The Website Audit Checklist I Used
for a $16M Contact Center Company

The foundation. Most automated tools cover parts of this, but doing it manually reveals issues that tools miss — especially around content quality and platform constraints.

• ☐Scrape all core pages individually — meta tags, heading structure, schema markup, canonical tags, hreflang for international versions
• ☐Check page sizes (target under 500KB per page — our client's pages averaged over 1MB)
• ☐Run Lighthouse on top 5 pages, mobile and desktop (our client's homepage scored 38/100 on mobile)
• ☐Check robots.txt and sitemap configuration
• ☐Verify SSL and security headers
• ☐Check for broken links and redirect chains
• ☐Assess the platform — WordPress, Webflow, custom? Is it helping or hindering? (WordPress/Elementor was generating bloated DOM and render-blocking resources for our client)
• ☐Check Core Web Vitals — LCP, CLS, INP (every page failed on mobile for our client)
• ☐Review meta descriptions — 150-160 characters, compelling copy (we found descriptions ranging from 351 to 2,121 characters)

This is where most tool-generated audits stop and a real audit begins. Tools can tell you a page is slow. They can't tell you that your most important conversion page has been broken for four years.

• ☐Map every path from entry to conversion — for each conversion type (demo request, partner inquiry, contact form)
• ☐Test the primary conversion page manually — does the form actually load? Does it submit? (Our client's demo page rendered raw code instead of a form)
• ☐Inventory all CTAs across the site — how many different labels exist for the same action? (We found 7+ variants: “Request a Demo,” “Schedule a Discovery Call,” “Request Quote,” “Schedule My Demo”)
• ☐Inventory all forms — how many different systems? Are partner inquiries distinguishable from prospect inquiries?
• ☐Check messaging consistency across pages — does the homepage promise something the pricing page contradicts?
• ☐Evaluate trust signals — where are they deployed? Are they current? (We found G2 badges from two years prior and awards from 2018-2020)
• ☐Assess the mobile conversion experience

SEO data tells you where you stand versus competitors in concrete terms. It's the difference between “our search isn't working” and “we rank #100 for our core keyword while our competitor ranks #4.”

• ☐Run keyword gap analysis versus 3 competitors (SEMrush or Ahrefs) — we found 736 keywords where competitors ranked and our client didn't
• ☐Pull Google Search Console data — clicks, impressions, CTR, positions (our client's average CTR was 0.37%, roughly one-fifth the industry average)
• ☐Analyze traffic composition — what percentage is commercially relevant? (16% of our client's traffic came from blog posts about free phone call apps, completely unrelated to their enterprise software)
• ☐Check for keyword cannibalization — multiple pages targeting the same keyword competing against each other
• ☐Check for noindexed pages that should be indexed (we found a page with 29,000 characters of quality content blocked from search engines, targeting a keyword with 5,400 monthly searches)
• ☐Assess backlink profile — domain authority, link quality, spam patterns (our client had 133K backlinks but 67% were nofollow, many from directory spam)
• ☐Evaluate content quality — is it written for humans or stuffed with keywords? (We found a homepage paragraph with foreign-language keywords, intentional misspellings, and SEO spam)

This is newer territory that most website audit services don't cover yet. But AI engines are increasingly where enterprise buyers start their research, and being absent from AI responses is becoming as costly as being absent from Google.

• ☐Test 10-15 queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews
• ☐Check brand queries — do AI engines know who you are? (Our client was accurately described for brand searches)
• ☐Check solution queries — do AI engines recommend you? (Our client didn't appear in any of the 6 product/solution queries we tested. Every competitor did.)
• ☐Verify robots.txt allows AI crawlers (GPTBot, Anthropic, PerplexityBot)
• ☐Assess content structure for AI citation potential — clear headings, direct answers, structured data

Not to copy competitors, but to identify where you're falling behind and — just as importantly — where you genuinely win. We scraped 15 pages across 3 competitors and compared them dimension by dimension.

• ☐Scrape 3-5 pages per competitor — homepage, product/AI page, pricing, demo, partners
• ☐Compare navigation complexity (a competitor with 10x the revenue operated with 11 navigation items; our client had 60+)
• ☐Compare pricing transparency — do competitors show prices? (Two of three showed actual prices. Our client hid pricing behind “Request Quote” despite having a cost advantage.)
• ☐Compare trust signal freshness — are competitor awards from this year or five years ago?
• ☐Compare AI and product positioning — is AI treated as core or add-on?
• ☐Identify what they do better AND where you genuinely win (our client had deployment flexibility, faster implementation, and higher customer satisfaction — none communicated on the website)

This phase answers a question that tools cannot: does the website reflect the reality of the company? The gap between what a company has achieved and what the website communicates can be the single most valuable finding of an entire audit.

• ☐Visual modernity assessment — does the design match current industry standards?
• ☐Trust signal inventory — awards, customer logos, testimonials. Where are they? How current?
• ☐Credibility gap analysis — what you HAVE versus what the site SHOWS (our client's CEO had taken the industry's largest competitor public, but this was buried in a short bio on a thin About page)
• ☐Compare design quality against competitor sites

Every checklist produces data. The value is in the findings. Here are the highlights from our engagement, anonymized but real.

The primary conversion page was broken for 4+ years

The dedicated demo request page — the single most important conversion page on the site — rendered raw WordPress shortcodes instead of a form. It was also set to “noindex,” meaning search engines couldn't see it. No meta description. No canonical tag. Last modified in November 2021. The company was surviving on a popup modal triggered from the navigation — one JavaScript error away from having no conversion path at all.

Core keyword ranking: page 10 of Google

They ranked #100 for their core product keyword — literally the last result. A competitor ranked #4 for the same term. For their stated strategic priority keyword, they ranked #62 while that same competitor was #8. Their domain authority score was 40 versus 63-67 for competitors. Google Search Console data showed an average position of 29 and a click-through rate of 0.37% — roughly one-fifth the industry average.

16% of organic traffic was commercially irrelevant

Their two highest-traffic pages were blog posts about free phone call apps — content completely unrelated to their enterprise contact center software. These pages accounted for over 16% of all organic traffic. The traffic numbers looked healthy on paper, but the visitors had zero commercial intent. Meanwhile, their core product pages were invisible.

Strongest competitive advantages were absent from the website

All three competitors are cloud-only. This company offers on-premise, private cloud, and public cloud deployment — a genuine differentiator for regulated industries. Nowhere on the website. They deploy in half the industry average time. Not prominent. They have a cost advantage over every competitor. Hidden behind “Request Quote.” Their partner margins are the highest in the industry at 50%. The website said “highest margins” but never stated the number.

The CEO's industry-defining background was buried in a bio

The CEO had previously led the industry's largest competitor to a public offering. This is an extraordinary credibility asset — the person who built the market leader now runs the challenger. It was mentioned in passing on a thin About page. Recent customer wins from 2025 and 2026 were absent. Awards were from 2018-2020. The site presented a company that had 140 employees as if it had 3.

Known by AI engines, but never recommended

We tested 14 queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Brand queries worked — AI engines knew who the company was. But for every solution query (“best software in their category,” “fastest to deploy,” “cloud with on-premise option”), they didn't appear. Every competitor did. Even for queries that described their exact differentiator, they were invisible.

You don't need to hire someone to run every item on this list. Here's what you can do yourself and where you might need help.

What you can do with free tools

The technical audit and conversion audit are largely doable with free tools. Google PageSpeed Insights gives you Lighthouse scores. Google Search Console (free, if you've installed it) shows you clicks, impressions, and positions. Screaming Frog has a free tier for up to 500 URLs. You can manually test every conversion path and inventory your CTAs with a spreadsheet.

What needs paid tools

The SEO keyword gap analysis and competitive benchmarking need SEMrush ($130/month) or Ahrefs (similar). These tools show you the 736 keywords your competitors rank for that you don't, the domain authority gap, the backlink quality comparison. Google Search Console shows your data; SEMrush shows everyone else's. The AEO audit can be done manually by testing queries in ChatGPT and Perplexity, but it's time-intensive.

Where a consultant adds value

The synthesis. Connecting a broken demo page to declining lead volume. Connecting a messaging inconsistency to buyer confusion. Connecting a hidden credibility asset to a specific competitive advantage. Seeing that the homepage says “AI-powered platform” while the pricing page lists AI as an optional add-on — and understanding why that contradiction erodes trust with every prospect who visits both pages. The checklist produces data. A consultant connects the data to business impact and prioritized recommendations.

If you want a deeper understanding of what the synthesis phase looks like, I wrote about the full scope in what website audit services actually include.

No single audit covers everything. Here's what's outside this checklist's scope:

• •Behavioral analytics — heatmaps, scroll depth, session recordings. This needs Microsoft Clarity or Hotjar installed and collecting data for at least 2 weeks before you can draw conclusions. If you're planning a website redesign, install these tools now.
• •A/B testing — requires traffic volume that many B2B companies don't have. Our client's homepage gets about 7,000 organic clicks per year — not enough to reach statistical significance on most tests quickly.
• •Sales funnel analysis beyond the website — CRM data, sales cycle length, close rates, lead-to-opportunity conversion. The website audit tells you whether the site generates leads. Understanding what happens after submission requires sales ops analysis.
• •Content strategy development — this checklist identifies content gaps (736 missing keywords) but doesn't produce the editorial calendar or content briefs to close them. That's a separate engagement.

An audit produces findings. What you do with them depends on what the findings say. For our client, the issues were structural — the WordPress/Elementor platform was contributing to performance problems, the information architecture needed ground-up rethinking, and the messaging needed strategic repositioning. We recommended a full website rebuild.

But we also identified 15 quick wins they could implement immediately on the current site. Remove the noindex tag from a page targeting a keyword with 5,400 monthly searches. Redirect the broken demo page. Delete the keyword-stuffed paragraph that risked a Google penalty. Fix the typo in the homepage H1 that propagated across every locale page. These are same-day fixes that don't require any redesign or development budget.

That's the real value of an audit — it gives you both the immediate fixes and the long-term strategic direction, grounded in evidence rather than opinion.