Your First Website Audit: A Beginner Tutorial
If you run a small business, your website is probably something you had built, filled in and then mostly left alone. A website audit is a way of finding out what it looks like to the people and machines that visit it: customers on phones, Google, social networks, screen readers and AI assistants. This tutorial assumes no technical knowledge. It explains the ideas behind each part of the Combined Audit in everyday language, why they matter to a business like yours, and how to run your first audit and read the report calmly.
What a website audit is
Think of an audit as an MOT for your website. A tester does not drive your car across the country; they run through a fixed list of checks, note anything that fails or is close to failing, and hand you a sheet. A website audit does the same thing with your pages. It visits the site the way a browser or a search engine would, reads what comes back, and compares it with a list of things a healthy website normally gets right.
Most of those checks are invisible to you as the owner. You see the page looking fine on your own laptop. You do not see that a search engine has been told to ignore it, that it takes several seconds to appear on a cheap phone, or that someone using a screen reader cannot tell what a button does. That gap between what you see and what others experience is what an audit is for.
The Combined Audit runs many separate checks at once, up to 21 in the free Quick Audit, and puts the results into one PDF. You do not need to know what each check is called before you start. The next section explains the ideas behind them.
The ideas behind the checks, in plain English
Being found: crawling, robots.txt, sitemaps and errors
Search engines discover pages by sending a program, often called a crawler or bot, that follows links
from page to page. Your site can leave instructions for these bots in a small file called robots.txt,
and it can offer a list of its pages in a sitemap. If the instructions accidentally say
keep out, or the list is out of date, pages can go unnoticed. When a link points to a page that no longer
exists, the visitor gets an error page, usually a 404. When a page has moved, a redirect sends people
to the new address; too many redirects in a row slow things down.
Describing itself: titles, descriptions and structured data
Every page carries labels that visitors rarely see but search engines and social networks read: a title, a short description, and a preview image used when the link is shared. Structured data goes further. It is a block of code that states facts plainly for machines, such as this is a bakery, here is its address and its opening hours. Getting those labels right affects how your listing looks in search results and how AI assistants describe you.
Feeling fast and steady: Core Web Vitals
Google measures three things about how a page feels to use: how quickly the main content appears, how quickly the page reacts when someone taps, and how much the layout jumps around while loading. You will see them as LCP, INP and CLS. Large photos and heavy scripts are the usual culprits.
Usable by everyone: accessibility
Some visitors use screen readers, keyboard navigation or zoom. Accessibility checks look for things that block them, such as pale text on a pale background, buttons with no name, form boxes with no label, and images with no text description, called alt text.
Right place, right language: local and international
If customers come to you, search engines want your name, address and phone number to be clear and identical everywhere. If you have versions of the site in different languages or for different countries, special tags called hreflang tell search engines which version to show to whom.
Safe, trustworthy and respectful of privacy
Browsers expect a secure connection and certain protective settings from your server. People and security tools also judge a site by signals such as how long the domain has existed and whether real contact details are published. Under UK data protection rules, sites generally need consent before setting non-essential tracking cookies, and they need a clear privacy policy.
Why any of this matters to a small business
None of these checks is about pleasing a machine for its own sake. Each one connects to something you care about:
- Being found. A page that search engines cannot reach cannot bring you customers from search, however good it is.
- Looking right when found. A clear title and description, and a proper preview image when someone shares your link in WhatsApp or on Facebook, make people more likely to click.
- Not losing people on the way in. A page that loads slowly on mobile data or jumps as someone tries to tap Book now loses visitors you have already won.
- Not shutting anyone out. An accessible site serves more customers, and the same clear structure helps search engines too.
- Being trusted. Missing contact details, browser warnings or an unclear owner make people hesitate before they buy.
- Staying on the right side of privacy rules. Tracking visitors before they agree is a common problem and usually a simple setting to change. This tutorial is general information, not legal advice.
You do not need to fix everything at once, and many findings will not apply to you. The point of the first audit is simply to know where you stand.
Before your first run
You need very little to get started:
- The address of your website, including the
https://at the start. Copy it from your browser's address bar to be sure. - Your name. A company name is optional.
- An email address you can open, because the report is sent as a download link after you verify it.
- About five minutes for the audit to run, and half an hour to read the report properly.
You do not need your website login, your hosting password or any technical help. The audit only reads what any visitor can already see, so it cannot change or break anything on your site.
A free account is optional but worth making. Without one the Quick Audit runs 19 checks; with one it adds the Site Crawler, which looks across many pages rather than one, and the Trust Audit, which looks at how trustworthy the site appears. That makes 21.
Your first audit, step by step
Step 1
Pick the page you care about most
For a first run, use your homepage. It is the page most visitors see, it usually shares its header, footer and menu with every other page, and problems found there often turn out to affect the whole site. Open the homepage in your browser, click the address bar and copy the full address, including the https:// part at the start. Using the exact address people land on avoids confusing results about redirects.
Step 2
Make a free account
This step is optional, but it gives you a fuller first report. Use the Join free link on the site and follow the sign-up steps. Once you are signed in, the Quick Audit includes two extra checks: one that walks through many pages of your site looking for broken links and repeated problems, and one that looks at trust signals such as your domain and your published contact details. Without an account you still get 19 useful checks.
Step 3
Start a Quick Audit
Go to the Combined Audit page, paste your address into the website box and type your name. Make sure Quick is chosen rather than Full; the Full Audit is a larger paid option for later. Ignore the Advanced controls link for now, because the standard selection is the right one for a first look. If the form asks you to confirm that you own the site, or have permission, tick that box honestly and then press Generate Report.
Step 4
Wait for the checks to finish
The Quick Audit takes about five minutes, because it is running every check against your page at the same time. Leave the tab open while it works; you can make a cup of tea. Nothing is being changed on your website during this time, it is only being read. If you have already used up the free daily allowance, the page will say so clearly rather than leaving you waiting with nothing happening.
Step 5
Get the report from your inbox
When the audit is done, type in your email address. A verification email will arrive, and the link inside it lets you download your report as a PDF. Check your spam or promotions folder if it does not appear within a few minutes. Save the PDF somewhere you will find it again, with the date in the file name, because it becomes the before picture that you compare against after making changes.
Step 6
Write a short to-do list
Do not try to act on every line. Read the overall score and the summary first, then open each section and note only its first one or two problems, since each section lists the worst first. For each one, write down whether you can do it yourself in your website editor, whether it needs your web designer or host, or whether it does not apply to your business. That list, not the score, is what you take forward.
Reading the report without panicking
A first report on almost any site contains a lot of findings. That is normal and does not mean your website is bad. Many sites built in good faith by capable designers still have dozens of small issues, because the checks are thorough and some of them are about best practice rather than anything broken.
A few reading habits help:
- Start at the top. The report opens with an overall score and a summary of every audit, so you can see which areas are strong and which need attention before you dive into detail.
- Read the first problem in each section. Problems are listed worst first. Each one says what is wrong, why it matters to your visitors and how to fix it, in plain language.
- Some results are good news. The checks also tell you what is already right, such as images that are correctly sized or links that work.
- Some results do not apply. If your business serves one country in one language, having no hreflang tags is correct and the report says so.
- The same issue can appear twice. A large photo might be mentioned in the image section and the speed section. Fixing it once clears both.
At the end of the report there is an AI fix prompt. It is a block of instructions you can paste into an AI coding tool if you or your developer use one. It only covers your site's own files and tells the tool to back up and work carefully. If you would rather someone did the work, each section has a link to request a quote.
Glossary of terms in the report
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Alt text | A short written description of an image, read aloud by screen readers and used by search engines. |
| Canonical URL | The address you tell search engines is the main version of a page when similar versions exist. |
| CLS | Cumulative Layout Shift: how much the page jumps around while it loads. |
| Consent banner | The pop-up asking visitors whether they accept non-essential cookies. |
| Crawler | A program that visits web pages automatically, such as Googlebot. |
| HTTPS and TLS | The secure connection between a visitor's browser and your site, shown by the padlock. |
| Hreflang | Tags that tell search engines which language or country version of a page to show. |
| INP | Interaction to Next Paint: how quickly the page responds when someone taps or clicks. |
| JSON-LD | The most common format for structured data, a block of code in the page. |
| LCP | Largest Contentful Paint: how long the main content, often the big photo, takes to appear. |
| Meta description | The short summary search engines may show under your page title. |
| NAP | Name, address and phone number, which should match everywhere your business is listed. |
| Open Graph | Tags that control the title, image and description shown when your link is shared. |
| Redirect | An instruction sending visitors from an old address to a new one. 301 means permanent. |
| robots.txt | A small file telling crawlers which parts of the site they may visit. |
| Security headers | Settings your server sends with each page that tell browsers how to protect visitors. |
| Sitemap | A file listing the pages you want search engines to know about. |
| Structured data | Code that states facts about the page or business in a form machines read reliably. |
| 404 | The error a visitor sees when a page cannot be found. |
What to do next
Once you have a short to-do list, sort it into three groups.
- Things you can do in your website editor, such as writing alt text for photos, filling in page titles and descriptions in your SEO plugin, or adding your phone number and address to the footer. Do these yourself.
- Things for your web designer or developer, such as theme changes, image sizing, scripts and structured data. Send them the PDF, or the AI fix prompt if they use AI coding tools.
- Things for your hosting company, such as security settings, the secure certificate and email records. The report keeps these separate from page fixes so they are easy to pass on.
When some changes have been made, run the audit again and compare the new PDF with your first one. The Combined Audit Fixes hub suggests which findings to deal with first, and the example report walk-through shows what a typical report looks like for a small business before you run your own.
1. Do I need to be technical to use the Combined Audit?
No. You only need your website address, your name and an email address you can open. The report explains each problem in plain language, including why it matters to your visitors and how to fix it. Some fixes you can make yourself in your website editor, such as adding alt text or contact details. Others, such as server settings, are clearly marked so you can pass them to your web designer or hosting company without having to understand them fully.
2. Could running an audit harm my website?
No. The audit reads your pages in the same way a visitor or search engine does. Nothing is installed on your site, it never asks for your login or hosting details, and it never writes anything to your server. The security part is passive, which means it only looks at what your site already sends to every visitor. Running it again carries no risk to the site itself; free use has a daily allowance per connection.
3. What is a good score for a small business website?
There is no single number that counts as good enough, and the score is best used to compare your own site before and after changes. What matters more is that nothing serious is left, such as pages search engines cannot reach, broken links in your menu, or tracking before visitors agree. A small site with a modest score but no serious problems is in better shape than one with a high score and a single critical fault.
4. My website was built by an agency. Should they fix the problems?
Often, yes, especially anything in the theme, scripts, images or structured data. Share the PDF with them; each problem says what is wrong and how to fix it, which makes the conversation easier. Some items, such as security settings or email records, belong to whoever runs your hosting, which may be the agency or a separate company. If neither is available, every section of the report has a link to request a quote for the work.
5. Is it worth auditing a very small website?
Yes. A five-page site can have the same problems as a large one: a missing page title, an uncompressed photo that makes the homepage slow on phones, a contact form box with no label, or analytics running before consent. Small sites are also usually quicker to fix, because there are fewer pages and often one shared template. A free Quick Audit takes about five minutes and gives you a clear list to work from.
6. Why does the report mention AI crawlers like GPTBot?
Some AI assistants, such as ChatGPT and Perplexity, send their own crawlers to read websites, and those crawlers say they follow the instructions in your robots.txt file. The audit checks whether the main AI crawlers can reach your site, so you can make a deliberate choice about it. For most small businesses, being readable by these assistants helps people find you when they ask questions, but it is your decision whether to allow them.
The Combined Audit Fixes hub groups your report into eight areas, from being found and loading fast to security, trust and privacy, and suggests a sensible order to work through them.
Open Combined Audit Fixes →