The Short Answer
A website audit checklist for a small business comes down to 12 checks across four areas: speed (3 checks), mobile experience (2), search visibility (4), and conversion (3). You can run all 12 free in under 15 minutes using Google's own tools - or get the first five scored automatically in 30 seconds with our free website audit. Below is each check with its pass/fail threshold, so you know exactly what "good" means.
Speed (checks 1-3)
1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) under 2.5 seconds. This is Google's threshold for how fast your main content appears - at or under 2.5s is "good", over 4s is failing (web.dev Core Web Vitals). Slow LCP is the single most common issue we find on small-business sites.
2. Interaction to Next Paint (INP) under 200 milliseconds. How fast the page responds when someone taps a button or opens a menu (web.dev INP guide). Over 500ms feels broken on a phone.
3. Layout shift (CLS) under 0.1. If your page jumps around while loading - buttons moving as someone tries to tap them - you fail this one. Usually caused by images without dimensions or late-loading ads.
Run all three at once with Google PageSpeed Insights, or let our audit tool pull them into one weighted score.
Mobile (checks 4-5)
4. Everything works one-handed on a phone. Most local-business traffic is mobile. Tap targets big enough for thumbs, no horizontal scrolling, forms that don't require zooming.
5. Phone number and address are tappable. tel: links that dial and an address that opens maps. A phone number as plain text on mobile is a lead leak.
Search visibility (checks 6-9)
6. One clear title tag per page, 50-60 characters, with the service and city for local businesses ("Emergency Plumber in Austin | Same-Day Service").
7. A meta description that sells, 120-160 characters. It doesn't affect ranking directly, but it is your ad copy on the results page.
8. Exactly one H1 per page that says what you do, plus a logical heading structure below it.
9. You're verified in Google Search Console and your sitemap is submitted. If Google can't index you, nothing else on this list matters. Free, takes 10 minutes.
Conversion (checks 10-12)
10. A visible call-to-action above the fold on every page - call, book, or quote. Not buried in the footer.
11. HTTPS with no browser warnings. The padlock. Without it, browsers actively warn visitors away.
12. Your contact form actually delivers. Submit a test lead monthly and confirm it reaches your inbox or phone. Forms silently break more often than anyone expects - we've seen sites lose every enquiry for weeks without knowing. (This exact failure shows up in our audit case study - 8 issues that were quietly costing a real business leads.)
How to run this in 15 minutes
- Free instant audit - covers checks 1-5 and 11 in 30 seconds, scored.
- PageSpeed Insights - the detail behind any failing speed check.
- View-source (or right-click → Inspect) for titles, descriptions, H1s.
- Send yourself a test enquiry for check 12.
If three or more checks fail, the fixes usually cost less than the leads being lost - see what we'd charge to fix them or current pricing.
Sources
Thresholds come from Google's published Core Web Vitals documentation: web.dev/articles/vitals and web.dev/articles/inp, plus the PageSpeed Insights docs. Checked August 2026.
FAQ
What is a website audit checklist? A repeatable list of pass/fail checks - speed, mobile, SEO, and conversion - that tells you what's silently costing your site visitors and leads, and which fixes matter first.
How often should I audit my website? Quarterly for the full 12 checks, monthly for the contact-form test (check 12). Also after any redesign, plugin update, or hosting change - that's when things quietly break.
What is a good website audit score? On our free audit, 80+ means healthy, 60-79 means fixable issues are costing you some leads, and under 60 usually means speed or mobile problems severe enough to lose most mobile visitors.
Can I audit my website for free? Yes - every check on this list uses free tools. Our 30-second audit covers the technical half automatically; Google's PageSpeed Insights and Search Console cover the rest.
What's the most common issue small-business websites fail? Speed on mobile (check 1) and the silent contact-form failure (check 12). One loses visitors before they see your offer; the other loses the leads who tried to reach you.