Website Audit Checklist: What to Check, and the Free Tool for Each

A website audit isn't one scan — it's nine separate checks, and most have a specific free tool built for exactly that job. Running a single Lighthouse report or glancing at analytics tells you less than it looks like it does, because indexing, speed, and accessibility are checked by different tools that answer different questions. This checklist pairs each item with the free, official tool that actually verifies it, so you're not guessing which report covers what.

What should I check, and in what order?

The order matters less than covering all nine — a fast, accessible site that isn't indexed gets no traffic to be fast or accessible for.

Is the site actually indexed?

Start in Google Search Console, specifically the Page indexing report. Google's own description of it is direct: "See which pages Google can find and index on your site, and learn about any indexing problems encountered" (Search Console Help, "Page indexing report", checked September 2026). The report separates indexed from non-indexed URLs and lists specific reasons for each non-indexed page — blocked by robots.txt, marked noindex, a server error, a redirect, or a 404 — so you're not left guessing why a page is missing.

For a single page you're checking right now, use the URL Inspection tool inside Search Console instead of the site-wide report. It shows what Google currently knows about that one URL and can request a fresh crawl, though Google is upfront that "submitting a request does not guarantee that the page will appear in the Google index" (Search Console Help, "URL Inspection tool", checked September 2026). If a page you expect to rank isn't showing up at all, Why Isn't My Website Builder Site on Google? covers the specific visibility settings on five major builders that most often cause this.

Does Google know about every page?

Check the Sitemaps report in Search Console. Google explains its purpose plainly: "Use the Sitemaps report to tell Google about any new sitemaps for your property, to see your sitemap submission history, and to see any errors that Google encountered when parsing your submitted sitemaps" (Search Console Help, "Sitemaps report", checked September 2026). A sitemap itself is just "a file on your site that tells Google which pages on your site we should know about" (same source) — and submitting one doesn't mean uploading a file to Google directly: "Submitting a sitemap means telling Google where to find the file on your site. You cannot actually upload a sitemap to Google" (same source). To submit one, post it on your site, confirm it loads without a login wall, then paste its URL into the Sitemaps report and click Submit.

Are titles and descriptions set on every page?

There's no single official scanning tool for this one — it's a manual pass, guided by Google's own documentation on what a title link should look like (Google Search Central, "Influencing Title Links in Google Search", checked September 2026), which recommends every page have a specific, descriptive <title> element rather than a repeated or missing one. Open each page's source (or your builder's SEO settings panel) and confirm a unique title and a real meta description exist — a missing or duplicated title across many pages is also visible indirectly in Search Console's Page indexing report, since Google sometimes treats near-duplicate, thin pages as not worth indexing separately.

Are there broken links?

The W3C Link Checker, a free tool published by the W3C itself, checks a page (or an entire site, recursively) for links that don't resolve, flagging redirects and dead references along the way (W3C Link Checker, checked September 2026). Run it after any migration, redesign, or bulk content edit — those are the moments internal links most often silently break. If you're checking links specifically because you just moved platforms, Website Migration Checklist covers the fuller redirect and URL-mapping process this single check fits into.

Is the site fast enough?

Use Google PageSpeed Insights. Google describes it directly: "PageSpeed Insights (PSI) reports on the user experience of a page on both mobile and desktop devices, and provides suggestions on how that page may be improved" (Google for Developers, "About PageSpeed Insights", checked September 2026). It blends two kinds of data: "Lab data is useful for debugging issues, as it is collected in a controlled environment," while "field data is useful for capturing true, real-world user experience - but has a more limited set of metrics" (same source). Under the hood, "PSI uses Lighthouse to analyze the given URL in a simulated environment for the Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO categories" (same source) — so a PageSpeed Insights run also gives you a rough second opinion on accessibility and SEO, not just speed.

For a site-wide, ongoing view instead of a one-page check, Search Console's Core Web Vitals report shows real visitor data: "The Core Web Vitals report shows how your pages perform, based on real world usage data (sometimes called field data)" (Search Console Help, "Core Web Vitals report", checked September 2026), grouped by status (Poor, Needs improvement, Good) across your Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint, and Cumulative Layout Shift metrics. Google groups similar pages together for this: "URLs in the report are grouped into pages that have a similar user experience. The LCP, INP, and CLS status applies to the entire group" (same source) — so one slow template can drag down every page built from it, and fixing that template fixes the whole group at once.

Does the site work well on mobile?

Run the same PageSpeed Insights check specifically on mobile — the tool reports mobile and desktop as separate results for the same URL, per Google's own description above, so check both rather than assuming a fast desktop score means a fast phone experience. Combine the score with an actual hands-on pass: open the live page on a real phone (not just a resized browser window) and confirm tap targets, menus, and forms are usable, since a passing performance score doesn't test whether a mobile menu actually opens.

Does the site clear basic accessibility checks?

Automated tools catch real issues but not everything — the full accessibility audit guide already covers this in depth, built around W3C's own tools and the point that "some accessibility checks just cannot be automated" (W3C, evaluation tools overview). For this checklist, treat accessibility as its own line item rather than something a speed or SEO scan happens to catch — run an automated scan, then a keyboard-only pass, using that guide's issue-ledger format.

Do forms actually submit?

There's no official automated tool for this — it's a real test. Submit a real test entry through every form on the site (contact, newsletter signup, checkout if you have one) and confirm the submission actually arrives wherever it's supposed to: an inbox, a spreadsheet, a CRM, or a database. Test an empty submission and an invalid value too, not just a valid one, since a form that silently fails validation is as broken as one that doesn't submit at all.

Is analytics actually tracking?

Use Google Tag Assistant, Google's own tool for checking whether a Google tag is actually firing. It "helps you verify the implementation and functionality of tags on your website," letting you "review the tags, events, and data on your website" as either a web tool at tagassistant.google.com or a Chrome extension (Tag Assistant Help, "Troubleshoot with Tag Assistant", checked September 2026). Load your site with Tag Assistant running and confirm your GA4 or Google Tag Manager container actually appears and fires — a tag that was pasted into the wrong template, or blocked by a cookie banner that never got configured for consent, can sit there silently reporting nothing for months.

What if a check fails?

Nothing here is a one-way door. A page that isn't indexed usually traces back to one setting (see the builder-specific guide linked above). A slow score is a prioritized list of fixes, not a single number to chase. A broken form is almost always a notification address that changed during a redesign. Re-run the specific tool for whatever you fixed — don't assume a fix worked without checking the same tool again.

Bottom line: treat a website audit as nine separate, specific checks rather than one pass. Google Search Console covers indexing and sitemaps, PageSpeed Insights covers speed and gives a rough mobile and accessibility read, the W3C Link Checker covers broken links, and Tag Assistant confirms analytics is actually firing — pair each item with its own tool instead of trusting a single overall score.