What does site audit mean?
What exactly gets examined in a site audit?
A site audit typically covers several layers of your website simultaneously. The technical layer checks whether search engines can actually access and read your pages — including whether pages load fast enough, whether there are broken links, whether your URLs follow a sensible structure, and whether your HTTPS certificate is valid. The on-page layer reviews each page's title tags, meta descriptions, headings, and content for quality and relevance. The off-page layer considers backlinks and external signals. Together, these three layers give a complete picture of where your site stands.
When should you run a site audit?
Site audits are most commonly run in three situations: before launching an SEO campaign (to establish a baseline and catch problems before you start building on shaky foundations), after a redesign or platform migration (to confirm nothing important broke in the transition), or on a regular schedule as part of ongoing maintenance. Running an audit after a major Google update can also help you understand whether your site was affected and what specifically changed.
What happens after an audit?
A site audit on its own changes nothing — its value is entirely in what you do with the findings. The output should be a prioritised list of issues, ranked by their likely impact on performance, not just a raw list of everything technically wrong. Critical issues (like important pages being blocked from search engines) should be addressed before minor improvements (like shortening a slightly-too-long meta description). Most site owners make the mistake of trying to fix everything at once rather than working through the highest-impact items first.
Key Takeaways
- A site audit examines technical health, on-page SEO, and overall structure.
- Run audits before campaigns, after redesigns, and periodically as maintenance.
- Prioritise fixes by impact — not every issue is equally urgent.