What is included in a Site Audit?
The main sections of a comprehensive site audit
A full site audit generally breaks into four main sections. The technical section covers server and infrastructure: how your site is crawled, whether pages are indexed correctly, page load speeds, mobile friendliness, HTTPS, status codes, and structured data. The on-page section covers what's on each page: title tags, meta descriptions, headings, content quality, internal links, and image optimisation. The off-page section covers external signals: your backlink profile, referring domain quality, and brand mentions. The content section assesses whether your pages cover topics thoroughly enough to compete for the queries they're targeting.
What a site audit doesn't automatically include
A standard site audit typically doesn't include conversion rate optimisation (whether visitors who do arrive take the action you want), user experience testing (whether real users find the site easy to navigate), competitive analysis (whether your competitors' pages are doing things yours aren't), or keyword strategy (whether you're targeting the right terms to begin with). These are separate but complementary analyses. Some audit tools include elements of conversion tracking or competitor comparison, but a traditional crawl-based site audit is focused primarily on technical and on-page SEO factors.
How to decide how deep to go
The depth appropriate for an audit depends on the size of the site and the specific questions you're trying to answer. A five-page brochure site can be comprehensively audited manually in a few hours. A five-hundred-page e-commerce site requires dedicated tools and a structured process to audit effectively. Rather than trying to decide upfront on the 'right' depth, many experienced practitioners recommend starting with an automated crawl to understand the scale of issues across the whole site, then going deeper on the pages that matter most.
Key Takeaways
- A full audit covers technical, on-page, off-page, and content sections.
- UX, CRO, and keyword strategy are separate from but complementary to a standard audit.
- Start with an automated crawl to understand scale, then go deep on the most important pages.