Four Things to Check in a Website Audit

"Website audit" can mean anything from a quick look to a fifty-page report full of scores. For a small business site, four things decide most of whether it does its job: how fast it loads, how it works on a phone, whether Google can understand it, and whether a visitor knows what to do next.

You can check all four yourself with free tools, and this post shows how. Or I'll check them for you: a free five-minute video review of your homepage, emailed to you within two business days (request it here).

Speed

What to check. How quickly the main content appears, how quickly the page responds when you tap something, and whether things jump around while it loads. Google measures these three as its Core Web Vitals, and publishes what counts as good (web.dev):

How. Paste your address into PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile results first. If your site gets enough visitors, the top section shows what real Chrome users experienced; below it is a lab test of one load. The lab score out of 100 moves a little from run to run, so watch the three measures above rather than chasing a perfect score.

What usually causes trouble. Photos uploaded at full camera size, too many plugins or third-party scripts, and slow hosting.

Phones

What to check. Open your homepage on your own phone, not in a narrowed desktop window, and ideally on cellular data:

• Can you read everything without zooming?
• Are buttons and links big enough to tap without hitting the wrong one?
• Does the menu open, and can you close it again?
• Is your phone number a link that starts a call?
• Does anything spill off the side of the screen?

What usually causes trouble. Text inside images, tables and embeds that don't shrink, and pop-ups that cover the page on a small screen.

Search basics

What to check. The parts of a page Google reads first:

• The page title, the blue link in search results. Each page should have its own, saying what the page is and, for a local business, where: "Your Service in Your Town | Your Business".
• The description under it. Write one per page that makes someone want to click. Google sometimes shows its own excerpt instead, but a good description is what it starts from.
• One main heading per page that says what the page is about.
• Alt text on images, describing what's in them.
• Whether Google has found your pages. In Google Search Console, which is free, the Pages report lists what's indexed and why anything isn't.

What to skip. "Keyword density" and lists of towns. Repeating a phrase until it sounds unnatural, or listing the cities you want to rank for in a block of text, is keyword stuffing under Google's spam policies. Write for the person reading.

Next steps

What to check. On each page, can a visitor tell within a few seconds what you want them to do: call, book, or ask for a quote? On a phone, can they see that button without scrolling far?

Then test it yourself:

• Send yourself a message through your own contact form. Did it arrive, at an address someone checks?
• Tap the phone number on your site from your phone.
• Click the booking or quote button and follow it to the end.

What usually causes trouble. Three buttons competing for attention, a form that still sends to an old email address, and a contact link that only appears at the bottom of the page.

A few more quick checks

Not part of the four, but each takes a minute:

• The address bar. Every page should load over https, with no warning from the browser.
• Old information. Hours, prices, staff names, a holiday notice from last year, a copyright year in the footer that stopped changing.
• Dead ends. Click every link in your menu and footer. A page that no longer exists sends a visitor away.
• Your Google Business Profile. Its name, address, phone number, hours and website link should match what your site says.

How often to check

Run through all four after any change to the site, and whenever Google Search Console emails you about a problem. Between changes, a quick pass every few months is enough: test the contact form, tap the phone number, and run PageSpeed Insights once on your homepage.

What to do with what you find

Fix what's broken first: forms, links and the phone number. Then the phone layout, then speed, then the search basics. Check again after each change.

Some fixes take minutes in your site's editor. Others, like slow hosting or a theme that was never built for phones, are bigger, and that's when it's worth weighing a repair against a rebuild.

The free audit

If you'd rather not do this yourself, I'll do it for you. You send your name, email and your site's address (a phone number is optional), and I record a five-minute video review of your homepage covering speed and mobile layout, SEO basics and calls to action. It's free, and it arrives by email within two business days. Request your audit.

If the fixes turn out bigger than a tweak, a new site may cost less than patching an old one: plans start at $2,400 (see the plans). If you run a WordPress site you'd like to keep, I host and maintain WordPress sites on a written quote (WordPress hosting).