A lot goes into making a website run smoothly, be intuitive to use, and appear in front of the right audience. Just like your house, health, or car needs routine maintenance, your website also needs regular checkups to identify issues that need to be addressed.
A website audit finds everything from poor user experience impacting conversions to problems with crawling that prevent you from showing up in search results. Identifying these problems early means you can intervene before they cost you visibility, leads, or revenue.
This guide will walk you through a step-by-step website audit process. You’ll get tool recommendations for each step and a free downloadable tracker you can use to stay on top of your site’s performance.
What is a website audit?
A website audit is a comprehensive analysis of a website’s performance, structure, usability, and content.
The primary purpose of a website audit is to identify areas for improvement that you can address. This can help you enhance the site’s user experience (UX), SEO, and overall effectiveness in achieving your goals.
A typical website audit covers at least a few of the following areas:
- Technical SEO: Assessing the technical aspects of the website, such as site speed, mobile-friendliness, URL structure, crawlability, and indexing. Technical SEO efforts ensure that search engines and AI systems can easily access and understand the site.
- On-page SEO: Examining individual webpages to assess the likelihood they’ll show in search results. Optimization efforts focus on things like title tags, meta descriptions, keyword use, and content quality.
- Backlinks: Assessing a website’s link profile (i.e., the quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to the website). This helps identify whether your site is in need of more high-quality links to improve authority.
- Conversion rate optimization (CRO): Evaluating the website’s ability to convert visitors into customers or achieve other desired actions. Like signing up for a newsletter or filling out a contact form.
A website audit typically concludes with a detailed report highlighting issues and providing recommendations for improvement.
Website audits are best run on a regular basis.
Why should you conduct a website audit?
You should conduct a website audit to identify issues you can fix to improve your site’s performance.
Audits surface issues that are paired with recommended fixes across areas like SEO, AI optimization, and user experience. Implementing these fixes can improve your traditional search and AI visibility along with your conversion rate.
How to do a website audit step by step
Follow the steps below to perform a comprehensive website audit.
Add URLs with issues you find on your site to our free website audit tracker sheet. Create a copy and use it to help you (or your dev team) keep track of fixes.
Step 1: Define your audit scope before you start
Before you start a website audit, determine the scope of your audit to focus on what’s likely to be most impactful.
Jumping straight into a full audit of every page on your site can produce a long list of issues with no obvious way to prioritize them. You could spend weeks working through technical fixes that have no meaningful impact on the metrics you actually care about.
Start by asking what prompted you to want to run an audit in the first place:
- Have you seen a sudden, unexplained drop in organic traffic?
- Is search visibility slipping on specific pages?
- Has your conversion rate dropped?
If nothing specific has prompted the audit and you’re running one as a routine checkup, it helps to scope it by site size. A small site with fewer than 50 pages can reasonably be audited end to end, covering all the steps in this guide across all pages.
A larger site with thousands of pages might need a more targeted approach. In that case, you would likely want to focus on your highest-traffic pages and your most important conversion paths.
Use the table below to match your situation with the ideal audit approach:
|
Your situation |
Ideal audit scope |
|
Routine check, small site (under ~50 pages) |
Follow all the steps across all your pages |
|
Routine check, large site |
Focus on your top ~20% of pages by traffic |
|
A specific metric has dropped (e.g., AI visibility) |
Focus on the pages that saw the drop, and the corresponding audit step (e.g., Step 9: Audit AI search readiness) |
|
Website migration or redesign |
Follow all nine steps across all pages |
|
A specific section is underperforming |
Follow all nine steps scoped to that section or category |
Step 2: Check search engine crawlability and indexability
Check your website’s search engine crawlability and indexability to ensure search engines can access 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 adds those pages to its database so they can appear in search results. Making it easy for crawlers to access and index your pages can improve your overall search visibility.
To check how well your site can be crawled and indexed, start in Google Search Console. The “Page indexing” report shows you exactly how many of your pages are indexed and flags the ones that aren’t, along with the reasons why.
Click into any row under “Why pages aren’t indexed” to see a sample list of pages with the corresponding issue.
Look through the list of pages that aren’t indexed due to the specific reason you clicked to find any that should be indexed but aren’t.
Be aware that not all the pages listed as not indexed in GSC represent an issue you need to fix. For example, some pages might be alternate versions that you don’t want Google to index as separate pages anyway.
For pages that should be indexed but aren’t, click the URL within GSC, then select “Inspect URL” to see more details about the issue.
Add these URLs to the tracker sheet (along with the issue type in the “Notes” column) to take action on once you’ve completed the rest of this audit. Then repeat this for the other issue types.
Semrush’s Site Audit gives you a more comprehensive overview of your site’s crawlability and indexability issues.
Set up a Site Audit project and go to the “Issues” tab. Select the “Crawlability” and “Indexability” filters to highlight associated issues like broken internal links and pages blocked by robots.txt. (You may need to click the three dots to access the indexability filter.)
Click into each issue to see the affected URLs, and add these to your list.
Step 3: Audit for AI search readiness
Audit whether AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity can access, understand, and cite your content.
As AI search becomes a more significant source of brand visibility, ensuring your site is accessible to AI crawlers and structured in a way that’s easy to extract from is increasingly important.
There are a few things to check here: AI crawler access, AI-friendly structure, and agentic commerce preparedness.
Check for AI crawler access
Make sure you aren’t blocking AI crawlers in your robots.txt file.
Robots.txt is a simple text file that tells bots which parts of your site they should and shouldn’t access. Check it by adding “/robots.txt” to your domain in a browser.
Look for any rules that block AI crawlers by name, including GPTBot (ChatGPT’s bot for gathering training data), ClaudeBot (Claude’s training data bot), and PerplexityBot (Perplexity’s crawler for finding live search information).
Here’s what your robots.txt might look like if you’re blocking ChatGPT, for example:
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /
If you’re unintentionally blocking any AI bots, removing those rules helps bots crawl your content to be used for training future models and to be cited in AI answers.
Semrush’s Site Audit tool will flag any pages you’re blocking from AI search on the “Overview” tab. Clicking the numbers next to the relevant bots (if there are any) will show you the pages they can’t access.
Review your pages’ structures
Pages that clearly state the main points, use descriptive headings, and are written using short, self-contained sections are easier for AI systems to parse and cite.
Go through your most important pages and check for the following:
- Each section answers a clear question directly in the first few sentences
- Headings are descriptive
- The page includes citable quotes and/or stats
- The page includes an FAQ section (not always necessary, but can be helpful for extraction)
Use the Visibility Overview report in Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit to track how frequently you’re cited in AI responses and which of your pages get cited. Monitor this over time to understand whether the changes you make after performing your website audit are working.
Consider agentic shopping readiness
Optimizing for agentic shopping involves making it easier for AI agents to take purchase actions on your pages.
Agentic search as a whole is still emerging. We’re still in the early stages of developing specific protocols (like the Universal Commerce Protocol) that are designed to help AI agents communicate with websites to fill out forms, make bookings, and complete purchases.
But agentic shopping readiness should become part of your regular website auditing process now. Specific checks to perform include:
- Making sure your schema markup is valid (see step 9)
- Ensuring your product and pricing data is up to date
- Implementing relevant protocols (see our guide to agentic commerce for more)
Step 4: Audit Core Web Vitals performance
Auditing your website’s Core Web Vitals performance helps you understand where you can improve your user experience.
The Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics Google uses to measure page experience, and there are three of them:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures how fast your main content loads
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP) measures how quickly your page responds to user input
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures how much the layout shifts unexpectedly as the page loads
Solid Core Web Vitals scores can improve your user experience, which in turn can affect your search visibility (since page experience is a ranking factor). Plus, a page that loads quickly is more likely to garner interactions. This could improve your conversion rate.
To audit your website’s Core Web Vitals, start with the “Core Web Vitals” report in Google Search Console. It groups your pages into three categories: “good,” “need improvement,” and “poor.” Click “Open Report” (for mobile or desktop) to see more details about the affected pages.
Add pages that appear under “need improvement” or “poor” in the “Core Web Vitals” report to your audit tracker sheet.
To further audit the individual URLs flagged in Google Search Console, use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. It gives you a full breakdown of the issues affecting that page’s Core Web Vitals.
Scroll down the report to see more detailed information on specific issues affecting your page’s Core Web Vitals.
Add any context you learn about the issues affecting your Core Web Vitals scores to the notes column in your tracker sheet.
Step 5: Review on-page SEO elements
Reviewing on-page SEO elements across your site reveals pages that are underperforming due to fixable optimization gaps.
On-page SEO elements are the components on individual pages that help search systems understand what your content is about and can therefore influence your visibility in search results.
Key on-page SEO elements to check include your title tags, meta descriptions, headings, and keyword use. Specifically, look for the following problems you can address:
- Missing or duplicate title tags and meta descriptions
- Title tags that don’t include the page’s target query
- Pages with no clear H1 heading or multiple H1s
- Keyword cannibalization, where two or more pages on your site target the same terms and compete with each other
Use Google Search Console to identify pages that likely have poorly optimized title tags and meta descriptions. Go to “Performance” > “Search results,” select the “Pages” tab, and sort the “Impressions” column from high to low.
Look for pages that have lots of impressions (500 or more is a good starting point) but not many clicks. These are pages that are appearing in front of searchers but that aren’t getting many clicks, which could be due to the title tags and/or meta descriptions.
For title tags, make sure they:
- Are 50-60 characters
- Include your primary keyword
- Match search intent
For meta descriptions, ensure they:
- Are 105 characters or fewer
- Include your primary keyword
- Clearly tell the user what to expect when they visit your page
(Follow our guidance on optimizing your title tags and meta descriptions for more ways to improve them.)
Add these pages to your tracker sheet with the “on-page SEO” category.
Semrush’s Site Audit SEO checker tool flags on-page issues like these across all the pages it crawls. Just go to your Site Audit project and look for issues in the “Meta tags” category. Click the number for a given issue to see all affected pages, and then add those pages to your tracker sheet.
Step 6: Audit your content quality
Audit your content quality to identify underperforming pages and then manually assess whether they need to be updated, consolidated with similar content, or removed.
Use Google Analytics (GA4) to find which pages to focus on. In GA4, look at engagement metrics by page. For example, a low average engagement time is often a sign that visitors aren’t finding what they expected, which can point to thin content, a mismatch with search intent, or content that simply isn’t useful enough.
Find low-quality pages in GA4 by going to “Reports” > “Engagement” > “Pages and screens.” Then sort by “Average engagement time per active user” so that the time is ascending.
Pages with low average engagement time are ones you’ll want to analyze further. Visit these pages and manually check for content quality issues.
Here are three questions to ask for each piece of content to help you identify issues:
- Does the content match search intent? Think about what the user’s goal is with a search that would ultimately lead to this page. If your page doesn’t help them meet that goal, update the page so it does.
- Is there an opportunity to add originality/information gain? Original data, a specific process, or a real example from your business makes your content more useful for readers. And Google’s Helpful Content guidelines also specifically mention originality.
- Is the information still accurate? Outdated content, especially anything citing old statistics or describing tools and processes that have changed, erodes user trust and can hurt your visibility. AI tools also tend to favor fresh content when citing sources in responses.
Based on your answers to these questions, you have three options:
- Update the page if the topic is worth targeting and the content can be meaningfully improved
- Consolidate it with related pages if those pages cover similar ground and none of them are strong enough on their own
- Remove it if the page has no traffic, no backlinks, and no realistic path to being useful
Add pages you plan to update or consolidate to your tracker sheet. Remove pages that are no longer relevant, but consider redirecting them to relevant alternatives.
Step 7: Review your backlink profile
Review your backlink profile to understand the quality and quantity of links pointing to your site to identify whether a lack of high-quality links may be impacting your ability to appear prominently in search.
To audit your site’s backlinks, go to Semrush’s Backlinks tool and enter your domain. Then, look for pages with no or few backlinks. These are pages that currently have limited authority and are less likely to show in search results.
Find pages with few incoming links by going to the “Indexed Pages” tab in the Backlinks tool and sorting by “Domains,” so that pages with the fewest (or zero) referring domains are at the top.
You won’t need to build links to every single page with few backlinks. For example, you don’t need your privacy policy page to rank well.
But it’s worth going through the list and adding pages you do want to rank to your audit tracker sheet. These are pages you can then prioritize getting links to with link building campaigns.
Step 8: Check the user experience
Good user experience (UX) can directly affect your conversion rate and your search performance.
Check your site’s UX to identify pages where visitors are struggling to navigate, engage with, or act on your content.
Three key areas to check are your mobile usability, overall site accessibility, and page layout.
Check these three areas using the tips below and add any pages with clear UX issues to your tracker spreadsheet, along with details of the issue to the “Notes” column.
Audit mobile usability
Audit how your site performs on mobile devices, since Google prioritizes crawling the mobile version of your site to index.
Plus, over 62% of all website traffic is now on mobile, so a good mobile experience should be a priority for all site owners.
Common mobile usability issues to check for include:
- Text that’s too small to read
- Clickable (tappable) elements placed too close together
- Content wider than the screen (this can affect the scrolling experience)
- A menu that’s hard to access or navigate
- Interactive elements (like forms or calculators) that work on desktop but not on mobile
If you use templates for areas of your site (like blog posts), you might see the same issue on lots of pages. In these cases, just add a sample URL, and then apply the fix to the template so it rolls out to all the affected pages.
Check your site’s accessibility
Audit your site’s accessibility with a tool like Lighthouse in Chrome’s dev tools to ensure your site is usable for people of all abilities.
Just right-click on your page, select “Inspect,” and go to the “Lighthouse” tab in the window that opens. Make sure the box next to “Accessibility” is ticked and click “Analyze page load” to audit the page.
Once the Lighthouse audit is complete, click the drop-downs to learn more about any accessibility issues on your page.
Analyze your page layout
Audit your page layout to ensure it’s easy for users to navigate your pages and find what they need.
When analyzing pages, perform the following checks:
- Is the most important content visible without scrolling? Visitors should be able to understand what the page is about and what to do next without having to scroll.
- Is the call to action clear and easy to find? If the goal of the page is to get visitors to sign up, buy, or contact you, that option should be obvious and accessible.
- Is the page easy to read? Short paragraphs, clear headings, and sufficient contrast between text and background can all affect how long someone stays on a page.
- Are there any elements that could be interrupting the experience? Intrusive pop-ups, auto-playing videos, or slow-loading media can all cause visitors to leave before they’ve had a chance to engage.
You can use a heatmap tool like Microsoft Clarity to see how real users are behaving on your site. This shows you the places they click most, which is useful for spotting issues with CTA placements. You can also watch recordings to understand scroll behavior and to spot areas where users might be getting stuck.
Further reading: How UX and SEO are related (& how to optimize for both)
Step 9: Audit your schema markup
Audit your schema markup (a type of structured data that provides more information about your pages) to check whether your key pages are giving search engines the additional context they need to display rich results like star ratings.
Schema markup may also help AI systems understand your content, which could influence your LLM visibility. Enter a URL into Google’s Rich Results Test, and it will show you whether the page has any structured data, what type it is, and whether it’s valid.
Semrush’s Site Audit tool checks for structured data issues across every page on your site that was crawled, which is more practical than testing pages one by one. Especially for larger website audits.
Go to your Site Audit project and navigate to the “Markup” thematic report by clicking “View details.”
Scroll to the “Structured Data Items” section and look for any pages with a number in the “Invalid” column. Click the number to view the affected pages.
Click the arrow in the “Affected Fields” column to highlight the specific schema issue with each page. Then add these pages and note the issue in your tracker spreadsheet.
How to prioritize your audit findings
How you prioritize your website audit findings depends on your goals and the scope of the audit you ran. You can use the tracker spreadsheet to do this for you.
For a quick approach to prioritization, use Semrush’s Site Audit tool. It performs 140+ checks across crawlability and indexability, structured data, on-page SEO, and more. And you can set up the audit to run automatically, letting you easily monitor your progress after applying fixes.
Semrush’s Site Audit uses a three-tier severity model that gives you a good starting point for prioritizing these fixes:
- Errors are the most serious issues and should be fixed first
- Warnings are less critical but worth addressing once errors are resolved
- Notices are lower-priority observations that are worth fixing when time allows
Run a website audit today with a free trial of Semrush One.
