Website audit

Audits come in several kinds and the word covers all of them. A technical audit checks crawlability, speed, metadata and errors. A content audit checks what pages exist and what each earns. A conversion audit looks at the site the way a customer would and asks where they would leave and why. Most useful audits are a blend, weighted toward whatever the site is for.

The tell of a poor audit is a long list of findings with no priority. Forty items of equal weight are forty items nobody acts on. A useful audit names the three things to change first and explains why those three, because the reasoning is what lets the reader judge the recommendation.

Automated tools produce a score and a list, and both are inputs rather than conclusions. A perfect technical score on a site with an unclear hero is a fast site that loses people, and no tool notices the hero.