How to Do a Free Website Audit Yourself (Step-by-Step)

Why a Self-Audit Is Worth an Hour of Your Time

A website audit is simply a structured review of how well your site works for both your visitors and the search engines that send them. You do not need to be a developer to do a basic one. With a handful of free tools and an hour of focused time, you can spot the problems that quietly cost you customers — a slow page, a form that does not work on phones, or a missing piece of information that keeps you out of Google.

We work with a lot of Washington small businesses — contractors, shops, service providers — and the same handful of issues come up again and again. The good news is that most of them are easy to find once you know where to look. This guide walks you through the exact checks we run, using tools that cost nothing.

Set aside a quiet block of time, open your website on both a computer and your phone, and grab a notepad. The goal is not to fix everything today. The goal is to build an honest list of what is working and what is not, so you can prioritize.

Step 1: Check Your Speed With PageSpeed Insights

Start with speed, because it affects everything else. A slow site frustrates visitors, hurts your Google ranking, and drives people to hit the back button before they ever read a word. Go to Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool, paste in your homepage URL, and run the test.

You will get two scores — one for mobile and one for desktop. Pay the most attention to the mobile score, because that is how most local customers find you. A score in the green (90+) is excellent, yellow (50–89) is workable, and red (under 50) needs attention. Below the score, the tool lists specific opportunities like "properly size images" or "reduce unused code."

Write down your mobile and desktop scores and the top three suggestions. Oversized images are the single most common culprit we see, and they are also one of the easiest things to fix. If your homepage is slow, test a service page and a contact page too — speed problems are often site-wide.

Step 2: Test Mobile-Friendliness and Click Through Every Page

More than half of local searches happen on a phone, so your site has to work flawlessly on a small screen. Pull up your website on your own phone and use it like a customer would. Can you read the text without pinching to zoom? Are the buttons big enough to tap with a thumb? Does your phone number tap-to-call?

Go through the real tasks a customer needs to complete: find your services, see your service area, and reach a contact form or phone number. On many sites we audit, the contact form is broken on mobile or the menu is hard to open. These are conversion killers — a visitor who cannot reach you simply leaves.

• Tap your phone number — does it start a call?
• Open the navigation menu — does it work with one thumb?
• Fill out and submit your contact form — does it actually send?
• Read a paragraph of body text — can you read it without zooming?
• Check images and buttons — do they fit the screen, or run off the edge?

Step 3: Connect Google Search Console

Google Search Console is the most valuable free tool you are probably not using. It is Google's own window into how your site appears in search. It is free to set up — you verify that you own the site, then Google starts reporting data.

Once it is running, three reports matter most. The Performance report shows which search terms bring people to your site and where you rank. The Coverage or Pages report tells you which pages Google has indexed — if a page is missing here, it cannot appear in search at all. The Mobile Usability and Core Web Vitals reports flag technical problems Google has detected on real visits.

If you only check one thing, look at whether all of your important pages are indexed. A surprising number of business sites have pages Google has never seen, which means months of effort earning nothing. Search Console will tell you for free.

Step 4: Run the Manual Checks — and Know When to Get Help

A few important things require your own eyes rather than a tool. Look at your browser's address bar: does it show a padlock and start with https://? If it still says "http" or shows a "Not Secure" warning, you are missing an SSL certificate, which scares off visitors and hurts ranking.

Next, check your title tags. Open a few pages and look at the text in your browser tab — that is your title tag, and it should describe the page and include your service and location, like "Roof Repair in Tacoma | Your Company." Then search your business name on Google and confirm your Google Business Profile appears with correct hours, phone number, and address. Inconsistent business information across the web is one of the biggest hidden drags on local ranking.

Run through this final manual checklist, then total up your findings.

1. Confirm every page loads over https:// with a valid padlock.
2. Check that each page has a unique, descriptive title tag with your location.
3. Verify your name, address, and phone number match everywhere they appear.
4. Search your business name and confirm your Google Business Profile is correct.
5. Look for obvious dead links, typos, and outdated year references.

If your list of problems is long, or the fixes feel technical, that is normal — and it is exactly the kind of work we handle. At northwest.net we offer a free website audit that runs all of these checks for you and delivers a plain-English report. For a deeper review with prioritized recommendations, our Standard Audit ($49) and Full Audit ($149) go further. Doing it yourself is a great start; letting us do it for you saves you the hour and catches the things that are easy to miss.