Run your first website audit

Your first website audit should leave you knowing what to investigate next.

Start with a manageable website you own or have permission to assess. Choose your source, check the scope and inspect a few real pages before acting on the totals.

Here’s how to build a baseline you can use again after making changes.

1. Pick the right crawl source

Open the crawl controls and select the source that matches your task. A website URL is useful for exploring linked pages.

A sitemap starts with the URLs declared in that file. A URL list is useful when you already know the exact pages to inspect.

Check the domain and source before running so a previous project or placeholder does not define the wrong scope.

2. Check what the audit will cover

Review the available crawling and rendering settings in Settings. Choose settings appropriate for your website and plan limit rather than assuming every page needs the same rendering method.

JavaScript-heavy pages can expose different information after rendering than in the original response. If a site needs authentication or blocks requests, resolve the access requirement before expecting a complete content audit.

3. Let the crawl finish

Start the audit from the crawl bar. Watch the discovered or processed page counts and any failure indicators.

While work is running, treat results as incomplete. A partial crawl is not a reliable baseline for a finished crawl, especially when different sections have been discovered.

Keep the Mac available during local work and avoid changing the source simply to interpret the current results.

4. Inspect real pages behind the numbers

When the audit finishes, open Pages and inspect a small sample: the homepage, an important content page and a page with a reported issue. Confirm the URLs and response evidence belong to the site you intended to crawl.

Then open Issues to inspect affected pages and recommendations. A count tells you how many observations match a condition; it does not explain every individual cause.

5. Choose one useful next action

Prioritize findings with clear evidence and meaningful impact on important pages. Use Queue to organize selected tasks instead of rewriting everything at once.

Save an export where useful and record the crawl scope before making changes. After implementation, run a comparable follow-up audit.

Missing data, failed access and unsupported checks should remain investigation items rather than being interpreted as proof that a problem is absent.

Quick reference

Continue learning

Ready for the next step? Start here: understand audit results, organize and prepare fixes.

If you still need help, contact support with your app version and the steps you tried. Leave out passwords, API keys and private account details.

Published by LLMIC. Documentation reviewed on 24 September 2026.