Make a short list of important pages
Start with the homepage, main service pages, contact page and a few articles that support those services. Write down the job each page should do and the customer question it should answer. This prevents the audit becoming a hunt for minor warnings across unimportant URLs.
For each page, record the URL, audience, main topic and next step. If two pages do almost exactly the same job, investigate whether each has a reason to exist before rewriting either. Similar topics are not automatically a problem; indistinguishable purposes are harder to manage.
Keep the first audit small enough to act on. Five important pages reviewed carefully can produce a more useful work list than a large automated report nobody understands.
Check that Google can access the page
Use URL Inspection in Search Console to review an important URL. Look at indexing status, the selected canonical and any reported access problem. An intentional noindex or a canonical pointing elsewhere deserves attention if the page is meant to appear in search.
Open the URL yourself too. Does it load the correct content? Does an old URL redirect to the right replacement? Check that navigation leads to the current pages and that the sitemap lists the URLs you want discovered.
Do not remove every restriction blindly. Private content and duplicate utility pages may be excluded for a reason. Record the intention before recommending a change. If you are unsure what a setting does, investigate before changing it across the whole website.
Read the page like a potential customer
Can you tell what the business offers and who it helps without hunting? Does the title describe the page? Is the main heading clear? Does the content explain scope, process, proof and the next step?
Look for gaps that affect a decision: missing service areas, vague deliverables, outdated examples or unanswered cost questions. A page can be technically accessible and still give a buyer too little reason to contact you.
Check that claims are supportable and examples are genuine. Repeating a keyword is less useful than answering a question the buyer needs resolved. See how to structure a service page for a fuller review.
Test the experience on a phone
Open the pages on a real phone. Read the headings, use the menu, tap the contact buttons and complete a clearly labelled test enquiry. Confirm it arrives. Look for cropped content, tiny text, obstructive overlays and awkward form fields.
Use PageSpeed Insights to investigate loading and responsiveness, then prioritise issues that affect real use. An oversized hero image or delayed form may deserve attention before a minor cosmetic warning. The report is a diagnostic tool, not a complete assessment of the page's business value.
If you make changes, retest the same journey. Record the original issue and fix so you can confirm it was resolved rather than simply redesigned.
Inspect links and measurement
Make sure relevant articles link to the service they support, and visitors can reach important pages from normal navigation. Use link text that explains the destination. An article hidden from the rest of the site has a weaker route to discovery by people as well as crawlers.
Check that analytics records the actions you intend to measure. A click on an enquiry button and a successful form submission are different events. Do not count the former as a completed lead without checking the setup.
Review queries alongside the pages they lead to. If a page attracts a different audience from the one you serve, more traffic may not be the right objective.
Turn findings into a work order
Group findings into broken, unclear and improve later. Broken includes failed forms, inaccessible pages and wrong redirects. Unclear includes an offer customers cannot understand. Improve later can include supporting articles and design refinements.
Give every item an owner, reason and way to confirm it is fixed. Review the highest-value pages after implementation. If you want help interpreting the findings, bring the list to M8. The aim is a website that does its job, not a perfect-looking audit score.
| Priority | Example | Verification |
|---|---|---|
| Broken | Form does not deliver enquiries | A labelled test arrives with the expected fields |
| Unclear | Visitors cannot tell what is included | Scope and exclusions are visible on the service page |
| Improve later | Useful question has no answer | A distinct article is published and linked |
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