A website audit checklist walks you through eight checks: page speed, mobile, SEO basics, broken links, security, forms and calls to action, content, and accessibility. You can run all eight yourself in about an hour with free tools, and below each one is how US business websites actually do on it. Your website is working for you 24/7, or at least it should be. But most small business owners set up their site and forget about it until something breaks or traffic drops. When we scan small business sites, the most common issues are things the owner had no idea about: broken forms, missing meta descriptions, oversized images dragging down speed. A regular website health check catches these before they cost you customers. Think of this as your quarterly check-up. No developer required.

1. Check Your Page Speed

Speed is the check with the clearest bar: Google wants the main content of a page to appear in under 2.5 seconds. Test your homepage and your most important pages with Google PageSpeed Insights and look at the phone results. Most US business sites clear it. Of 383,806 we could measure with real Chrome visitor data, 65% pass all three Core Web Vitals on phones and the typical site shows its main content in 1.7 seconds. If yours is in the slower third, the usual culprit is an oversized image near the top of the page. Compressing it and lazy loading the images further down are quick wins.

2. Test on Mobile

Google uses the mobile version of your site as the primary version for search rankings, and for most local businesses the phone is where customers look you up. Open your website on your own phone and tap through every page. Are buttons easy to tap? Does text require pinching to read? Do images overflow the screen? These aren't just annoyances. They directly affect whether people can find you and whether they stay once they do.

3. Review Your SEO Basics

This is where many small businesses have the most room to gain. Every page should have a unique title tag (the text that shows in browser tabs and search results) and a meta description (the summary below your title in Google). These should use words your customers actually search for. Check that your headings follow a logical order (a clear H1, then H2s and H3s) and that your images have descriptive alt text. Most sites get the top of this right: 99% of US business homepages have a title and 98% have a main heading. The common gap is the description. About 1 in 5 has none, so Google writes its own snippet from whatever text it finds. These are the SEO fundamentals, and getting them right is the first step to fixing SEO issues on your site.

4. Check for Broken Links

Broken links frustrate visitors and hurt your search rankings. Click through your navigation, footer links, and any buttons or calls-to-action. Pay special attention to links to external sites, which break more often than internal ones. A single broken link on your contact page could mean lost leads. Most website audits flag these automatically, and Search Console lists the pages Google could not reach.

5. Verify Your Security

Your site should load with HTTPS (look for the padlock icon in the browser bar). Without it, browsers will warn visitors that your site isn't secure, and most will leave immediately. Check that your SSL certificate is valid, renews automatically, and that old http:// links redirect to the secure version. More advanced security settings exist, but they need careful setup and can break parts of a site, so leave them to whoever manages your hosting. This isn't just a technical box to check. It's a trust signal that directly affects whether people feel safe doing business with you.

6. Test Your Forms and Calls-to-Action

Fill out every form on your site: contact forms, email signups, quote requests. Make sure they actually deliver the submission and show a confirmation. You'd be surprised how often forms silently break after a plugin update or hosting change. Then check that your main call-to-action (the thing you most want visitors to do) is visible without scrolling on every important page. Make it easy for people to reach you. For reference, 58% of US business homepages have a form on them.

7. Review Your Content

Read through your key pages as if you were a first-time visitor. Is it clear what you do, who you serve, and how to take the next step? Look for outdated information (old addresses, discontinued services, last year's dates). Make sure your contact information is consistent everywhere it appears. Fresh, accurate content tells both visitors and search engines that your business is active and trustworthy.

8. Check Accessibility

Accessibility means making sure everyone can use your website, including people who use screen readers or navigate with a keyboard. At minimum: all images need descriptive alt text, your color contrast should be high enough to read easily, and all interactive elements should be reachable with the Tab key. Beyond being the right thing to do, accessibility issues can expose you to legal risk, and fixing them usually improves the experience for all your visitors.

How Often Should You Do This?

A thorough website health check every quarter is a good baseline. If you're actively making changes to your site or running marketing campaigns, monthly checks on speed, broken links, and form functionality will help you catch problems before they cost you customers. A website audit can automate most of these checks and give you a prioritized list of what to fix first, so you always know where to focus your time.

More on auditing and scoring your site

These guides explain what website scores mean and how to choose and read an audit.