Many small business owners assume a website audit means hiring an agency, spending hundreds of dollars, or sitting through a lengthy technical report. It does not. With the right free tools and a clear checklist, you can work through the most important checks yourself in an afternoon.

This guide walks you through eleven practical checks. Some take thirty seconds. Others might reveal a problem that has been quietly costing you customers for months. Grab a coffee, open your website, and start working through the list.

1. Speed

Head to Google PageSpeed Insights and enter your website URL. The tool will score your site from 0 to 100 for both mobile and desktop. Pay close attention to the three Core Web Vitals:

  • LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) is how quickly the main content of a page loads. Aim for under 2.5 seconds.
  • INP (Interaction to Next Paint) is how fast your site responds when a visitor clicks or taps something. Aim for under 200 milliseconds.
  • CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) is how much the page layout jumps around as it loads. Aim for a score under 0.1.

A PageSpeed score under 50 needs urgent attention. Slow sites lose visitors before they even read a single word, and research consistently shows that most people abandon a page that takes more than three seconds to load.

2. Mobile Experience

Open your website on your actual smartphone right now, not a desktop browser in mobile preview mode. Ask yourself:

  • Is all the text readable without pinching to zoom?
  • Are buttons large enough to tap comfortably with a thumb?
  • Are images loading properly and fitting the screen?
  • Does the navigation menu work without frustration?

For a more formal check, use Google's Mobile-Friendly Test. Enter your URL and Google will flag specific issues. The majority of web traffic worldwide now comes from mobile devices, so this matters enormously. A site that is difficult to use on a phone is turning away more than half your potential visitors.

3. HTTPS / Security Padlock

Look at your browser's address bar right now. Do you see a padlock icon next to your website URL? If you see a 'Not Secure' warning instead, your site is running on HTTP rather than HTTPS, and that is a problem on two fronts.

First, Google uses HTTPS as a ranking signal. Sites without it are at a disadvantage in search results. Second, and more importantly, visitors see a clear warning that the site is not secure. That erodes trust immediately, especially if you have a contact form or any kind of checkout. Contact your hosting provider. Most offer free SSL certificates through Let's Encrypt, and the fix is usually straightforward.

4. Homepage Clarity

One simple test reveals a lot. Ask someone who knows nothing about your business to read your homepage for five seconds, then close it. Ask them: What does this business do, and who does it help?

If they struggle to answer, your homepage messaging needs work. Within five seconds of landing on your site, a visitor should understand exactly what you offer and whether it is relevant to them. If that is not clear, they will leave, and they will not come back. Strong homepages lead with a clear headline, a brief supporting statement, and an obvious next step.

5. Content Quality

Work through your key service or product pages and ask:

  • Is each page specific about what is offered, or is it vague and generic?
  • Does every page have a clear call to action, such as a button, a link, or a prompt telling the visitor what to do next?
  • Is your contact information (phone number, email address, or a link to your contact form) visible on every page, ideally in the header or footer?
  • Are there any pages with very little content, such as just a paragraph or two?

Thin pages (those with minimal, low-value content) can drag down your overall site quality in Google's eyes. If a page does not serve a clear purpose for your visitors, consider expanding it or removing it entirely.

6. Basic SEO Checks

You do not need specialist software for these checks, just your browser and Google.

  • Title tags: Look at the browser tab when you open each page. Does it show a unique, descriptive title, rather than just your business name on every page?
  • Clean URLs: Do your page addresses look readable, like /services/web-design? Or do they look like /page?id=42? Clean URLs are better for both users and search engines.
  • Google indexing: Open Google and search site:yourwebsite.com (replace with your actual domain). This shows how many of your pages Google has indexed. If very few appear, or none at all, there may be a serious indexing problem.
  • Google Search Console: Have you set it up? If not, do it today. It is completely free. Go to Google Search Console and follow the setup steps. It shows you exactly how Google sees your site, which search queries bring visitors, and any errors that need fixing.

7. Broken Links

Broken links (pages that return a 404 'Not Found' error) frustrate visitors and signal poor maintenance to search engines. Use a free tool like Dead Link Checker to crawl your site and identify any broken links.

Once you have a list, fix them. Either update the link to point to the correct page, or set up a redirect from the old URL to the new one. This is a quick win that improves both user experience and SEO.

8. Google Business Profile

If your business serves customers in a specific location, your Google Business Profile is one of the most valuable pieces of online real estate you have, and it is free.

Search for your business name on Google. Does a profile appear on the right-hand side? Is it claimed and verified by you? Check that the following are accurate and current:

  • Business name
  • Address
  • Phone number
  • Website URL
  • Opening hours
  • Business category

An unclaimed or outdated profile is a missed opportunity for local search visibility. Competitors with complete, well-maintained profiles will consistently outrank you in local results.

9. Images

Oversized images are one of the most common causes of slow websites, and one of the easiest to fix. Check your key pages and ask:

  • Are images compressed to a reasonable file size? For most images on a website, aim for under 200KB. Hero images can be larger, but should rarely exceed 500KB.
  • Do your images have descriptive alt text? Alt text is the written description attached to an image. It helps search engines understand what the image shows, and it is essential for accessibility, because screen readers use it to describe images to visually impaired users.

Use a free tool like TinyPNG to compress images without visible quality loss. For alt text, log into your CMS and check that every image has a meaningful description rather than just the filename.

10. Forms

This one is critical, and it is surprisingly often broken. Submit a test enquiry through your contact form right now. Use a personal email address so you can confirm delivery.

  • Did the confirmation message appear on screen?
  • Did the email arrive in your inbox within a few minutes?
  • If not, check your spam folder.

A broken contact form is one of the most common and most costly website problems. If enquiries are not reaching you, you are losing business every single day without knowing it. If the form is broken, contact your web developer or hosting provider immediately.

11. Security

If your website runs on a CMS like WordPress, keeping it updated is essential. Outdated software, themes, and plugins are the most common cause of hacked websites.

  • Log into your CMS and check for any pending updates. Apply them.
  • Remove any plugins or themes you are not actively using.
  • Run a free malware scan using Sucuri SiteCheck. Enter your URL and it will check for known malware, blacklisting status, and other security issues.

If you find anything concerning, act quickly. A hacked website can be penalised by Google and will damage visitor trust significantly. Staying on top of updates, malware scans, and broken links is the part I take on as ongoing website care.

What to Do With Your Results

Now that you have worked through the checklist, take stock of what you found.

If you identified five or more issues (particularly around speed, security, mobile experience, or indexing), your site likely benefits from professional attention. Those problems are likely affecting your visibility and the number of enquiries you receive.

If you found one to three minor issues, the good news is that many of them are fixable yourself using the free tools mentioned above. Compress your images, update your plugins, fix a broken link. These are all achievable without technical expertise.

Either way, the fact that you have done this audit puts you ahead of most small business owners, who never look under the bonnet at all.

An audit tells you what is wrong, and deciding what to fix first is usually the harder part. Send the project brief with the issues you found and your goals for the site.