Find out how to do a web site audit in 2026 (+ free tracker)

Lots goes into making a web site run easily, be intuitive to make use of, and seem in entrance of the appropriate viewers. Similar to your own home, well being, or automotive wants routine upkeep, your web site additionally wants common checkups to establish points that have to be addressed.

A web site audit finds the whole lot from poor consumer expertise impacting conversions to issues with crawling that stop you from displaying up in search outcomes. Figuring out these issues early means you possibly can intervene earlier than they value you visibility, leads, or income.

This information will stroll you thru a step-by-step web site audit course of. You’ll get software suggestions for every step and a free downloadable tracker you should utilize to remain on high of your website’s efficiency.

What’s a web site audit?

A web site audit is a complete evaluation of a web site’s efficiency, construction, usability, and content material. 

The first goal of a web site audit is to establish areas for enchancment which you can tackle. This may also help you improve the positioning’s consumer expertise (UX), website positioning, and total effectiveness in attaining your objectives.

A typical web site audit covers a minimum of a couple of of the next areas:

• Technical website positioning: Assessing the technical points of the web site, comparable to website velocity, mobile-friendliness, URL construction, crawlability, and indexing. Technical website positioning efforts be sure that engines like google and AI methods can simply entry and perceive the positioning.
• On-page website positioning: Analyzing particular person webpages to evaluate the probability they’ll present in search outcomes. Optimization efforts concentrate on issues like title tags, meta descriptions, key phrase use, and content material high quality.
• Backlinks: Assessing a web site’s hyperlink profile (i.e., the standard and amount of backlinks pointing to the web site). This helps establish whether or not your website is in want of extra high-quality hyperlinks to enhance authority.
• Conversion fee optimization (CRO): Evaluating the web site’s means to transform guests into prospects or obtain different desired actions. Like signing up for a e-newsletter or filling out a contact kind.

A web site audit usually concludes with an in depth report highlighting points and offering suggestions for enchancment. 

Web site audits are greatest run frequently. 

Why do you have to conduct a web site audit?

You need to conduct a web site audit to establish points you possibly can repair to enhance your website’s efficiency. 

Audits floor points which can be paired with really useful fixes throughout areas like website positioning, AI optimization, and consumer expertise. Implementing these fixes can enhance your conventional search and AI visibility alongside along with your conversion fee.

Find out how to do a web site audit step-by-step

Observe the steps beneath to carry out a complete web site audit. 

Add URLs with points you discover in your website to our free web site audit tracker sheet. Create a replica and use it that can assist you (or your dev group) preserve observe of fixes. 

Step 1: Outline your audit scope earlier than you begin

Earlier than you begin a web site audit, decide the scope of your audit to concentrate on what’s more likely to be most impactful. 

Leaping straight right into a full audit of each web page in your website can produce an extended listing of points with no apparent solution to prioritize them. You could possibly spend weeks working by technical fixes that don’t have any significant influence on the metrics you really care about.

Begin by asking what prompted you to need to run an audit within the first place: 

• Have you ever seen a sudden, unexplained drop in natural site visitors?
• Is search visibility slipping on particular pages? 
• Has your conversion fee dropped?

If nothing particular has prompted the audit and also you’re operating one as a routine checkup, it helps to scope it by website dimension. A small website with fewer than 50 pages can fairly be audited finish to finish, protecting all of the steps on this information throughout all pages. 

A bigger website with 1000’s of pages may want a extra focused method. In that case, you’d seemingly need to focus in your highest-traffic pages and your most essential conversion paths. 

Use the desk beneath to match your state of affairs with the best audit method:

Step 2: Test search engine crawlability and indexability

Test your web site’s search engine crawlability and indexability to make sure engines like google can entry your pages and add them to their databases (indexes).

Crawling is when a search engine or LLM bot visits your pages. Indexing is when it provides these pages to its database to allow them to seem in search outcomes. Making it simple for crawlers to entry and index your pages can enhance your total search visibility.

To examine how nicely your website may be crawled and listed, begin in Google Search Console. The “Web page indexing” report exhibits you precisely what number of of your pages are listed and flags those that are not, together with the the reason why. 

Click on into any row underneath “Why pages aren’t listed” to see a pattern listing of pages with the corresponding subject.

Look by the listing of pages that aren’t listed because of the particular cause you clicked to search out any that must be listed however aren’t. 

Bear in mind that not all of the pages listed as not listed in GSC characterize a difficulty it’s worthwhile to repair. For instance, some pages is likely to be alternate variations that you just don’t need Google to index as separate pages anyway.

For pages that must be listed however aren’t, click on the URL inside GSC, then choose “Examine URL” to see extra particulars in regards to the subject.

Add these URLs to the tracker sheet (together with the problem sort within the “Notes” column) to take motion on when you’ve accomplished the remainder of this audit. Then repeat this for the opposite subject varieties.

Semrush’s Web site Audit provides you a extra complete overview of your website’s crawlability and indexability points. 

Arrange a Web site Audit mission and go to the “Points” tab. Choose the “Crawlability” and “Indexability” filters to spotlight related points like damaged inside hyperlinks and pages blocked by robots.txt. (You could have to click on the three dots to entry the indexability filter.)

Click on into every subject to see the affected URLs, and add these to your listing. 

Step 3: Audit for AI search readiness

Audit whether or not AI instruments like ChatGPT and Perplexity can entry, perceive, and cite your content material. 

As AI search turns into a extra important supply of brand name visibility, guaranteeing your website is accessible to AI crawlers and structured in a method that’s simple to extract from is more and more essential.

There are some things to examine right here: AI crawler entry, AI-friendly construction, and agentic commerce preparedness.

Test for AI crawler entry

Ensure you aren’t blocking AI crawlers in your robots.txt file. 

Robots.txt is an easy textual content file that tells bots which components of your website they need to and should not entry. Test it by including “/robots.txt” to your area in a browser. 

Search for any guidelines that block AI crawlers by identify, together with GPTBot (ChatGPT’s bot for gathering coaching information), ClaudeBot (Claude’s coaching information bot), and PerplexityBot (Perplexity’s crawler for locating reside search data).

Right here’s what your robots.txt may seem like in the event you’re blocking ChatGPT, for instance:

When you’re unintentionally blocking any AI bots, eradicating these guidelines helps bots crawl your content material for use for coaching future fashions and to be cited in AI solutions. 

Semrush’s Web site Audit software will flag any pages you’re blocking from AI search on the “Overview” tab. Clicking the numbers subsequent to the related bots (if there are any) will present you the pages they will’t entry.

Assessment your pages’ buildings

Pages that clearly state the details, use descriptive headings, and are written utilizing brief, self-contained sections are simpler for AI methods to parse and cite. 

Undergo your most essential pages and examine for the next:

• Every part solutions a transparent query straight within the first few sentences
• Headings are descriptive
• The web page consists of citable quotes and/or stats
• The web page consists of an FAQ part (not all the time essential, however may be useful for extraction)

Use the Visibility Overview report in Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit to trace how regularly you’re cited in AI responses and which of your pages get cited. Monitor this over time to know whether or not the adjustments you make after performing your web site audit are working.

Contemplate agentic buying readiness

Optimizing for agentic buying includes making it simpler for AI brokers to take buy actions in your pages. 

Agentic search as an entire continues to be rising. We’re nonetheless within the early levels of creating particular protocols (just like the Common Commerce Protocol) which can be designed to assist AI brokers talk with web sites to fill out types, make bookings, and full purchases. 

However agentic buying readiness ought to turn into a part of your common web site auditing course of now. Particular checks to carry out embrace:

• Ensuring your schema markup is legitimate (see step 9)
• Making certain your product and pricing information is updated
• Implementing related protocols (see our information to agentic commerce for extra)

Step 4: Audit Core Internet Vitals efficiency

Auditing your web site’s Core Internet Vitals efficiency helps you perceive the place you possibly can enhance your consumer expertise.

The Core Internet Vitals are a set of metrics Google makes use of to measure web page expertise, and there are three of them: 

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures how briskly your most important content material masses
• Interplay to Subsequent Paint (INP) measures how shortly your web page responds to consumer enter
• Cumulative Structure Shift (CLS) measures how a lot the structure shifts unexpectedly because the web page masses

Stable Core Internet Vitals scores can enhance your consumer expertise, which in flip can have an effect on your search visibility (since web page expertise is a rating issue). Plus, a web page that masses shortly is extra more likely to garner interactions. This might enhance your conversion fee.

To audit your web site’s Core Internet Vitals, begin with the “Core Internet Vitals” report in Google Search Console. It teams your pages into three classes: “good,” “want enchancment,” and “poor.” Click on “Open Report” (for cellular or desktop) to see extra particulars in regards to the affected pages.

Add pages that seem underneath “want enchancment” or “poor” within the “Core Internet Vitals” report back to your audit tracker sheet. 

To additional audit the person URLs flagged in Google Search Console, use Google’s PageSpeed Insights software. It provides you a full breakdown of the problems affecting that web page’s Core Internet Vitals.

Scroll down the report back to see extra detailed data on particular points affecting your web page’s Core Internet Vitals. 

Add any context you study in regards to the points affecting your Core Internet Vitals scores to the notes column in your tracker sheet. 

Step 5: Assessment on-page website positioning components

Reviewing on-page website positioning components throughout your website reveals pages which can be underperforming resulting from fixable optimization gaps.

On-page website positioning components are the parts on particular person pages that assist search methods perceive what your content material is about and might due to this fact affect your visibility in search outcomes. 

Key on-page website positioning components to examine embrace your title tags, meta descriptions, headings, and key phrase use. Particularly, search for the next issues you possibly can tackle:

• Lacking or duplicate title tags and meta descriptions
• Title tags that do not embrace the web page’s goal question
• Pages with no clear H1 heading or a number of H1s
• Key phrase cannibalization, the place two or extra pages in your website goal the identical phrases and compete with one another

Use Google Search Console to establish pages that seemingly have poorly optimized title tags and meta descriptions. Go to “Efficiency” > “Search outcomes,” choose the “Pages” tab, and kind the “Impressions” column from excessive to low. 

Search for pages which have numerous impressions (500 or extra is an effective start line) however not many clicks. These are pages which can be showing in entrance of searchers however that aren’t getting many clicks, which could possibly be because of the title tags and/or meta descriptions.

For title tags, be sure that they:

• Are 50-60 characters
• Embody your major key phrase
• Match search intent

For meta descriptions, guarantee they:

• Are 105 characters or fewer
• Embody your major key phrase
• Clearly inform the consumer what to anticipate after they go to your web page

(Observe our steerage on optimizing your title tags and meta descriptions for extra methods to enhance them.)

Add these pages to your tracker sheet with the “on-page website positioning” class. 

Semrush’s Web site Audit website positioning checker software flags on-page points like these throughout all of the pages it crawls. Simply go to your Web site Audit mission and search for points within the “Meta tags” class. Click on the quantity for a given subject to see all affected pages, after which add these pages to your tracker sheet.

Step 6: Audit your content material high quality

Audit your content material high quality to establish underperforming pages after which manually assess whether or not they have to be up to date, consolidated with related content material, or eliminated.

Use Google Analytics (GA4) to search out which pages to concentrate on. In GA4, take a look at engagement metrics by web page. For instance, a low common engagement time is usually an indication that guests aren’t discovering what they anticipated, which might level to skinny content material, a mismatch with search intent, or content material that merely is not helpful sufficient.

Discover low-quality pages in GA4 by going to “Reviews” > “Engagement” > “Pages and screens.” Then kind by “Common engagement time per lively consumer” in order that the time is ascending.  

Pages with low common engagement time are ones you’ll need to analyze additional. Go to these pages and manually examine for content material high quality points. 

Listed here are three inquiries to ask for each bit of content material that can assist you establish points:

• Does the content material match search intent? Take into consideration what the consumer’s aim is with a search that will finally result in this web page. In case your web page does not assist them meet that aim, replace the web page so it does.
• Is there a chance so as to add originality/data acquire? Authentic information, a particular course of, or an actual instance from what you are promoting makes your content material extra helpful for readers. And Google’s Useful Content material tips additionally particularly point out originality.  
• Is the knowledge nonetheless correct? Outdated content material, particularly something citing previous statistics or describing instruments and processes which have modified, erodes consumer belief and might damage your visibility. AI instruments additionally are inclined to favor contemporary content material when citing sources in responses. 

Based mostly in your solutions to those questions, you’ve got three choices:

• Replace the web page if the subject is price focusing on and the content material may be meaningfully improved
• Consolidate it with associated pages if these pages cowl related floor and none of them are robust sufficient on their very own
• Take away it if the web page has no site visitors, no backlinks, and no life like path to being helpful

Add pages you propose to replace or consolidate to your tracker sheet. Take away pages which can be not related, however contemplate redirecting them to related alternate options.

Step 7: Assessment your backlink profile

Assessment your backlink profile to know the standard and amount of hyperlinks pointing to your website to establish whether or not a scarcity of high-quality hyperlinks could also be impacting your means to look prominently in search.

To audit your website’s backlinks, go to Semrush’s Backlinks software and enter your area. Then, search for pages with no or few backlinks. These are pages that presently have restricted authority and are much less more likely to present in search outcomes. 

Discover pages with few incoming hyperlinks by going to the “Listed Pages” tab within the Backlinks software and sorting by “Domains,” in order that pages with the fewest (or zero) referring domains are on the high. 

You gained’t have to construct hyperlinks to each single web page with few backlinks. For instance, you don’t want your privateness coverage web page to rank nicely. 

But it surely’s price going by the listing and including pages you do need to rank to your audit tracker sheet. These are pages you possibly can then prioritize getting hyperlinks to with hyperlink constructing campaigns.

Step 8: Test the consumer expertise 

Good consumer expertise (UX) can straight have an effect on your conversion fee and your search efficiency.

Test your website’s UX to establish pages the place guests are struggling to navigate, interact with, or act in your content material. 

Three key areas to examine are your cellular usability, total website accessibility, and web page structure.

Test these three areas utilizing the information beneath and add any pages with clear UX points to your tracker spreadsheet, together with particulars of the problem to the “Notes” column.

Audit cellular usability

Audit how your website performs on cellular units, since Google prioritizes crawling the cellular model of your website to index. 

Plus, over 62% of all web site site visitors is now on cellular, so a very good cellular expertise must be a precedence for all website house owners.

Widespread cellular usability points to examine for embrace: 

• Textual content that is too small to learn
• Clickable (tappable) components positioned too shut collectively
• Content material wider than the display (this could have an effect on the scrolling expertise)
• A menu that’s onerous to entry or navigate
• Interactive components (like types or calculators) that work on desktop however not on cellular

When you use templates for areas of your website (like weblog posts), you may see the identical subject on numerous pages. In these instances, simply add a pattern URL, after which apply the repair to the template so it rolls out to all of the affected pages. 

Test your website’s accessibility

Audit your website’s accessibility with a software like Lighthouse in Chrome’s dev instruments to make sure your website is usable for folks of all talents.

Good-click in your web page, choose “Examine,” and go to the “Lighthouse” tab within the window that opens. Make sure that the field subsequent to “Accessibility” is ticked and click on “Analyze web page load” to audit the web page.

As soon as the Lighthouse audit is full, click on the drop-downs to study extra about any accessibility points in your web page.  

Analyze your web page structure

Audit your web page structure to make sure it’s simple for customers to navigate your pages and discover what they want.

When analyzing pages, carry out the next checks:

• Is an important content material seen with out scrolling? Guests ought to have the ability to perceive what the web page is about and what to do subsequent with out having to scroll.
• Is the decision to motion clear and straightforward to search out? If the aim of the web page is to get guests to enroll, purchase, or contact you, that choice must be apparent and accessible.
• Is the web page simple to learn? Quick paragraphs, clear headings, and enough distinction between textual content and background can all have an effect on how lengthy somebody stays on a web page.
• Are there any components that could possibly be interrupting the expertise? Intrusive pop-ups, auto-playing movies, or slow-loading media can all trigger guests to go away earlier than they’ve had an opportunity to have interaction.

You should utilize a heatmap software like Microsoft Readability to see how actual customers are behaving in your website. This exhibits you the locations they click on most, which is helpful for recognizing points with CTA placements. It’s also possible to watch recordings to know scroll habits and to identify areas the place customers is likely to be getting caught.

Additional studying: How UX and website positioning are associated (& learn how to optimize for each)

Step 9: Audit your schema markup

Audit your schema markup (a kind of structured information that gives extra details about your pages) to examine whether or not your key pages are giving engines like google the extra context they should show wealthy outcomes like star scores. 

Schema markup might also assist AI methods perceive your content material, which might affect your LLM visibility. Enter a URL into Google’s Wealthy Outcomes Check, and it’ll present you whether or not the web page has any structured information, what sort it’s, and whether or not it is legitimate.

Semrush’s Web site Audit software checks for structured information points throughout each web page in your website that was crawled, which is extra sensible than testing pages one after the other. Particularly for bigger web site audits. 

Go to your Web site Audit mission and navigate to the “Markup” thematic report by clicking “View particulars.”

Scroll to the “Structured Information Objects” part and search for any pages with a quantity within the “Invalid” column. Click on the quantity to view the affected pages.

Click on the arrow within the “Affected Fields” column to spotlight the particular schema subject with every web page. Then add these pages and be aware the problem in your tracker spreadsheet. 

Find out how to prioritize your audit findings

The way you prioritize your web site audit findings is determined by your objectives and the scope of the audit you ran. You should utilize the tracker spreadsheet to do that for you. 

For a fast method to prioritization, use Semrush’s Web site Audit software. It performs 140+ checks throughout crawlability and indexability, structured information, on-page website positioning, and extra. And you’ll arrange the audit to run mechanically, letting you simply monitor your progress after making use of fixes.

Semrush’s Web site Audit makes use of a three-tier severity mannequin that provides you a very good start line for prioritizing these fixes:

• Errors are probably the most severe points and must be fastened first
• Warnings are much less important however price addressing as soon as errors are resolved
• Notices are lower-priority observations which can be price fixing when time permits

Run a web site audit at this time with a free trial of Semrush One.