The Complete Website Audit Checklist for 2026 (80+ Checks)

Updated March 2026 · 10 min read

A website audit is a systematic review of everything that affects how your site performs in search engines, how visitors experience it, and whether it's technically sound. This checklist covers 80+ checks across six categories — the same checks that professional SEO auditors run, organized so you can work through them yourself.

You can run through this manually, or use an automated scanner to check most of these instantly. Either way, knowing what to look for is the first step.

SEO fundamentals (20 checks)

Every page should have:

• A unique title tag between 50-60 characters including the primary keyword
• A unique meta description between 120-155 characters that encourages clicks
• Exactly one H1 tag that clearly describes the page content
• A logical heading hierarchy (H1 → H2 → H3, no skipping levels)
• A canonical URL pointing to the preferred version of the page
• Open Graph tags (og:title, og:description, og:image) for social sharing
• Twitter Card meta tags for proper display when shared on X/Twitter

Site-wide SEO checks:

• A valid sitemap.xml accessible at your root domain
• A robots.txt file that references your sitemap
• The lang attribute set on the HTML tag
• JSON-LD structured data (schema.org) on at least your homepage
• No duplicate title tags across different pages
• No duplicate meta descriptions across different pages
• Clean URL structure — lowercase, hyphens instead of underscores, under 75 characters
• A favicon that displays in browser tabs and bookmarks
• Adequate internal linking — at least 3-5 internal links per page
• No orphan pages (pages with no internal links pointing to them)
• Breadcrumb navigation with structured data on content-heavy sites
• XML sitemap submitted to Google Search Console
• Site verified in Google Search Console with no critical errors

Page speed and Core Web Vitals (15 checks)

Core Web Vitals (what Google measures):

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) under 2.5 seconds
• First Contentful Paint (FCP) under 1.8 seconds
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) under 0.1
• Total Blocking Time (TBT) under 200ms
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP) under 200ms

Speed optimisation checks:

• All images compressed and served in WebP or AVIF format
• All images have explicit width and height attributes
• No render-blocking CSS or JavaScript in the document head
• Text compression enabled (gzip or Brotli)
• Browser caching configured for static assets (30+ day cache lifetime)
• Unused CSS removed or deferred
• Unused JavaScript removed or deferred
• Critical CSS inlined in the HTML head
• Lazy loading enabled for below-the-fold images
• A CDN serving static assets from edge locations

Broken links and navigation (10 checks)

• No internal 404 errors (broken links within your own site)
• No broken external links pointing to dead pages on other sites
• A custom 404 page that helps visitors find what they're looking for
• No redirect chains (A → B → C — should be A → C directly)
• No redirect loops
• All HTTP URLs redirecting to HTTPS versions
• www and non-www versions resolving to the same URL
• No links pointing to pages that return 5xx server errors
• Navigation menu working correctly on all pages
• Footer links all functional and pointing to live pages

Security and trust (10 checks)

• HTTPS enabled with a valid SSL certificate
• No mixed content (HTTP resources loaded on HTTPS pages)
• HSTS (Strict-Transport-Security) header present
• X-Content-Type-Options header set to nosniff
• X-Frame-Options or Content-Security-Policy frame-ancestors set
• Referrer-Policy header configured
• Permissions-Policy header configured
• SSL certificate not expiring within 30 days
• No exposed server version information in headers
• No sensitive information in HTML source comments

Mobile readiness (8 checks)

• Viewport meta tag present with width=device-width, initial-scale=1
• Text readable without zooming (minimum 16px body text)
• Tap targets (buttons, links) at least 44x44px with adequate spacing
• No horizontal scrolling required on mobile
• No fixed-width elements wider than the viewport
• Forms usable on mobile with appropriate input types
• Images responsive and not overflowing their containers
• Navigation accessible and usable on small screens

Content quality (12 checks)

• Every page has at least 300 words of meaningful content
• All images have descriptive alt text (5-15 words each)
• No empty links (anchor tags with no text or aria-label)
• Paragraphs broken up for readability (no walls of text over 150 words)
• Content matches the search intent for target keywords
• No duplicate content across multiple pages
• Contact information easily findable
• Legal pages present (privacy policy, terms of service) if collecting data
• No broken images (images returning 404)
• No placeholder or lorem ipsum text left on live pages
• Consistent brand voice and formatting across all pages
• Clear calls-to-action on key landing pages

Bonus: accessibility basics (5 checks)

• Sufficient colour contrast between text and backgrounds (4.5:1 minimum)
• All form fields have associated labels
• All interactive elements keyboard-navigable
• Skip-to-content link for keyboard users
• ARIA labels on icons and non-text interactive elements

How to prioritise fixes

Don't try to fix everything at once. Start with the issues that have the highest impact on both rankings and visitor experience. Missing title tags and meta descriptions, broken HTTPS, and failing Core Web Vitals should be fixed first. Low-severity issues like missing Twitter Cards or suboptimal favicon formats can wait.

A good audit tool will sort issues by severity automatically. If you're working through this checklist manually, tackle each section in this order: security first (it's binary — your site is either secure or it's not), then SEO fundamentals, then speed, then links, then content, then mobile.

Set a goal: get your site to 80+ out of 100 on your first pass, then revisit quarterly to catch anything new. SEO isn't a one-time task — it's maintenance, just like keeping your shop clean and well-lit.