A website audit is a comprehensive analysis of your site's performance, SEO, accessibility, and technical health. Done right, it uncovers the issues holding your site back and gives you a clear roadmap for improvement.

Why You Need Regular Website Audits

Websites degrade over time. New content is published without following SEO best practices, third-party scripts slow things down, dependencies become outdated, and search engine requirements change. An audit every 1-3 months keeps everything in check.

Signs you need an audit now:

Organic traffic has dropped unexpectedly
New pages aren't getting indexed
Your site feels slow compared to competitors
You've recently migrated to a new platform
You're preparing for a major redesign

The 5 Areas of a Complete Website Audit

1. Performance Audit

What to check:

Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, INP)
Time to First Byte (TTFB)
Total page size and number of requests
Render-blocking resources
Image optimization

Key tools: Google PageSpeed Insights, Chrome DevTools Performance tab, Krokanti Audit

What "good" looks like:

LCP < 2.5 seconds
CLS < 0.1
INP < 200ms
Total page size < 1.5MB
TTFB < 600ms

2. SEO Audit

What to check:

Meta titles and descriptions (unique, correct length)
H1 tags (one per page, contains primary keyword)
URL structure (descriptive, hyphen-separated, no parameters)
Canonical tags (no duplicate content)
robots.txt (not accidentally blocking important pages)
XML sitemap (up to date, submitted to Search Console)
Internal linking structure (key pages within 3 clicks)
Structured data (JSON-LD schemas)

3. Accessibility Audit

What to check:

Alt text on all meaningful images
Color contrast ratios (4.5:1 for normal text)
Form labels and error messages
Keyboard navigation (can you tab through the entire site?)
Focus indicators (visible when tabbing)
Semantic HTML and ARIA usage

Target: WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance

4. Security & Best Practices

What to check:

HTTPS (all pages, no mixed content)
Security headers (CSP, X-Frame-Options, HSTS)
Outdated dependencies (npm audit, Dependabot)
No sensitive data exposed in source code or client-side JS
CORS configuration

5. Content Audit (Manual)

What to check:

Thin content pages (under 300 words with no clear purpose)
Duplicate or near-duplicate content
Outdated or inaccurate information
Missing or poor-quality meta descriptions
Internal links to 404 pages

How to Prioritize Issues

Not all issues are equal. Use this framework to prioritize:

Severity × Impact Matrix

Severity	Impact	Priority
Critical	High traffic page	Fix immediately
Critical	Low traffic page	Fix this week
Warning	High traffic page	Fix this sprint
Warning	Low traffic page	Add to backlog
Info	Any	Nice to have

The 80/20 Rule

In most sites, 80% of the performance and SEO gains come from fixing 20% of the issues. Focus on:

Core Web Vitals failures (direct ranking signal)
Missing or incorrect meta data on high-traffic pages
Broken links and 404 errors
Security issues

Turning Audit Findings into a Roadmap

Export your audit results (CSV or PDF) to share with your team
Categorize issues by area (performance, SEO, accessibility) and severity
Estimate effort for each fix (quick win vs. major refactor)
Assign ownership — who is responsible for each area?
Set deadlines — critical issues in 1 week, warnings in 1 month
Schedule follow-up — re-audit in 4 weeks to measure progress

Automated vs. Manual Auditing

Automated tools (like Krokanti Audit) are excellent for:

Catching technical issues at scale
Consistent, repeatable checks
Tracking improvements over time
Getting specific, actionable recommendations via AI

Manual review is still needed for:

Content quality assessment
UX and conversion rate optimization
Competitive analysis
Business logic errors

The best approach: automated audit first to get the full picture fast, then manual investigation of the most critical issues.

Start your free website audit with Krokanti Audit and get a complete report in under 60 seconds. No setup required, no credit card needed.