{"id":20096,"date":"2020-01-28T15:40:05","date_gmt":"2020-01-28T15:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/glosario-digital\/web-audit"},"modified":"2026-09-16T06:34:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T06:34:51","slug":"web-audit","status":"publish","type":"encyclopedia","link":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/digital-glossary\/web-audit","title":{"rendered":"Web Audit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"boxpad alignright wp-image-23084 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/web-audit.jpg\" alt=\"Web Audit\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" style=\"margin-top:0;\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/web-audit.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/web-audit-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><strong>Definition:<\/strong> <strong>A web audit<\/strong> is a systematic evaluation of a website that determines its condition, detects problems, and documents opportunities for improvement through verifiable evidence. It may cover technical operation, crawling and indexing, performance, accessibility, content, user experience, security, and measurement. The result is not merely a list of errors, but a defined diagnosis with priorities, owners, and criteria for checking the corrections.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Scope and Evidence in a Web Audit<\/h2>\n<p>The scope depends on the objective and type of website. An online store, publication, web application, or corporate website has different journeys, content, and risks. Before testing begins, the domains and subdomains, environments, languages, templates, integrations, and critical processes included in the review are identified.<\/p>\n<p>An audit combines several sources because no single source describes the entire website. Common evidence includes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Inventory of URLs and resources:<\/strong> pages, images, documents, scripts, style sheets, and server responses.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Technical crawl:<\/strong> HTTP status codes, links, canonicals, robots directives, pagination, structured data, and navigation depth.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Search engine data:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/digital-glossary\/google-search-console\">Google Search Console<\/a> reports, log files, and indexing checks for specific URLs.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Usage data:<\/strong> events, conversions, internal searches, and journeys that reveal friction or measurement failures.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Manual testing:<\/strong> navigation on different devices, forms, purchases, accounts, error messages, and tasks that a crawler cannot fully reproduce.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The number of indexed URLs does not need to match every existing page. Some pages may be duplicates, canonicalize to another URL, be excluded through noindex, or remain outside the public scope. A useful comparison examines the URLs that should be indexable and those that search engines know, crawl, and index.<\/p>\n<h2>Areas a Web Audit Can Cover<\/h2>\n<p>A web audit can be broad or restricted to one discipline. An SEO audit is one possible part of the analysis, while a complete review connects several areas:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Technical foundation:<\/strong> availability, response codes, HTTPS, canonicals, robots.txt, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/digital-glossary\/sitemap\">sitemaps<\/a>, internationalization, and consistency among versions.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Crawling and SEO:<\/strong> architecture, internal linking, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/digital-glossary\/broken-link\">broken links<\/a>, duplication, rendering, indexability, and signals relevant to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/digital-glossary\/technical-seo\">technical SEO<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Performance:<\/strong> loading times, visual stability, responsiveness, resource weight, caching, and dependencies covered by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/digital-glossary\/wpo\">WPO<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Accessibility and experience:<\/strong> keyboard navigation, semantic structure, contrast, forms, messages, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/digital-glossary\/alt-attribute\">alt attributes<\/a>, and compatibility with assistive technologies.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Content and conversion:<\/strong> accuracy, freshness, intent, duplication, paths to important tasks, and consistency between messages and actions.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Security, privacy, and measurement:<\/strong> exposed software, permissions, forms, cookies, tags, consent, data collection, and event operation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Not every check has the same depth. A crawl may identify a slow URL or an inaccessible form, but diagnosis may require specific measurements, code review, or user testing. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/digital-glossary\/web-accessibility\">Web accessibility<\/a>, security, and legal compliance may also require their own specialists and methods.<\/p>\n<h2>Web Audit Process<\/h2>\n<p>A reproducible audit preserves the context of each finding. The process can be organized into several connected phases:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Define objectives and criteria:<\/strong> establish which decisions the audit must support, what is in scope, and which conditions are considered correct.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Create a baseline:<\/strong> preserve configurations, metrics, versions, dates, and samples before interpreting changes.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Gather evidence:<\/strong> combine crawling, manual navigation, tool data, logs, and tests of priority journeys.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Validate findings:<\/strong> reproduce the problem, identify the affected URLs or templates, and eliminate false positives.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Analyze causes and dependencies:<\/strong> distinguish a symptom from its origin and determine whether a correction may affect other systems.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Prioritize and document:<\/strong> describe the evidence, impact, scope, urgency, effort, owner, and acceptance criterion.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Apply and retest:<\/strong> execute each change through the authorized process and verify both the original problem and possible side effects.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Automated tools provide coverage and repeatability, but do not replace interpretation. A single run should not be assumed to represent every template, session, device, or state in a dynamic application.<\/p>\n<h2>Report, Priorities, and Follow-up<\/h2>\n<p>A useful finding identifies the observed condition, evidence, possible effect, and affected set. Generic recommendations to improve SEO or scores without context do not support a decision or make a solution testable. When uncertainty exists, the report should distinguish it from confirmed errors and specify the test needed to resolve it.<\/p>\n<p>Priority does not depend only on the number of occurrences. A fault in a template may affect thousands of URLs, while an isolated error may block a purchase or expose data. Evaluation combines impact, frequency, risk, dependency, effort, and reversibility. It also distinguishes immediate actions from structural changes that require design or development.<\/p>\n<p>An audit represents the website and the available evidence at a particular time. After corrections are applied, the affected checks are repeated and a change log is retained. Follow-up confirms what was resolved, detects regressions, and updates the diagnosis when the website&#8217;s content, technology, or objectives change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A web audit evaluates a site&#8217;s technical state, content, performance, accessibility, and measurement through verifiable evidence and priorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":79763,"template":"","encyclopedia-tag":[1243],"class_list":["post-20096","encyclopedia","type-encyclopedia","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","encyclopedia-tag-technical-auditing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/encyclopedia\/20096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/encyclopedia"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/encyclopedia"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"encyclopedia-tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arimetrics.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/encyclopedia-tag?post=20096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}