How to Audit a Website (Steps, Tools, and More)
Melwyn Joseph
07 May 2025 | 7 minute read
Just like regular health checkups keep us in good shape, your website needs periodic checkups too. Regular audits ensure your site stays fast, optimised, and SEO-friendly by addressing issues and identifying areas that need improvement.
That’s why knowing how to audit a website is so important. In this guide, we’ll show you the steps to audit your website. Plus, we’ll cover what actions to take after an audit and answer some common questions about website auditing.
What Are the Different Types of Website Audits?
Website audits come in several forms, each focusing on a specific aspect of your site’s health and effectiveness. The most common types include:
- SEO Audit
- Accessibility Audit
- Performance Audit
- Content Audit
Let’s break down each type to understand its purpose and what it typically includes.
SEO audit
An SEO audit dives into your site’s on-page, off-page and technical SEO, checking keywords, meta tags, backlinks, and overall search engine visibility. The goal? To boost your rankings so potential customers can easily find you.
Explore our comprehensive guide on SEO audit for all the details.
Accessibility audit
This audit ensures your website meets standards like WCAG, making it accessible to people with disabilities. By doing this, you’re not only broadening your audience but also staying compliant with legal requirements such as ADA, EAA, AODA, etc.
Check out our guide on accessibility audit for more info.
Performance audit
A performance audit focuses on optimising key performance metrics such as loading speed, Core Web Vitals, mobile-friendliness, and website response time. The result? Happier users, lower bounce rates, and a smoother browsing experience.
Explore our guide on monitoring website performance for all the details.
Content audit
This audit looks at your content’s quality, relevance, and structure to make sure it aligns with what your users need and your business goals. Engaging, well-organised content builds trust and attracts meaningful traffic to your site.
That’s why many businesses hire SEO copywriters to craft content that’s not only optimised for search engines but also valuable to readers.
How to Audit Your Website (For Free)
WebYes is an all-in-one tool that audits your website’s performance, accessibility, SEO, and quality -everything that truly matters, all in a single scan. The best part? It’s free to use – limitations included, but nothing that stops you from getting real value.
Enter your URL and pick your nearest location to start your free website audit now:
Note that this scan covers only the single URL you provided. To scan additional pages of your choice, you need to sign up for a free WebYes account. After creating an account and completing the initial scan, you’ll gain access to a dashboard like the one shown below.
⚠️ Important: Automated audit tools like WebYes provide a strong starting point, but they can’t catch everything. Some issues – especially those requiring context, judgment, or visual interpretation – still need human evaluation to be properly identified and addressed.
For instance, an automated tool alone can’t ensure complete WCAG compliance. Several WCAG success criteria require human review to accurately assess accessibility. To achieve the most effective and efficient audit, follow up automated audit with a thorough manual audit.
What to Do After a Website Audit
- Prioritise issues and begin fixing them.
- Evaluate traffic and performance post-audit.
- Adjust your strategy based on the results of the evaluation.
Your audit report will have a list of issues affecting your website’s performance, quality, SEO, and accessibility, categorised into critical, medium, and low. The first thing to do after a website audit is to prioritise each issue and start addressing it.
Note that the accessibility audit may flag issues requiring manual review and fixes by an expert. Download the report and pass it to your web dev or the person responsible for resolving these issues. Be sure to review the manual checks provided by the accessibility audit.
We recommend beginning with performance and SEO issues (critical first), as they have the most immediate impact on your website’s visibility and user experience. Once those are addressed, focus on accessibility and quality issues.
Once all the fixes are implemented, review how well your new content is performing and check if it’s generating more or less traffic than before. If it’s leading to less traffic, you may need to further optimise the content and adjust your SEO strategy.
What Are the Benefits of Conducting a Website Audit?
While auditing your website may seem like an additional expense, it brings valuable benefits. It can either provide peace of mind by confirming everything is functioning well, or uncover issues that, once addressed, lead to improved overall website health.
Key benefits of a website audit:
- Discover issues before they hurt your traffic and conversions
- Detect WCAG accessibility violations and reduce legal risk
- Identify areas for improvement across performance, SEO, and UX
Let’s explore each of these benefits in more detail:
1. Discover issues before they affect your traffic and conversion
A website audit helps you catch issues early, preventing them from negatively impacting your traffic and conversion rates. By addressing these problems proactively, you can maintain optimal site performance and ensure a smooth user experience.
Page speed is a ranking factor for Google, and research by Backlinko shows that the average load time for a first-page result is 1.65 seconds. An audit can help you identify and fix the issues slowing your site down, allowing you to meet or even exceed this speed.
2. Detect WCAG violations to avoid legal risks
WCAG compliance is now mandatory in many countries. A website audit helps identify accessibility issues, ensuring your site is compliant, which not only helps you avoid legal risks but also expands your audience and improves user experience.
Accessibility lawsuits are on the rise, with UsableNet’s midyear 2024 report estimating the number will surpass 4,000 by year’s end in the U.S. Regular audits to ensure WCAG compliance can protect your business from costly lawsuits and their consequences.
3. Identify areas for improvement
A website audit provides a comprehensive overview of your site, helping to identify weaknesses across various areas. It offers clear guidance on what improvements are needed to enhance performance, user experience, SEO, and overall website functionality.
According to an Ahrefs study of over 1 million domains, 72.3% of sites were flagged for slow loading speeds, while 80.4% were missing alt attributes. Conducting a website audit helps identify these common problems and provides a roadmap for improvement.
FAQ
The cost of a website audit depends on the number of web pages and the method you choose for auditing – manual or automated. While manual audits can cost a minimum of $500, automated tools are much more affordable, often costing less than $50.
You can audit your website for free using WebYes. This website audit and monitoring tool analyses SEO, quality, performance, and accessibility for free. However, the free version has a limit on the number of pages you can scan.
The general recommendation is to audit your website once each quarter. However, in certain situations, an immediate audit is needed. We cover these situations in detail in our guide: How often should you audit your website.
The duration of a website audit depends on the number of pages, their complexity, and the type of audit being performed. For example, with WebYes, it takes approximately 1 hour to complete a comprehensive audit, including accessibility, SEO, quality, and performance, for 100 pages.
Article by
Melwyn holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and has been writing professionally for over 4 years. He has a strong background in SEO and is certified in web accessibility from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). When he's not writing about website optimisation, you can find him enjoying a game of FIFA or exploring the open world of GTA.
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