, explore more, and take the next step.
• Reduces bounce rates and increases conversions by removing barriers to action.
• Aligns performance with business goals, making sure your website is actively supporting your wider marketing strategy.

Think of it as a health check for your digital front door, one that reveals what’s helping you grow, and what’s quietly holding you back.

What a Website Audit Report Should Include

A strong website audit report doesn’t just point out issues; it gives you the clarity and direction to fix them.

It should be structured, easy to digest, and focused on actionable insights that improve performance.

Here’s what an effective report should include:

• Executive summary: A high-level overview explaining why the audit was conducted, the key findings, and the top opportunities for improvement.
• Technical audit: Analysis of site speed, mobile usability, crawl errors, broken links, and security status (including HTTPS and SSL configuration).
• SEO analysis: Review of keyword targeting, meta titles and descriptions, heading structure, internal linking, and indexing status to ensure search engines can find and rank your content.
• Content audit: Evaluation of your on-site content for relevance, freshness, quality, and alignment with user intent.
• UX and CRO insights: Assessment of navigation, page structure, and user journeys to identify friction points that may be blocking conversions.
• Performance metrics: Data on traffic trends, bounce rates, dwell time, and conversion rates, providing a baseline to track future improvements.
• Prioritised recommendations and action plan: A clear, step-by-step roadmap ranked by potential impact and ease of implementation.
• Visuals: Graphs, screenshots, and heatmaps to make data easy to understand and illustrate where changes will have the biggest effect.

A well-constructed audit report acts as both a diagnosis and a prescription, showing you what’s working, what’s holding you back, and how to turn your website into a high-performing asset.

The 5 Core Areas to Audit

Breaking up the audit into different sections will prevent you from missing anything important. You don’t want to get to the end of the website audit and realise there are gaps.

Here are the 5 areas to break your audit into:

Technical Health

Technical health is the foundation of your site. If it’s unstable, everything else will suffer. A technically sound website allows search engines to crawl it easily and for users to access it quickly. Plus, your security will meet modern standards.

Ask:

• Is my site fast and mobile-friendly?
• Are there broken links or crawl errors blocking users or search engines?
• Is SSL (HTTPS) properly set up to protect visitors?

Example:

An e-commerce store discovers that its product pages take 8 seconds to load on mobile. Even with great products, users abandon the site before they ever browse. In a world of fast, short-form technology, waiting for sites to load is not an option.

SEO Performance

Your website may look great, but without solid SEO, people won’t find it. This part of the audit checks if your site is optimised for search engines, so your content actually reaches your target audience.

Ask:

• Do my titles, meta descriptions, and headings clearly reflect target keywords?
• Are important pages being indexed by search engines?
• Does my site have a logical internal linking structure?

Example:
A professional services firm realises half its service pages aren’t being indexed because of a simple robots.txt issue. They’ve been invisible to potential clients for months.

Content Quality

Even with flawless technicals and SEO, weak content won’t engage visitors. Here, you’re looking at the accuracy, relevance, and usefulness of your on-site content.

Ask:

• Is the content up-to-date, accurate, and fact-checked?
• Does it match user search intent?
• Is the tone consistent with your brand voice?

Example:
A healthcare company finds that its “COVID Guidelines” page still shows advice from 2021. Visitors leave confused, and the brand risks credibility.

User Experience (UX) & Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)

A beautiful website is great. But it means little if users can’t navigate it or complete key actions. UX and CRO are about making the journey clear, intuitive, and conversion-friendly.

Ask:

• Is navigation intuitive and easy to follow?
• Do forms, checkout processes, and CTAs work seamlessly?
• Where are users dropping off in their journey?

Example:
A SaaS provider finds that its free trial signup form is broken on certain browsers. Hundreds of potential leads were lost simply because of a technical oversight.

Performance Metrics & Analytics

Numbers provide context and confirm whether your website is meeting goals. This part of the audit tracks how users interact with your site and highlights what’s driving results versus what’s underperforming.

Ask:

• Where is my traffic coming from (organic, paid, social, referral)?
• Which pages have the highest bounce rates or lowest engagement?
• What’s converting and what isn’t?

Example:

A B2B company notices organic traffic is growing steadily, but conversions are flat. Deeper analysis reveals blog visitors never move toward service pages due to poor linking.

By reviewing these 5 areas, you’ll uncover both issues and opportunities. This will give you a complete picture of your website’s health and how to make it a stronger driver of growth.

How To Do a Website Audit (Step-by-Step)

Once you’ve taken the time to break the audit into the core areas, you can dive into the website audit. We’ve broken down how to do a website audit into a step-by-step process to help make sure you cover all bases.

Wondering how to do a website audit?

Here is a step-by-step guide:

Step 1: Review Website Performance Metrics

Before you can improve your website, you need to know how it’s currently performing. This will give you a great base. Without a clear understanding of traffic and engagement, it’ll be harder to spot gaps and opportunities.

Reviewing your analytics data will give you a baseline and help you spot obvious red flags.

To do this:

• Collect data from Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other analytics tools.
• Look at overall traffic, traffic sources (organic, paid, referral, social), and audience behaviour.
• Identify top-performing landing pages and those with high bounce rates or low session duration.
• Track conversions and goal completions to see which pages are actually driving results.
• Compare current data against historical trends to spot growth, decline, or seasonality.

Example:
A B2C eCommerce site notices that traffic is steady, but conversion rates have dropped in the last quarter. A deeper dive reveals the checkout page has recently changed, adding friction and hurting sales.

Step 2: Conduct a Technical Audit

A strong website relies on solid technical foundations. If your site is slow, insecure, or hard for search engines to crawl, everything else will suffer, no matter how good your content is.

To do this:

• Crawl your site with tools like Screaming Frog, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to uncover crawl errors, broken links, and indexing issues.
• Test site speed with Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix.
• Check for mobile responsiveness across different devices and browsers.
• Confirm that your SSL certificate is active and that site pages are loading over HTTPS.
• Review your XML sitemap and robots.txt file to ensure they’re properly configured.

Example:
An online shop discovered that many product pages weren’t appearing in Google search because of duplicate URL settings. Fixing the crawl settings and updating the sitemap made the pages visible, increasing traffic and sales.

Step 3: Evaluate On-Page SEO Elements

SEO makes your website discoverable and can set you apart from the competition and boost brand awareness. Even if your technical foundation is solid, you won’t get far if your metadata, keywords, and site structure aren’t optimised.

To do this:

• Audit all title tags and meta descriptions to ensure they’re unique, keyword-focused, and compelling.
• Review heading structures (H1, H2, H3) to make sure they’re clear and keyword-aligned.
• Check URLs for clarity, brevity, and inclusion of target keywords.
• Make sure every image has descriptive alt text for both accessibility and SEO.
• Analyse internal linking and check if you are guiding users (and search engines) to important pages.

Example:
An education platform realises that dozens of its how-to guides don’t have meta descriptions at all. Once added with keyword-rich summaries, organic click-through rates improved by 20%.

Step 4: Assess Content Quality and Relevance

Your website’s content is what ultimately engages users and drives action. Outdated, irrelevant, or thin content can tank trust and conversions. By doing this, you can make sure your site is delivering value to your audience.

To do this:

• Review all pages for accuracy and relevance to user needs. The best content is fresh and engaging, so go through and make a note of any areas where updates are necessary.
• Check for consistent tone and messaging across all content.
• Identify thin content (pages with very little text or substance).
• Update or remove outdated resources, statistics, or product/service information.
• Make sure that all content aligns with search intent. This might be informational, navigational, or transactional, and can significantly affect SEO.

Example:
A fintech site has a high-traffic article on “2021 tax deductions” still ranking in 2023. Visitors land, see outdated info, and bounce. This can hurt credibility and lose conversions.

Step 5: Analyse User Experience and Conversion Paths

Attracting traffic is one thing; getting visitors to take action is another. UX and CRO (conversion rate optimisation) focus on making your site as smooth and intuitive as possible, so users stick around and convert.

To do this:

• Map out navigation and user flows. Is your menu structure clear and logical?
• Test CTAs, forms, and checkout processes across desktop and mobile.
• Use heatmaps, scroll maps, or session recordings (via Hotjar, Crazy Egg, etc.) to see how users interact with key pages.
• Look at drop-off points in conversion funnels. Where are people leaving? This will give you a great insight into what you need to focus on.
• Collect direct user feedback to identify friction you might miss in the data.

Example:
An online course provider finds 40% of users abandon checkout. Heatmap analysis reveals the “Enroll Now” button is buried below the fold on mobile, a small fix with a big impact.

Step 6: Prioritise Findings and Plan Improvements

An audit is only valuable if it leads to action, and it can be great for this. Wrapping up the website audit with an action plan makes sure issues are fixed for a reason, and problems are solved in the areas they need to be.

To do this:

• Categorise issues as high, medium, or low priority.
• Rank them based on potential impact on traffic, UX, or conversions.
• Estimate the time and resources required for each fix.
• Develop a roadmap that aligns technical improvements with business goals.
• Assign responsibilities and set clear timelines.

Example:
An eCommerce site discovers three major issues: slow load speed, outdated product descriptions, and missing meta descriptions. They tackle speed first (highest impact), then metadata, then content refreshes.

Using Your Website Audit as a Launchpad for Growth

A website audit is a great chance to discover growth opportunities. As an exercise, you might assume it’s a negative one, but this isn’t the case. By turning your findings into action, you can transform your site into a more powerful driver of traffic, leads, and revenue.

You can use your website audit findings to:

• Uncover opportunities to improve SEO, user experience, and technical performance.
• Prioritise fixes that deliver quick wins (like speeding up page load) alongside bigger long-term projects (like a full redesign or content overhaul).
• Align website improvements with marketing campaigns and business objectives for maximum impact.
• Optimise conversion paths to allow for more visitors to turn into leads or customers.
• Support future initiatives, from SEO campaigns to paid ads, by giving them a stronger digital foundation.
• Leverage tools, templates, and best practices (or even agency expertise) to accelerate improvements.
• Once you’ve mapped out your action plan, share your findings across teams. Marketing, design, sales, and IT can all benefit from the insights, helping your entire organisation work in sync toward stronger online performance.

Common Website Issues Revealed by Audits

If you’ve found yourself with a long list of issues after a website audit, don’t worry. While this might feel like a blow, it’s actually a good thing and gives you great direction. Look at the list of issues in a positive light and use each one to create a future plan where growth and strategy spur you on.
Common website issues you might find are:

• “We have slow site speed that’s causing visitor drop-off.”
• “Our poor mobile experience is losing potential customers.”
• “There are broken links and indexing errors harming SEO.”
• “We found outdated or irrelevant content that’s reducing engagement.”
• “There is confusing navigation, frustrating users.”
• “Weak calls to action are lowering our conversions.”

A list of issues is something we, naturally, don’t see as a good thing. However, if you turn problems into an action plan, it will give you a solid improvement strategy to move forward with.

Should You Hire a Website Audit Expert?

Doing a website audit yourself is absolutely possible. Especially if you have a smaller site or an in-house team with the time and skills to dig into the details. Free and affordable tools make it easier than ever to get started.

But there are times when bringing in an expert can really help.

Experts and agencies can:

• Spot technical issues you might miss and provide deeper strategic insight.
• Use advanced tools and benchmarking data to give you a clearer picture of how your site stacks up.
• Offer best practices from across industries to help you avoid common pitfalls.
• Save you time by cutting through the noise and focusing on what really matters.

At Canny, we’ve built tools that do the heavy lifting for you. Not to mention our website retainer package that covers all bases.

When we do a website audit, our goal is to uncover hidden issues, provide clear recommendations, and give you an actionable plan to make your website stronger.

Want a thorough website checkup? We’re here to help. And watch this space, we have a very useful piece of software on its way.

How To Do a Website Audit FAQs

How To Do a Website Audit

A high-performing website starts with a clear understanding of its current health and how well it serves your users.

A thorough website audit will:

• Reveal technical issues holding back performance.
• Highlight SEO gaps and missed opportunities.
• Show how your site experience impacts conversions.
• Give you the clarity to plan smarter, more effective improvements.

At Canny, we’ve developed our own audit tool that:

• Surfaces clear, actionable insights based on your site data.
• Flag crawl errors, slow speeds, weak metadata, and more.
• Help you prioritise fixes and opportunities for maximum impact.

Ready to see how our audit tool can transform your website? Visit AYM and find out what you need to fix in less than 10 minutes.

Tony Hardy

Founder & Director

Tony specialises in B2B brand strategy, high-performing websites, and SEO-led content. He works with marketing teams to identify what’s holding their marketing back, and turn it into clear, commercially focused action. With over a decade of experience across branding, web, and content, he leads on strategy, ensuring every project is built to drive measurable results, not just look good.