Free website audit: is your site costing you customers?

Page titles, headings and the behind-the-scenes setup Google uses to understand and list your pages.

• A page doesn’t load. Anyone who lands on it, from Google or a link, gets an error instead of your business.
• The headline Google shows for a page. The page title is the blue headline in Google’s results: the first thing a searcher reads about you.
• The summary under your Google listing. Without one, Google picks a line from the page itself, and it rarely makes anyone want to click.
• No main heading on the page. The main heading tells visitors, and Google, what the page is about at a glance.
• Google isn’t told which address is the real one. When a page can be reached at two addresses, Google may split its credit between them.
• No icon in the browser tab. The small logo in tabs and bookmarks is how people spot your site among ten open tabs.
• Shared links look bare. Links sent on WhatsApp, Facebook or LinkedIn show without a picture or a proper headline.
• Google isn’t told what kind of business you are. A few lines of hidden code tell Google your business type, address and opening hours, which helps you show up in local results.
• The page language isn’t set. Screen readers and translation tools need to know the page is in English to read it properly.
• Headings skip a level. Headings that jump from main heading straight to a small one make the page harder to follow with a screen reader, and harder for Google to outline.
• The page is hidden from Google. This page asks Google not to list it, so nobody can find it by searching.
• No instructions file for search engines. This small file (robots.txt) tells search engines what to read and where your list of pages is.
• AI assistants can’t read your site. ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini describe businesses from what their crawlers have read. Shut out, they describe you from old directory listings, or not at all.
• No list of pages for Google. A sitemap is the list of pages you hand Google, so none get missed.
• Some pages are missing from your sitemap. Google can take longer to find, or never find, pages the list leaves out.
• Your site answers at two addresses. With and without “www” both work separately, so Google sees two sites and splits your credit.
• Several pages share the same headline. Google can’t tell them apart, so it may show the wrong page, or neither.
• Several pages share the same summary. Identical summaries make different pages look the same in Google’s results.
• Links that go nowhere. A link to an error page is a dead end for a customer, and a sign of neglect to Google.
• Pages that return errors. Error pages lose the visitor, and Google counts them against the site.
• Missing pages don’t say so properly. If a missing page doesn’t send a proper “not found” signal, Google may list junk pages as real ones.
• You can’t see who visits. Without analytics you can’t tell how many people come, where from, or what they do.
• No cookie consent. Privacy law in the UK and EU says you must ask before setting tracking cookies.

How quickly your pages appear, especially on a phone.

• Your server is slow to answer. Every page waits on the server before anything appears, so every visit starts late.
• Heavy pages. Big pages load slowly on mobile data and eat into people’s allowance.
• Too many add-ons loading. Every extra plugin or tracker slows the page and is one more thing that can break it.
• Images too big for the web. One oversized photo can add seconds to a page on a phone.

The padlock, and the settings that protect your visitors and their details.

• No padlock on the site. Browsers mark the site “Not secure”, and most people leave when they see that.
• Insecure pieces on a secure page. Browsers block them or drop the padlock, so the page looks unsafe.
• Forms are open to spam bots. Unprotected forms fill your inbox with junk, and real enquiries get lost in it.
• Browsers aren’t told to always use the secure version. Without it, someone’s first visit can be quietly moved onto an insecure connection.
• No rules on what your pages may run. If someone ever slips harmful code onto your site, a security policy stops it running in your visitors’ browsers.
• File types aren’t locked down. Stops a browser treating an uploaded file as a program and running it.
• Other sites can show your pages inside theirs. A scammer could load your page inside their own and trick visitors into clicking.
• Your page addresses leak to other sites. When someone clicks away, the other site sees exactly which page they came from.
• The insecure address doesn’t redirect. Anyone who types or follows an http:// link lands on the unprotected version.

Whether your words are clear, consistent, and tell a visitor what to do next.

• Too little on the page. Pages with only a few lines of text rarely show up in Google for anything.
• Hard going to read. Long sentences and long words lose people reading on a phone.
• The copyright year is out of date. An old year in the footer makes the site look abandoned.
• Contact details are hard to find. Someone ready to buy leaves if they can’t see a phone number or email straight away.

Whether it reads and works properly on a small screen, and for people using a screen reader.

• Not set up for phones. Phones show a shrunken desktop page that people have to pinch and zoom to read.
• Images have no descriptions. People using screen readers hear nothing for these images, and Google can’t tell what they show.