# What Should a Site Audit Checklist Cover in 2026?

> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://attensira.com/llms.txt).
> Every page on this site is also served as Markdown: append `.md` to any URL, or send `Accept: text/markdown`.

> A 12-point site audit checklist for Google and AI search, the order to run it in, how to rank what you find, and what an audit of our own site turned up.

- Canonical page: https://attensira.com/blog/site-audit-checklist
- Family: blog
- Last updated: 2026-10-04
- Author: Karl-Gustav Kallasmaa (https://attensira.com/blog/author/karl)
- Claims as data: https://attensira.com/claims.json?slug=site-audit-checklist

**In short:** A site audit checks whether search engines and AI assistants can reach, read and trust your pages. Run it in order. Start with crawl access and indexing, then rendering, duplicates and redirects, on-page basics, structure and internal links, speed, content quality, and finally which of your pages AI answers actually cite. Fix what blocks access before anything cosmetic.

**Which attensira.com pages AI answers cite · ChatGPT and Perplexity, the 7 most-cited of 596 pages · 4 Sept 2026 to 4 Oct 2026, n=4,524 answers**

| Name | answers |
| --- | --- |
| www.attensira.com/ | 72 |
| /compare | 61 |
| /alternatives/profound | 58 |
| /pricing | 58 |
| attensira.com/ (bare host) | 47 |
| /compare/attensira-vs-profound | 47 |
| /use-cases/saas-startups | 41 |

_attensira.com workspace, read over the Attensira MCP · 4 Oct 2026 · 24 of 31 days read_

A site audit has one job: find what stops search engines and AI assistants from reaching, reading and trusting your pages, and turn it into a list of fixes in the right order. Most audit checklists stop at Google. This one adds the layer that decides AI answers, and it is ordered so that the checks that block everything else come first.

At the end you will find what happened when we ran it on our own site, attensira.com, using our own product.

## How do you run a site audit, step by step?

Gather four sources before you start. Each answers a different question, and an audit built on only one of them misses things.

- **A crawler** (any desktop SEO crawler): what your site links to, and what each URL returns.

- **Google Search Console:** what Google indexed, which queries show your pages, and the errors it found.

- **Server or CDN logs:** what crawlers actually fetched, including AI crawlers that analytics scripts never see.

- **The answers themselves:** which of your pages ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI cite for the questions your buyers ask.

Then work down the checklist in order. The order matters: a perfect title tag on a page no crawler can reach is wasted work.

## What is on the 12-point site audit checklist?

Twelve checks, in the order to run them. Each names the source that answers it best: using the right one avoids the most common audit mistake, reading a crawler's guess as if it were Google's or an AI engine's record.

### 1. Can crawlers reach the site?

Check robots.txt for rules that block whole sections by accident, including rules for AI crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot. Check that your firewall or bot protection is not challenging well-behaved crawlers.

**Pass:** the pages you want found return 200 to a crawler with no login and no challenge page.

**Best source:** robots.txt, firewall rules, server logs

### 2. Is what you want indexed actually indexed?

In Search Console, compare indexed pages with the pages you care about. Look at the reasons pages are excluded.

**Pass:** every page you want to rank is indexed, and what is excluded is excluded on purpose.

**Best source:** Search Console

### 3. Does the main text exist without JavaScript?

Load key pages with JavaScript turned off, or fetch them with a plain HTTP request. Most AI crawlers do not execute JavaScript, so text that appears only after scripts run is invisible to them.

**Pass:** the heading, the main copy and the links are in the HTML the server sends.

**Best source:** A plain HTTP fetch, or a browser with scripts off

### 4. Is each page reachable at exactly one address?

Check www versus bare domain, http versus https, trailing slashes and parameters. Every variant should redirect once to the canonical address, and every page should declare a self-referencing canonical. Google says duplicate content is not a spam violation, but it wastes crawling and splits signals.

**Pass:** one address per page, one redirect hop at most.

**Best source:** A desktop crawler

### 5. Do redirects and removed pages behave?

Find redirect chains, redirect loops and internal links that point at redirects or at pages that return 404.

**Pass:** internal links point straight at live pages, and every removal was a deliberate decision.

**Best source:** A desktop crawler

### 6. Does the sitemap tell the truth?

Your XML sitemap should list the canonical, indexable pages, with real last-modified dates, and nothing that redirects or returns an error.

**Pass:** sitemap URLs and indexable URLs match.

**Best source:** A desktop crawler

### 7. Are the on-page basics in place?

One clear title per page that says what it is, a description written for a person, one H1, headings that describe sections, and descriptive alt text on meaningful images. Skip the keywords meta tag: Google does not use it.

**Pass:** no missing or duplicated titles across the site.

**Best source:** A desktop crawler

### 8. Is the structure shallow and well linked?

Important pages should be a few clicks from the home page and linked from related pages with descriptive anchor text. Orphan pages, which nothing links to, rarely perform. Our [site architecture](/blog/site-architecture-seo) post covers the shape.

**Pass:** no orphans among the pages that matter.

**Best source:** A crawler's link graph

### 9. Is the site fast and stable on a phone?

Check Core Web Vitals in Search Console for real-user data, then test the slowest templates.

**Pass:** the templates that carry most of your traffic meet the thresholds on mobile.

**Best source:** Search Console Core Web Vitals

### 10. Does each important page answer its question?

Read each page that should win a query and ask whether its first paragraph answers the question a buyer typed, in a sentence that stands alone. AI answers are built from passages, and a page that leads with a slogan gives the engine nothing to lift.

**Pass:** each key page answers its question in its first 40 to 60 words.

**Best source:** Reading the page as a buyer

### 11. Is structured data valid and honest?

Validate Organization, Product, Article, FAQ and Breadcrumb markup where you use it. The markup must match what the page visibly says.

**Pass:** no errors, and no markup describing content that is not on the page.

**Best source:** A schema validator

### 12. Which of your pages do AI answers cite?

This is the check classic audits skip. Read the answers to the questions your buyers ask and list which of your URLs are cited, on which engine. Do not assume they are your best-ranking pages; engines often cite pages that rank nowhere for the query.

**Pass:** you know which pages engines rely on, and none of them is broken, outdated or about to be removed.

**Best source:** The answers themselves, read repeatedly

## What is a site audit not?

It is not a ranking report. Positions belong in a separate, regular report; an audit is about causes. It is not a content strategy either: it tells you which existing pages fail, not which new pages to write, which is what a [content gap analysis](/blog/seo-content-gap-analysis) is for. And it is not a score. Many tools roll hundreds of checks into one health number, and the number goes up when you fix trivia. Judge an audit by the blocking findings it surfaced and whether they got fixed.

## What did the checklist find on our own site?

Four findings from running the checklist on attensira.com with our own workspace, each tagged with the check that caught it. All four are work on our side of the site. What each one asks of your site comes next.

**Inbox**

- **Do** (web engineer): Two host names, cited separately
  The home page is cited at www.attensira.com and at attensira.com.
- **Do** (writer): Engines cite pages we are retiring
  /use-cases/saas-startups, in the chart at the top, and /use-cases, cited in 34 answers.
- **Do** (web engineer): We could not see AI crawlers
  Install the crawler collector so we can see whether AI bots fetch our pages.
- **Do** (writer): The most-cited pages are hubs, not posts
  /compare, the home page and /pricing were cited most.

_attensira.com workspace, read over the Attensira MCP · 4 Oct 2026 · 4,524 answers, 4 Sep to 4 Oct 2026_

## What do the audit findings mean?

We ran check 12, and parts of 1, 4 and 5, on attensira.com with our own workspace, reading ChatGPT and Perplexity answers from 4 September to 4 October 2026. The four findings are in the Inbox of four findings, "What did the checklist find on our own site?" What each one asks of your own site:

- **Split hosts (check 4).** Pick one canonical host and redirect the other to it in one hop. Expect the citations to consolidate over the following weeks, not overnight.

- **Cited pages you are retiring (checks 5 and 12).** Before you remove a page, list the questions whose answers cite it, make sure its replacement answers the same question, and read those answers again after the switch.

- **No view of AI crawlers (check 1).** Measure crawler visits at the server or the edge. Until you do, check 1 is a guess for AI bots.

- **Hubs cited, posts not (check 10).** Rewrite the posts that should answer category questions so the answer sits in the first 40 to 60 words, where an engine can lift it.

None of these would have appeared in a classic crawl report on its own. Three of them needed the answers, which is why check 12 belongs in every audit and not only in one about AI search.

## How do you rank what the audit finds?

Sort every finding into three bands:

1. **Blocks access.** Robots rules, firewall challenges, empty HTML, noindex on the wrong pages, broken canonicals. Fix first; nothing else works until they are fixed.

1. **Loses signal.** Duplicate addresses, redirect chains, orphan pages, links to removed pages, cited pages about to be removed. Fix next.

1. **Improves the page.** Answers, headings, titles, structured data, speed. Fix in order of the traffic or the answers each page carries.

Within a band, start with the pages that already earn impressions or citations. A small fix on a page engines already read pays back faster than a large fix on a page nobody visits.

## Which free checkers does an engine name?

Check 12 on a question of our own. Asked for a free AI visibility checker, ChatGPT named five tools on 4 October and not us, although we run a free audit. Across 66 answers in 30 days, Attensira was named in none and cited in none. An audit that skips the answers never sees this.

**ChatGPT, asked "free AI visibility checker" on 4 Oct 2026**

> Free AI visibility checkers you can try: 1. Ahrefs Free AI Visibility Checker — Checks whether your brand appears in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and Google AI results. No signup required. 2. IsVisible.ai AI Visibility Audit — Checks whether AI crawlers can access your site and gives an AI visibility score. 3. Semrush AI Visibility Tool — Measures brand visibility across AI search platforms and shows mentions/citations. 4. Rank.ai AI Visibility Checker — Tests a prompt across ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to see if your brand appears.

Sources cited, in order: ahrefs.com, isvisible.ai, semrush.com, rank.ai, praised.co.

Attensira: not named in this answer.

_attensira.com workspace, read over the Attensira MCP · 4 Oct 2026 · 1 stored answer; named 0 of 66 in 30 days_

## What should happen after the audit?

An audit that ends as a PDF is a list of chores nobody scheduled. Turn each finding into a change with an owner and a date, ship it, and read the same pages and questions again two to four weeks later. Google itself advises waiting a few weeks before judging whether a change worked.

Attensira does the AI half of this audit every day. It reads your tracked questions, records which of your pages each answer cites, keeps an inventory of your pages and re-reads them for changes, and its agents turn findings into page rewrites, pull requests or CMS drafts for your approval. For the crawler side of check 1, see the [AI crawler access data](/data/ai-crawler-robots-access) for how the top 10,000 domains treat each bot.

## FAQ

### How long does a site audit take?

For a site of a few hundred pages, a focused audit is a day or two of work with a crawler, Search Console and server logs. The fixing takes longer than the finding. Budget the audit as the start of a work queue, not as a report.

### How often should I audit my site?

Run the full checklist once a quarter and after any migration, redesign or platform change. Check crawl errors, indexing and broken links monthly, because they change with every deploy.

### What is the difference between an SEO audit and a site audit?

People use the terms interchangeably. A site audit leans technical (crawl, render, speed, structure); an SEO audit adds content, links and competitors. The checklist on this page covers both, plus the AI-search layer.

### Do I need a paid tool to audit my site?

Not to start. Google Search Console, a desktop crawler, your server or CDN logs and a browser with JavaScript turned off cover most of the checklist. Paid tools save time on large sites and add backlink and competitor data.

### Does an audit need to check AI search separately?

Yes, for two reasons. AI crawlers mostly do not run JavaScript, so a page that renders for Google can be empty to them, and the pages AI answers cite are often different from the ones that rank. Neither shows up in a classic crawl report.

## Sources

Each entry below is one claim on this page. `retrieved` is the date the exporter or a human last saw the source say this, and nothing more: it is not a publication date and not a promise of re-verification. `cite` is the anchor on the canonical page where this claim is rendered.

### google-wait-few-weeks

Google says some changes take effect in hours and others in months, and that you generally want to wait a few weeks to assess whether your work had beneficial effects.

- source: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide (developers.google.com)
- retrieved: 2026-10-04
- cite: https://attensira.com/blog/site-audit-checklist#claim-google-wait-few-weeks
### google-duplicate-content

Google says duplicate content is not a violation of its spam policies, but can be a bad user experience and can waste crawling resources.

- source: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide (developers.google.com)
- retrieved: 2026-10-04
- cite: https://attensira.com/blog/site-audit-checklist#claim-google-duplicate-content
### google-meta-keywords

Google Search does not use the keywords meta tag.

- source: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide (developers.google.com)
- retrieved: 2026-10-04
- cite: https://attensira.com/blog/site-audit-checklist#claim-google-meta-keywords

> Google Search doesn't use the keywords meta tag.
### ai-crawlers-no-js

AI crawlers do not execute JavaScript, so client-side analytics never sees them and crawler visits must be measured server-side.

- source: https://docs.attensira.com/traffic/ai-traffic (docs.attensira.com)
- retrieved: 2026-10-04
- cite: https://attensira.com/blog/site-audit-checklist#claim-ai-crawlers-no-js
### dogfood-cited-pages

attensira.com workspace, read over the Attensira MCP on 2026-10-04 (2026-09-04 to 2026-10-04, 4,524 answers): answers cited both https://www.attensira.com/ (72) and https://attensira.com/ (47), and cited /use-cases/saas-startups (41) and /use-cases (34), pages the site rebuild retires.

- source: https://mcp.attensira.com/mcp (mcp.attensira.com)
- retrieved: 2026-10-04
- cite: https://attensira.com/blog/site-audit-checklist#claim-dogfood-cited-pages
### dogfood-free-checker-prompt

attensira.com workspace, read over the Attensira MCP on 2026-10-04 (2026-09-04 to 2026-10-04): "free AI visibility checker" was answered 66 times, 33 by ChatGPT and 33 by Perplexity; Attensira was named in 0 of 66 and cited in 0 of 66; Ahrefs was named in 58 of 66.

- source: https://mcp.attensira.com/mcp (mcp.attensira.com)
- retrieved: 2026-10-04
- cite: https://attensira.com/blog/site-audit-checklist#claim-dogfood-free-checker-prompt
### dogfood-free-checker-answer

attensira.com workspace, read over the Attensira MCP on 2026-10-04: the stored ChatGPT answer to "free AI visibility checker" of 2026-10-04 named Ahrefs, IsVisible.ai, Semrush, Rank.ai and Praised, cited ahrefs.com, isvisible.ai, semrush.com, rank.ai and praised.co, and did not name Attensira.

- source: https://mcp.attensira.com/mcp (mcp.attensira.com)
- retrieved: 2026-10-04
- cite: https://attensira.com/blog/site-audit-checklist#claim-dogfood-free-checker-answer