How to Audit a Website (Steps, Tools, and More)

Melwyn Joseph

14 January 2025 | 7 minute read
a website and a woman monitoring it, representing how to audit a site

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 many forms, each focusing on different aspects of your site. A full website audit primarily focuses on SEO, accessibility, performance, and content to keep your site optimised and effective.

Here’s a quick breakdown:

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.

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.

Infographics showing the different types of website audits as accessibility audit, content audit, SEO audit, and performance audit.

Performance Audit

A performance audit focuses on optimising key performance metrics such as loading speed, Core Web Vitals, mobile-friendliness, and server response times. The result? Happier users, lower bounce rates, and a smoother browsing experience.

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-organized content builds trust and attracts meaningful traffic to your site.

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.

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.

An infographics on the three direct benefits of website audits.

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.

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.

How to Audit Your Website

The easiest way to audit your website is to use a tool that simplifies the process and lets you do everything in one place. Look for a comprehensive tool that lets you run all the important audits in one go, so you can skip paying for multiple tools or juggling between them.

WebYes is one such tool that audits your website’s performance, accessibility, SEO, and quality in one go. It covers all the essential audits except content, making it a comprehensive solution. The best part? It’s free (with a few limitations, of course).

Follow the steps below to audit your website instantly:

  • Visit WebYes (a free online audit tool) and enter your website’s URL.
  • Choose the device type (mobile or desktop) you want to assess the website’s performance for.
  • Click “Scan URL” to initiate the audit.
  • The tool will start auditing your website for performance, accessibility, SEO, and quality.

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.

WebYes dashboard showing audit scores for accessibility, performance, quality, and SEO.

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 them.

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 quality and accessibility 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.

FAQ

How much does a website audit cost?

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.

How can I audit my website for free?

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.

How many times should you audit your website?

The general recommendation is to audit your website once each quarter. However, certain situations call for an immediate audit. We cover these situations in detail in our guide: How often should you audit your website.

How long does a website audit take?

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.


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