Complete WordPress Website Audit Guide for 2025: Step-by-Step Tutorial
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Table of Contents
- 1. Design (UI/UX) Audit
- 2. Development Audit
- 3. Security Audit
- 4. SEO Audit
- Why Perform WordPress Website Audit?
- Conclusion
- Get a Free WordPress Website Audit with WP Creative
WordPress is an open-source platform so you have the flexibility to perform a website audit without much technical knowledge.
What you need is the right guide.
A WordPress website audit has many moving parts. So it’s normal to feel a little overwhelmed.
That’s why we’ve broken it down into simple, easy-to-follow sections.
Below, you will find four distinct parts of your WordPress website audit with a specific checklist for each to keep your site running at its best.
1. Design (UI/UX) Audit
The first step in your WordPress site audit should be the design and user experience (UI/UX) audit.
Why? Because a website can be fast and secure, but if it looks outdated, is hard to navigate, or isn’t user-friendly, visitors will bounce faster than you can say “conversion rate.”
A design audit ensures that your website looks professional, is easy to use, and aligns with your brand identity. Here is a web design checklist for you:
Visual Consistency and Branding
Your website’s look and feel should be consistent across all pages and reflect your brand image. That means using the same:
- Colors: Stick to your brand color palette. No sudden color shifts.
- Fonts: Keep typography styles uniform for headings, subheadings, and body text.
- Imagery: Use high-quality, relevant images with the same visual style.
You do not need any specific tools to perform this audit as you can make the assessment yourself based on the visual cues. However, you should have a clear image for your brand in your head to make the assessment.
Pro Tip: Use tools like Figma or Canva to create a brand style guide if you don’t have one.
Navigation
An ideal website navigation is simple, intuitive, and helps users find what they need quickly. Here, user flow is important.
How your visitors interact on your website is important to keep them engaged and result in conversions.
What to Check:
- Clear menu labels: Avoid vague names like “Stuff” or “More”.
- Logical page hierarchy: Keep the most important pages at the top.
- Click depth: Users should reach any page within three clicks.
Fixes for Poor Navigation:
- Simplify too many menu items with drop-down menus.
- Use action-driven labels like “Get Started” instead of “Click Here”.
- Check and fix broken links using tools like Broken Link Checker.
Mobile Friendliness
With over 50% of web traffic coming from mobile, a mobile-friendly design is non-negotiable on your website.
To check how mobile-friendly your website is:
- Use Google’s Lighthouse tool (Mobile-Friendly Test tool has been retired)
- Check tap targets and buttons on mobile (they should be at least 48px)
- Test on real devices (not just desktop resizing).
Accessibility Compliance
A well-designed website should be usable for everyone, including people with disabilities. Following WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) improves usability and compliance.
To check for Accessibility Issues:
- Use WAVE Web Accessibility Tool to spot errors
- Ensure proper contrast ratios on our website (e.g., black text on a white background is easier to read than gray-on-gray)
2. Development Audit
Think of a development audit like a car tune-up. It ensures that everything under the hood is running smoothly.
Slow website wasting your marketing spend?
- Uncover performance issues
- Identify SEO opportunities
- Security gaps, and quick wins
While a website’s design makes the first impression, it’s the backend (code, database, and system updates) that keeps it running fast, secure, and functional.
During a website development audit, focus on:
Update Core, Themes, and Plugins
WordPress is a self-updating system, meaning it automatically installs minor plugin and theme updates to keep your site secure. However, major updates for themes, plugins, and even WordPress itself might not always happen automatically.
That’s why checking and updating them manually is a must. Outdated WordPress plugins and themes are often a security risk as well.
How to check for updates:
- Go to your WordPress dashboard → Click on “Updates”
- Review available updates for WordPress Core, Plugins, and Themes
- Keep the themes and plugins updated one by one, checking for compatibility issues
- Delete any inactive themes and plugins that are no longer needed
Pro Tip: Before updating, protect your website using a backup plugin like UpdraftPlus to avoid any surprises!
Review The Code
Not all websites are built with clean and efficient code. Over time, you might find deprecated functions, broken scripts, or unnecessary customisations that slow things down or even break your website.
Look for older codes that no longer work in new versions of WordPress and replace them with updated ones. You can also use Minify CSS & JavaScript using WordPress plugins like WP Rocket to remove unnecessary codes.
Pro Tip: Use Code Sniffer or Query Monitor to check for errors and inefficiencies in your site’s code!
Database Optimisation
Your WordPress database stores everything; posts, comments, settings, plugin data, and more. Over time, it fills up with junk that slows things down.
To fix this:
- Use WP-Optimize or Advanced Database Cleaner to remove unnecessary data.
- Manually delete spam comments and old revisions from the WordPress dashboard.
- Optimise your database with phpMyAdmin if you have direct access.
3. Security Audit
A security audit is like locking your doors before going to bed, it keeps the bad guys out! If your WordPress site isn’t secure, hackers can steal data, inject malware, or even take your site offline.
Here is a checklist for you to ensure your website is secured:
User Account Management
If your WordPress site has multiple users, it’s time to clean house. Every account should have the right level of access. No need for half the team to have admin privileges.
Also, weak passwords are basically an open invitation for hackers, so enforce unique, strong passwords for everyone. You should also implement a two-factor authentication (2FA) on your website.
Scan for Malware
Even if your site looks fine on the surface, malware can be lurking in the background, slowing things down or even stealing data. There is where WordPress security plugins like Wordfence or Sucuri come to play.
They act like a digital security guard and protect your site from suspicious files, weird redirects, or other red flags.
Implement Security Best Practices
Finally, don’t forget the basics of website security. An SSL certificate is a must. It encrypts your data and makes your site more trustworthy.
And backups? They’re your safety net. If something goes wrong, having a recent backup means you can restore your site in no time.
4. SEO Audit
Even if your website looks great, bad SEO can make it invisible to potential visitors.
A proper SEO audit checks elements like content relevance, keyword optimisation, metadata, link structure, and technical setup to ensure search engines can easily crawl, index, and rank your site.
An SEO Audit comprises:
Meta Tags and Descriptions Review
Meta titles and descriptions are the first thing people see when your site appears in search results. They affect both click-through rates (CTR) and rankings, so they need to be well-written and relevant.
You can use SEO plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math to help you optimise your meta tags effortlessly. These tools flag missing, duplicate, or weak metadata and provide recommendations.
Guidelines for writing strong meta tags:
- Meta Title: Keep it 50-60 characters, include a primary keyword, and make it compelling.
- Meta Description: Keep it 150-160 characters, summarise the page clearly, and encourage users to click.
Content Evaluation and Keyword Optimisation
Content that’s outdated, irrelevant, or missing key information can hurt your rankings and user engagement.
Search engines love fresh, useful content so updating, optimising, and sometimes even deleting old content can boost SEO and improve performance.
To keep your content up to date and optimised:
- Identify content gaps: Find missing topics that your competitors are covering but you aren’t.
- Refresh outdated posts: Update old blog posts with new statistics, links, and insights.
- Optimise for the right keywords: Run a keyword analysis to see if your current keywords are still relevant or if you need new ones.
- Remove low-performing pages: If a page has no traffic and no ranking potential on Google Analytics, deleting it can help overall site health.
Internal and External Linking
Internal and external links help users navigate your site and improve SEO rankings. Pages that aren’t linked anywhere (orphan pages) often struggle to rank because search engines can’t find them easily.
To improve link structure, use paid or free tools like Google Search Console or Ahrefs to check for broken links and orphan pages.
Prioritise linking high-value pages (like service pages, product pages, and top blog posts) to other relevant content on your site.
Technical SEO Factors
Technical SEO can seem overwhelming, but focusing on fixing errors, improving crawlability, and optimising page speed can make a huge difference to your website.
Performing a technical SEO audit can help you determine the performance and structural problems within your site.
Key things to check:
- Broken links: Fix 404 errors and redirects.
- XML sitemap: Make sure it’s up-to-date and submitted to Google Search Console.
- robots.txt file: Ensure search engines can crawl important pages.
- Site speed: Optimise images, use caching, and choose a fast web hosting provider.
Why Perform WordPress Website Audit?
A WordPress website audit is a routine health checkup for your website. This audit includes comprehensive checks of all the factors that impact your site’s functionality, user experience, and search engine performance.
Improving on the areas identified by website audit helps your website become more prominent in serving its purpose. It does not matter if you are looking to get more sales, increase conversions, improve your search rankings or enhance user activity, auditing your website is the answer.
1. Enhanced Search Engine Visibility
Addressing technical issues sets the right starting position for your website and by optimising on-page elements, you can improve your website’s rankings on search engine results pages.
2. Improved User Engagement
WordPress website audit can help you identify issues and improvements in your website. You can then work on these to keep visitors engaged, reduce bounce rates and increase the likelihood of conversions.
3. Optimal Performance
Another area a site audit looks into is its performance. Website performance should be optimal and create a seamless experience for users.
4. Long-Term Growth
Regular audits ensure your website remains aligned with the updates, industry trends and best practices. Outdated websites do not serve their purpose well and can be a hindrance to your business growth. Website audit should be a part of your long-term strategy.
Conclusion
The WordPress website audit is an endless process. You will have to repeat it again and again until you are near perfection. Remember that your audit process can’t help you improve your website. You will need to find and fix the issues to maintain your WordPress website.
We recommend that you repeat the website audit process every quarter to make sure that your website is working properly and that visitors are going through the funnels you have set up for them.
Get a Free WordPress Website Audit with WP Creative
Is your WordPress website performing at its best? With a Free WordPress Website Audit from WP Creative, you’ll receive a comprehensive review of your site. Our expert team will evaluate your site’s performance, security, SEO, and user experience to provide actionable insights for improvement.
With over a decade of experience, WP Creative is a leading WordPress agency in Australia. We specialise in web design, web development, website maintenance and SEO services so as to handle every aspect of your website’s success.
Take the next step toward a better website! Contact WP Creative today for your Free WordPress Website Audit and start optimising your site for success.
Get Your Free Website Audit
($3,000 Value)
- Uncover performance issues
- Identify SEO opportunities
- Security gaps, and quick wins
