What a Website Strategy Audit Checks, and How to Score Your Own Site
You run a roofing company. Your nephew built the website a few years ago and says it looks fine. An agency that called last week says it’s “leaving money on the table.”
Both of them sound sure. Neither showed you a number.
So one evening you sit down with a legal pad, your phone and a cup of coffee, and decide to score the site yourself.
Quick answer
A website strategy audit checks two things: whether your site turns visitors into calls or form leads, and whether Google and AI tools can find and trust it. A practical version scores 20 criteria from 0 to 3, ten for conversion and ten for search, then converts each set to a score out of 100.
Key takeaways
- A strategy audit asks why the site isn't producing jobs, not just what's broken.
- Score ten conversion criteria and ten search criteria from 0 to 3.
- Divide each total by 30 and multiply by 100 for a score out of 100.
- Score on a phone first, because that is how many customers see you.
- Fix your three lowest scores before buying anything new.
What does a website strategy audit actually check?
Most free website scans are technical audits. They count broken links, missing tags and slow images. That is useful, but it answers a narrow question: what is broken?
A strategy audit asks a bigger one: why isn’t this site producing jobs? It looks at the site the way a customer and a search engine would, and splits the answer in two.
- Conversion: when the right person lands on the site, how likely are they to call, book or fill out the form?
- Findability: how easily can Google, Google Maps and AI assistants find the site, understand what it offers, and trust it enough to show it?
A site can be strong on one and weak on the other. Plenty of beautiful sites convert well and get no traffic. Plenty of old, ugly sites rank well and lose most visitors on the first screen. Scoring both halves tells you which problem you actually have.
How does the scoring work?
Use a simple 0 to 3 scale for every criterion:
- 0, failing: missing or actively hurting you.
- 1, weak: present but easy to miss or half done.
- 2, solid: done properly on the main pages.
- 3, strong: done well everywhere it matters, and it shows.
Each scorecard has ten criteria, so the most you can earn on each is 30 points. Divide your total by 30 and multiply by 100 to get a score out of 100. A 17 out of 30, for example, is a 57.
Then read it in bands: under 40 is failing, 40 to 69 needs work, 70 to 84 is good, and 85 or higher is strong. Be honest. If you’re not sure whether something deserves a 2, it’s a 1.
How do you score whether the site turns visitors into calls?
Do this part on your phone, not your laptop. Open your home page and your most important service page, and pretend you have never heard of your company.
| Criterion | Scores a 3 when | Scores a 0 when |
|---|---|---|
| Clarity | What you do, where, and for whom is clear on the first phone screen | Visitor has to scroll or guess |
| Friction | Tap-to-call at the top, short form, no dead ends | Phone number buried, long form, broken links |
| Proof near the ask | Real reviews and photos sit next to the call button | Proof is missing or on a separate page |
| Local proof | Named towns, local jobs, photos of real work in your area | Generic copy that could be for any city |
| Objection handling | Pages answer price, timing, warranty and licensing questions | Visitors must call to learn basics |
| Offer and call to action | One clear next step with a reason to take it now | “Contact us” with no reason |
| Qualification | Service area, minimums and fit are stated plainly | Wrong-fit leads waste your time |
| Follow-through | Thank-you page sets expectations; someone replies fast | Form disappears into silence |
| Speed and mobile | Passes Core Web Vitals on mobile | Slow, jumpy or broken on phones |
| Measurement | Calls and forms tracked as key events | No idea which pages bring leads |
A few notes on the trickier rows.
Speed and mobile. Google’s Core Web Vitals give you a clear bar. A page passes when Largest Contentful Paint happens within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint is 200 milliseconds or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift is 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads. Run your pages through Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool on the mobile setting and score from the results.
Measurement. In Google Analytics 4, important actions are tracked as key events, which Google describes as events that measure an action that’s particularly important to the success of your business. If phone clicks and form submissions aren’t set up as key events, score this a 0, no matter how good the rest looks.
Follow-through. Fill out your own form. What happens next? A thank-you page that says when you’ll hear back, and a reply within business hours, earns a 3. Silence earns a 0.
Free Growth Leak Audit
Want a second set of eyes on your scorecard? Rob, founder of Mission Driven Brand, personally reviews your site and scores how well it turns visitors into calls and how easily Google and AI tools can find you. You get your top three leaks.
How do you score whether Google and AI can find you?
This half takes more digging, but every tool you need is free.
| Criterion | Scores a 3 when | Scores a 0 when |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | One page per core service and per main service area | Everything crammed onto the home page |
| Keyword-to-page mapping | Each important search has one clear page that answers it | Several pages compete, or none fits |
| Internal links | Related pages link to each other with descriptive text | Pages are orphaned or linked only from the menu |
| Local relevance | City and neighborhood signals in titles, copy and examples | No location signals beyond the footer |
| Content strategy | Pages answer real customer questions in plain language | Thin pages or generic blog filler |
| Trust | Clear owner, credentials, contact details and real people | Anonymous site with no way to verify it |
| Technical foundation | Indexable, secure, no broken pages, clean redirects | Pages missing from Google or full of errors |
| Profile alignment | Name, phone, hours and services match your Google Business Profile | Site and profile disagree |
| AI answer readiness | AI search crawlers allowed; answers stated directly and early | Crawlers blocked or answers buried |
| Measurement loop | Search Console checked monthly and acted on | Nobody looks at search data |
Again, a few rows need explaining.
Keyword-to-page mapping and the measurement loop. Google Search Console is the best free source here. Its Performance report shows impressions, which Google defines as how many times your site appeared in Search results, along with clicks, click-through rate and average position. Look at your top searches and ask: does each one land on the page that best answers it? Lots of impressions with very few clicks often means the page title or description doesn’t match what people want.
Trust. Google’s guidance on helpful content says the E-E-A-T qualities it looks for are experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, and that of these aspects, trust is most important. The same page suggests asking whether it is self-evident to visitors who created the content. For a local business, that means a real owner name, real license numbers, a real address and real photos.
Technical foundation and profile alignment. Check that your name, address and phone match your Google Business Profile exactly. Structured data helps here too: Google’s LocalBusiness documentation says markup lets you tell Google about business hours, different departments within a business, reviews and more. Ask your web person whether it’s in place.
AI answer readiness. Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt. OpenAI says its OAI-SearchBot crawler is used to surface websites in ChatGPT’s search features, and sites that block it will not appear in ChatGPT search answers. Then read your service pages: is the answer to the obvious question in the first two sentences, or buried at the bottom?
What tools do you need to run it yourself?
You don’t need paid software for a first pass. You need:
- Your own phone, for every conversion row.
- Google Search Console, for the search rows. If it isn’t set up, that alone tells you something.
- Google Analytics 4, to see whether calls and forms are tracked.
- PageSpeed Insights, for speed.
- Your Google Business Profile, open in another tab, for alignment.
- About two hours, and a willingness to give yourself low scores.
Write one line of evidence next to every score, like “phone number not visible until third scroll” or “service page title doesn’t mention the city.” The evidence is what turns a score into a to-do list.
If the funnel idea is new to you, our overview of full funnel marketing from awareness to conversion shows where the website sits between first search and booked job.
What do the scores usually tell you?
Look at the two totals side by side.
| Conversion | Findability | What it usually means |
|---|---|---|
| High | Low | The site works once people arrive, but too few arrive. Work on search pages and your Google profile. |
| Low | High | People find you and leave. Fix clarity, proof and calls to action before chasing more traffic. |
| Low | Low | Start with conversion so new traffic isn’t wasted, then build search pages. |
| High | High | Protect what works and expand to new services or areas. |
Then find your three lowest individual scores. Those are your first three projects. Resist the urge to fix everything at once, because you won’t know which change moved the numbers.
For ideas on tightening the last step before a lead becomes a customer, see our piece on optimizing sales with lower funnel marketing campaigns.
What can a DIY audit miss?
Scoring your own site has one big weakness: you already know your business. You know what “full-service exterior solutions” means. A stranger doesn’t.
That is why outside eyes help. Ask a friend who has never hired you to find your phone number, your service area and one review, on their phone, while you watch without helping. Their hesitation is data.
A DIY pass also won’t easily show how you compare with the three competitors who show up above you, or which searches you nearly rank for. Those take more time in Search Console, or a second opinion.
Back to the roofer with the legal pad. By the end of the evening, there are two numbers on the page, maybe a 57 for conversion and a 40 for search, and a short list underneath: phone number hidden on mobile, no page for the town where most jobs come from, calls not tracked. That is not a vague feeling that the site is “fine” or “leaving money on the table.” It is a plan, in order, and a way to check in 60 days whether it worked.
Turn your scores into a plan
Like the roofer with the legal pad, you can get a long way on your own. If you want help deciding which of your lowest scores to fix first, book a 30-minute call and bring your numbers.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a website audit and an SEO audit?
An SEO audit focuses on whether search engines can crawl, index and rank your pages. A broader website audit also asks whether visitors who arrive actually call, book or buy, which is where many small business sites fall short.
How often should a small business audit its website?
A full scorecard once or twice a year is reasonable for most small businesses, with a quick monthly look at Search Console and lead tracking. Re-score after any major change, such as a redesign or new service.
Is a free website audit worth it?
It can be, if a real person reviews the site and gives specific, prioritized findings. Automated scans are a useful start but usually report technical issues without explaining which ones cost you customers.
What is a good website score for a small business?
On a 0 to 100 scale like the one above, 70 or higher on both conversion and findability is a healthy target. The most useful comparison is your own score over time, measured the same way.
Can I check if my site shows up in ChatGPT?
Yes. Ask ChatGPT the questions your customers would ask, including your city, and see who gets named and which sources are cited. Also make sure your robots.txt file does not block OAI-SearchBot.
