Guide · 11 min read

🔍 Website Audit UK — The 47-Point Checklist We Run on Every Site

A complete UK website audit covers performance, SEO, schema, accessibility, compliance and conversion. The 47-point checklist we run on every audit engagement, what to look for, and how to interpret the findings.

TL;DR

A proper UK website audit checks: Core Web Vitals on field data (LCP, INP, CLS), schema completeness against schema.org and Google's rich-result types, on-page SEO across 10+ factors per page, accessibility against WCAG 2.2 AA, UK GDPR + PECR compliance, and conversion-rate friction points. The 47-point checklist below covers every category.

A good website audit takes 4-8 hours of senior engineer time and produces a prioritised remediation list, not a 50-page PDF that no one reads. This page is the complete 47-point checklist we run on every audit engagement, organised by category, with the threshold each check passes or fails against. Use it as a self-audit checklist or as the spec for an external audit engagement.

Performance (8 checks)

Field data is the only data Google ranks on. (1) LCP under 2.5s at 75th percentile mobile — check via Search Console or CrUX. (2) INP under 200ms at 75th percentile mobile. (3) CLS under 0.1 at 75th percentile mobile. (4) TTFB under 600ms from a UK IP. (5) Total page weight under 1.5MB uncompressed. (6) JavaScript bundle for initial paint under 100KB. (7) Image bytes above the fold under 200KB total. (8) No render-blocking third-party scripts in the critical path.

SEO — on-page (12 checks per critical page)

(9) Unique meta title under 60 characters with primary keyword. (10) Meta description under 160 characters with primary keyword + CTA. (11) Canonical tag pointing to the correct URL. (12) Robots meta indexable (unless deliberately not). (13) One H1 per page containing the primary keyword. (14) Logical H2 → H3 nesting. (15) Primary keyword in first 100 words. (16) Internal links with descriptive anchor text (not "click here"). (17) Outbound links to authority sources where claims are made. (18) Image alt text descriptive and keyword-relevant where natural. (19) URL slug lowercase with hyphens, keyword-rich, ≤5 words. (20) Open Graph and Twitter Card metadata present and accurate.

SEO — schema (8 checks)

(21) Organization or LocalBusiness schema present sitewide. (22) WebSite schema with publisher reference. (23) BreadcrumbList schema on every non-homepage page. (24) Page-type-appropriate schema (Article on blog posts, Service on service pages, Product on product pages, FAQPage where applicable). (25) All schema validates on Google's Rich Results Test. (26) All schema validates on schema.org's validator. (27) @id values stable across the site so entities reference consistently. (28) AggregateRating present and tied to a Reviewable entity where genuine reviews exist.

Accessibility (7 checks against WCAG 2.2 AA)

(29) Colour contrast ratio meeting 4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text. (30) All interactive elements keyboard-navigable. (31) ARIA labels on all icon-only buttons and non-text controls. (32) Focus indicators visible on every interactive element. (33) Forms have associated labels (not placeholder-only). (34) Images have alt text (decorative images have alt=""). (35) Accessibility statement published with feedback channel.

Compliance — UK GDPR + PECR (6 checks)

(36) Cookie banner with a real "reject all" button of equal visual prominence to "accept all". (37) Privacy notice naming every third-party processor with purpose, lawful basis and retention period. (38) ICO Data Protection Fee paid (£52 for tier-1 small business as of February 2025). (39) DSAR (Data Subject Access Request) endpoint linked from privacy notice. (40) Consent log capturing timestamp, user, choice and notice version. (41) Analytics and marketing cookies fired only after consent (not before).

Conversion-rate (6 checks)

(42) Primary CTA visible above the fold on mobile (without scrolling). (43) Phone number is a tel: link, not a graphic. (44) Forms have ≤5 fields where the conversion path is high-intent (≤3 for emergency-service trades). (45) No interstitial pop-ups before the user has seen the page content. (46) Mobile-first design tested at 375px and 414px viewports. (47) Trust signals (reviews, badges, testimonials) visible without scrolling past the first viewport.

How to score the audit

Each check passes or fails; some checks have a "needs improvement" middle band (Core Web Vitals specifically). A site passing 40+ of 47 checks is in good shape; 30-39 is the typical baseline for UK SMB sites; under 30 needs material remediation. The remediation priority order: performance first (because it affects ranking and paid-media Quality Score), then schema (because it lifts ranking on commercial queries), then on-page SEO, then accessibility, then conversion-rate, then compliance. Compliance last only because it does not affect ranking — but it does affect your legal exposure, so do not skip it.

How long the audit itself takes

A proper audit takes 4-8 hours of senior engineer time depending on site complexity. Less than that and important checks are being skipped; more than that and the auditor is padding the deliverable with low-signal items. The output should be a prioritised remediation list with effort estimates, not a 50-page PDF. The auditor should be willing to fix the issues themselves — auditors who can only diagnose without fixing tend to identify problems that are not actually problems.

What to expect on remediation

Performance fixes typically deliver field-data improvements within 28 days of going live. Schema fixes typically deliver rich-results eligibility within 7-14 days. On-page SEO fixes deliver ranking changes over 4-12 weeks. Accessibility fixes deliver immediate user-experience improvements and longer-term legal/procurement benefits. Compliance fixes deliver legal-exposure reduction immediately and (where ICO contacted) a defensible audit trail. Most full-remediation engagements take 2-4 weeks of engineering time depending on scope.

Self-audit vs paid audit

For owners comfortable with developer tools and the time investment, self-audit against this checklist is genuinely useful — the checklist itself is the most important asset. For owners without that comfort or that time, a paid audit at £400-£800 from a competent freelancer or boutique agency delivers the same checklist applied by a senior engineer with the prioritised remediation list. Either way, the audit is the diagnosis; the remediation is the treatment.

FAQ

Common questions

How much should a website audit cost?

A proper UK website audit from a senior engineer costs £400-£800 for a site under 50 pages. Larger sites or sites with deep e-commerce or compliance complexity scale up to £1,200-£2,500. Anything cheaper than £400 is almost certainly an automated scan rebranded as an audit.

Is a "free SEO audit" worth anything?

The automated tools that produce free audits identify some real issues but rarely prioritise them well and often surface false-positives. They are useful as a starting point; they are not a substitute for senior engineer review.

How often should I audit my website?

A full 47-point audit makes sense annually. Quarterly spot-checks on performance and schema are worth doing — most of the regressions that hurt ranking creep in incrementally rather than appearing all at once.

Can I run the audit myself?

Yes, with three caveats. You need familiarity with Chrome DevTools, Search Console, Google's Rich Results Test, and the WCAG 2.2 specification. You need 4-8 hours of focused time without interruption. You need to be honest with yourself about which checks your site fails — owner self-audits sometimes find what the owner wants to find rather than what the auditor needs to find.

What is the difference between an SEO audit and a website audit?

An SEO audit covers checks 9-28 in this list — on-page, schema, technical SEO. A website audit covers all 47 checks, including performance, accessibility, compliance and conversion. SEO is a subset; the website audit is broader.

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About this guide

How we wrote this guide.

This guide on website audit uk was drafted by a senior member of the Same Day Website Launch editorial team — engineers and strategists who ship commercial UK websites every week. Every numerical claim that could be verified is cited to a primary source: the ICO’s published fee schedule, Google’s developer documentation, the platform’s public price page, the original peer-reviewed study, the regulator’s announcement. Where the guide makes claims from our own client data (response rates, conversion lift, build timelines), the data source is named explicitly. Where the guide offers an opinion, it is marked as opinion.

The guide is reviewed by a second member of the team before publication, fact-checked against the cited sources, and dated. When the underlying facts change — a price moves, a regulation updates, a Google algorithm shifts — we update the guide in place, add a dated correction note at the foot, and refresh the modifiedTime in the schema. Guides that have not been touched in 12 months carry a visible “last reviewed” date so the reader can judge currency.

Editorial corrections are welcome at hello@samedaywebsitelaunch.com with the subject line “Editorial correction” — we respond within five working days, update the guide with a dated correction note, and refresh the schema. The intention behind this guide and every guide in the library is the same: produce the resource a UK SMB owner can use to make a defensible decision on the topic without paying for a consultant first.

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The guides on this site are not lead-magnets. They are the published answers to the questions clients ask most often before they decide whether to brief us — what is involved in a website migration, how Core Web Vitals affect ranking in 2026, what local SEO actually moves the needle for a small UK business, what UK compliance looks like in practice. Reading the guide should be enough to make the decision; briefing us is the option, not the implied next step.

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