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Free website audit checklist

What a real audit looks for in 2026

Most "website audit checklists" you find online are 30 items long and four sentences deep. They tell you to "check your meta descriptions" without explaining what to check for. Here's what a real audit actually verifies — 10 checks, each with a concrete how-to-verify step, all relevant in 2026.

Updated 2026-05-08 · 10 min read

Skip the manual version

Run all 10 checks on your site in 30 seconds

Paste your URL. Uisdom runs the full audit (SEO, GEO, AEO, AIO, performance, mobile, schema, conversion readiness) and gives you scored results page-by-page. Free, no signup.

What a real audit actually does

An audit isn't a list of generic best practices. It's a structured comparison between your site and a known-good standard, with a numbered output telling you exactly which pages fail which checks. The good ones produce a per-page score on each axis. The bad ones produce vibes.

A real audit

  • ✓Crawls every page, not just the homepage
  • ✓Produces a numerical score per axis, per page
  • ✓Names specific issues with page URLs
  • ✓Suggests concrete fixes, not generic advice

A vibes audit

  • ✗Tells you to "improve your meta descriptions"
  • ✗One-page report, no per-page breakdown
  • ✗Generic advice copy-pasted from blog posts
  • ✗No mention of GEO / AI visibility

The 10 checks every audit should run

Working through these manually takes 1–3 hours per site. We'll point you at free tools for each. Or you can skip to the bottom and let Uisdom run them all in 30 seconds.

  1. 1

    Page titles + meta descriptions

    Every page should have a unique <title> (50–60 chars) and meta description (140–160 chars) that match the page's actual content. Generic, duplicated, or missing titles are the most common SEO miss.

    How to check

    View page source for each URL → search for <title> and <meta name="description">. Or run Screaming Frog free crawl up to 500 URLs.

    Uisdom score axis

    SEO — checked on every page during the audit; missing or duplicate titles flagged with their specific URLs.

  2. 2

    Heading hierarchy

    Exactly one <h1> per page, semantic <h2>/<h3> below, no skipped levels. Modern search algorithms and AI assistants use heading structure to extract the page's topic.

    How to check

    Open DevTools → run document.querySelectorAll('h1,h2,h3,h4').forEach(h => console.log(h.tagName, h.textContent)). Verify there's exactly one h1, headings descend logically.

    Uisdom score axis

    SEO + GEO — heading hierarchy is one of the strongest signals AI assistants use to extract page topics.

  3. 3

    Canonical URLs and indexability

    Each page should declare its canonical URL via <link rel="canonical">. Pages you don't want indexed should have <meta name="robots" content="noindex">. Wrong canonicals split your ranking signal across duplicates.

    How to check

    View source → search for rel="canonical". Verify the URL is correct (matches the page's intended public URL). Run site: search on Google to see what's actually indexed.

    Uisdom score axis

    SEO — verified per page during the audit. Common bug: every page canonicalizes to homepage, killing internal ranking.

  4. 4

    Mobile responsiveness

    Google has been mobile-first indexing since 2020. If your mobile UX is broken, you don't rank — period. Test at 375px width, the iPhone size, before anything else.

    How to check

    DevTools → device toolbar → set to iPhone SE (375px). Tap-test every CTA. Run Google's Mobile-Friendly Test (search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly).

    Uisdom score axis

    SEO — mobile-readiness scored explicitly. Issues like overflow, tap-target size, illegible font sizes are flagged with line numbers.

  5. 5

    Page speed (Core Web Vitals)

    LCP under 2.5s, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1. These are real ranking factors and a real conversion factor. Slow pages cost you both visibility and revenue.

    How to check

    Run PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev) on each main page. Check field data (real Chrome users), not just lab data.

    Uisdom score axis

    SEO — page-speed scoring uses lab measurement during the rebuild. Heavy images, render-blocking JS, oversized CSS all flagged.

  6. 6

    Structured data (schema.org)

    JSON-LD schema tells Google and AI assistants exactly what your content is about — Organization, Article, Product, FAQPage, LocalBusiness. The right schema unlocks rich results in search.

    How to check

    View source → search for application/ld+json. Validate at validator.schema.org. Run Rich Results Test (search.google.com/test/rich-results) on key pages.

    Uisdom score axis

    SEO + AEO — structured data is one of the strongest signals for featured-snippet placement and AI-overview citations.

  7. 7

    Image optimization + alt text

    Every meaningful image needs descriptive alt text. Modern image formats (WebP, AVIF) cut size by 30-70% vs JPEG. Lazy-loading below-the-fold images saves bandwidth on mobile.

    How to check

    DevTools → Network tab → filter by image. Look for any image > 200KB on initial load. Run document.querySelectorAll('img:not([alt])').length to find images missing alt.

    Uisdom score axis

    SEO + GEO — alt text is how AI assistants describe images. Missing alts = invisible to GEO. Image weight flagged for performance.

  8. 8

    Internal links + nav structure

    Pages should be reachable in 2-3 clicks from the homepage. Orphan pages (no internal links pointing to them) don't rank. Anchor text should describe what's on the linked page, not say "click here."

    How to check

    Run Screaming Frog free crawl → check for orphan pages, 404 internal links, and pages with very few inlinks. Click-depth report shows how deep each page sits.

    Uisdom score axis

    SEO — every page's internal link structure is analyzed. Orphans, broken internal links, and over-deep pages flagged.

  9. 9

    GEO — AI assistant readability

    Can ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude extract your content cleanly? They want clear headings, declarative first sentences, structured Q&A, and schema. Most sites built before 2024 score poorly here without realizing it.

    How to check

    Manually paste your URL into ChatGPT and Perplexity and ask them to summarize. If they hallucinate or miss obvious facts, your structure isn't extractable. There's no free automated tool yet — this is where Uisdom is unusual.

    Uisdom score axis

    GEO — full GEO score per page, with specific structural issues flagged (missing definitions, paragraphs without topic sentences, etc).

  10. 10

    AEO + AIO — answer engines and AI Overviews

    AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) means writing content that gets picked as a featured snippet. AIO (AI Overview Optimization) means getting cited by Google's AI Overviews. Both reward direct, declarative answers in question-shaped headings.

    How to check

    Search the questions your customers actually ask. If a featured snippet exists and isn't yours, look at what theirs does (clear answer, list/table format, declarative). For AIO, search and see whether an AI Overview appears for those queries — and whether you're cited.

    Uisdom score axis

    AEO + AIO — both scored separately. The audit identifies which of your pages are answer-shaped and which need restructuring.

All 10 checks, automated

The whole audit, run in 30 seconds

Paste your URL on uisdom.design. We crawl every page, score it on the four axes (SEO, GEO, AEO, AIO), surface every issue from the checklist above, and show you exactly what would change in a rebuild. Free. No signup. No email harvest.

Frequently asked

Is Uisdom's audit really free?
Yes. You paste your URL, we run all 10 checks plus a few more we don't list publicly, you see the page-by-page scored results. No signup, no email collection. The paid Starter plan kicks in only if you decide you want Uisdom to actually rebuild the site for you.
What's the difference between SEO, GEO, AEO, and AIO?
SEO is Google's classic ranking factors — titles, descriptions, page speed, internal links. GEO is Generative Engine Optimization — how AI assistants like ChatGPT extract and cite your content. AEO is Answer Engine Optimization — getting picked as a featured snippet for question-shaped queries. AIO is AI Overview Optimization — appearing in Google's AI Overview answers. All four matter in 2026; most builders only track classic SEO.
How long does a manual audit take vs Uisdom?
Working through this checklist manually with the suggested free tools takes 1-3 hours for a 5-10 page site. Uisdom runs the same checks in about 30 seconds because it crawls in parallel and the scoring is automated. The trade-off: manual lets you go deeper on specific issues; Uisdom gives you breadth + comparable scores across pages.
Can I run the audit on a competitor's site?
Yes. Uisdom crawls public URLs regardless of who owns them — it's just looking at the same HTML and signals a search engine sees. Pasting a competitor's URL is a legitimate way to see how you stack up. We don't email anyone or contact the site owner.
Will the audit work for non-English sites?
Yes. Uisdom audits in English, Italian, French, Spanish, German, and Portuguese. The structural checks (schema, headings, performance, mobile) are language-agnostic. The content-based checks (GEO, AEO) account for the page's actual language.
What if my site fails most of the checks?
That's the most common outcome — most sites built before 2024 weren't designed with GEO/AEO/AIO in mind, and many sites built after 2024 still miss SEO basics. The audit shows you exactly which checks fail and where. From there you can fix the issues manually, hire someone, or have Uisdom rebuild the site with the fixes baked in.

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