SEO firms and agencies sell website audits for a few hundred dollars, and fair enough: a good audit is real work. But before you buy one, you can run a basic check yourself. It won’t replace an expert review, but it will show you whether there’s something worth fighting for. Fifteen minutes, a phone and eight checks.
1. PageSpeed Insights on mobile
Go to pagespeed.web.dev, paste in your website address and wait for the result. Focus on the mobile tab, not desktop: phones account for most of your visits.
What you care about are the numbers in the real-user data section: Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift. We explain them in Core Web Vitals explained in plain English; for now, one rule is enough: all three in the green means you’re in good shape; red on even one of them means the site is losing visitors.
2. The mobile test
PageSpeed will also tell you whether the site works well on phones. Back that up with your own eyes: open the site on your phone and try to get something done, like a customer would. Find a price. Find the phone number. Send the contact form.
If you swore at any point, your customers have been swearing for a while.
3. The padlock and the certificate
Look at your browser’s address bar. You want a closed padlock and an address starting with https. A warning icon or the words “Not secure” are a free gift to your competitors: the browser warns people off your site before they’ve even seen it.
Certificates are free these days. Not having one is neglect, not thrift.
4. Click ten links
Work through them in order: everything in the menu, the footer, and a couple of links in the body text. Every one should work. A 404 error or an empty page is like a broken shop window: people still come in, but nervously.
While you’re at it, check that the menu actually opens on a phone. There are sites where the hamburger button does nothing at all. Yes, even in 2026.
5. The site: search, or what Google knows about you
In Google, type site:yourdomain.com (no space after the colon, with your own domain). You’ll see a list of the pages the search engine has indexed.
A nearly empty list for a site that’s up and running is a serious problem: it means Google can’t see you. A list that includes pages that shouldn’t be there, like test versions, is also a sign something’s off behind the scenes.
6. Hours, phone, address
Open the site and check that the basics are current: opening hours, phone number, email address, physical address. It sounds trivial, yet on about half the old websites we look at, at least one of these is out of date.
A customer who turns up to find you closed because your website lied about your hours won’t be back.
7. Two searches against the competition
In a private browser window, search Google for two phrases you care about: your service plus your town or city is a good start. See where you land: page one, page two, further down.
Then open the sites of the top two competitors. Don’t judge how pretty they are; judge the substance: prices, their own photos, how up to date they are. That’s the level you’re competing at.
8. A screenshot and a first-impression question
Take a screenshot of your homepage on a phone and on a computer. Show it to someone who doesn’t know your business and ask: “What does this company do? What would you click first?” Just that one question, no hints.
If the answer is “no idea”, you’ve learned everything you need. The rest of the audit was a bonus.
What next
All clear? Great: you can relax, and you’ve got a baseline for the future. Found problems? Before paying for an expert, you can drop your address into Webomat’s free audit: in a minute you’ll get desktop and mobile screenshots plus a check of speed, the SSL certificate and the number of pages. Then you can decide whether to fix or replace.
How to read the results, step by step
Numbers on their own mean nothing. Here are the thresholds where it’s worth acting:
Mobile performance score (the big number at the top): above 90 is good, 50 to 90 means room for improvement, below 50 is a problem that’s costing you customers. Sites on old systems typically land somewhere around 30 to 50.
LCP: green up to 2.5 seconds. Between 2.5 and 4 seconds, visitors start leaving. Above 4 seconds, they leave in droves.
INP: green up to 200 milliseconds, red above 500. If your buttons feel sluggish, this metric tells you so in black and white.
CLS: up to 0.1 is fine. Above 0.25 the page visibly jumps around. It’s the most irritating defect of the lot, and the easiest to fix.
Important: one red metric is a diagnosis, not a verdict. Each has a known list of causes and a known list of fixes. We cover what usually drags these numbers down in our post on Core Web Vitals.
Helpful tools (all free)
- PageSpeed Insights: the core measurement, described above.
- Google Search Console: a Core Web Vitals report based on real visits, plus your indexing status.
- Your browser’s device mode: the developer tools in Chrome or Firefox can show your site at phone widths, which is handy for a quick look on a desktop.
- Private browsing search: the best way to check rankings without your search history skewing them.
- Your phone’s camera: take a photo of your site open on a phone. You’ll see exactly what your customers see.
How to record the results so they’re worth something
Create a simple dated document and note down: the mobile score, the three metrics, and your five most important search phrases with their positions. A screenshot of the report is useful too.
Repeat the check in six months, or after any major change to the site. A single measurement tells you where you are. A series tells you where you’re heading. The second is invaluable when deciding whether to replace a website: you’ll see the trend before your customers see it in the form of slipping Google rankings.
When the audit says: replace it
Three situations where fixing stops making sense:
- The site runs on a system that can’t be sped up without rewriting it from scratch.
- Every fix breaks something else, and the plugins are held together with sticky tape.
- Whoever built the site is long gone, and the new developer quotes more to dig into someone else’s code than to start fresh.
In each case, replacing is the cheaper route. A snapshot and audit in Webomat shows you both worlds side by side: your current website and proposals for a new one. The decision is yours, but at least you’ll make it with your eyes open, not in the dark.
Save your results with a date. In six months, the comparison will tell you more than any single measurement.