DEV Community: CorgenX

How to Audit a Website: 21 SEO, Performance & Technical Checks

CorgenX — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 14:39:00 +0000

A website can have good traffic and still lose potential customers because of small problems on the homepage.

Before redesigning a website or spending more money on traffic, it is worth checking the basics first.

Here are 21 practical checks that can help you understand where a website may be losing enquiries.

1. Conversion

These checks look at whether a visitor understands the website and knows what to do next.

Clear headline

Does the main heading clearly explain what the business does?

Primary action button

Is there a clear button or link asking the visitor to take a specific action, such as booking, getting a quote, buying, or requesting a demo?

Way to enquire

Is there a contact form or booking link on the page itself?

Proof you're trusted

Does the page show testimonials, reviews, ratings, clients, case studies, or other trust signals?

Action visible near the top

Is the first call-to-action visible near the top of the homepage?

2. Contact & Trust

Even when a visitor is ready to contact a business, small obstacles can make that harder.

Tap-to-call

Is there a clickable phone number using a tel: link?

Email contact

Is there a direct email address using a mailto: link?

Chat or messaging

Does the website provide WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, or live chat?

Business location

Does the website provide an address, map link, opening hours, location information, or similar business-location details?

Credibility signals

Does the website have signals such as a privacy policy, terms, about page, live social links, current copyright year, or cookie notice?

3. Findability

These checks look at some of the basic information search engines need to understand a page.

Page title

Does the page have a useful title tag that describes the business instead of using something generic such as "Home" or "Untitled"?

Search result description

Does the page have a meta description between 50 and 160 characters?

Main heading

Does the page have exactly one H1 in its real content?

Secure connection

Does the final URL use HTTPS, and are page resources also loaded securely?

Mobile setup

Does the page have the correct viewport configuration for mobile devices?

Structured data

Does the page contain valid JSON-LD, including structured data that describes the business itself?

4. Speed & Health

These checks look at some basic technical signals that can affect how quickly a page becomes usable.

Server response time

How quickly does the server respond?

The audit measures time to first byte, including DNS and connection setup.

Page code size

How much HTML does the browser actually download?

The tool checks the compressed HTML size rather than the decompressed size.

Scripts delaying the page

Are there scripts in the page head without async or defer that can delay rendering?

Image descriptions

What percentage of images have an alt attribute?

Decorative images with an empty alt attribute are handled correctly.

Text compression

Is the server using compression such as gzip or Brotli for text responses?

Why check these 21 things?

You don't need to start with a complete website rebuild.

A first-pass audit can help you identify obvious issues with:

Conversion
Contact options
Trust signals
Basic SEO
Mobile setup
Technical performance

The important part is knowing what is actually wrong, rather than relying on a generic website score.

You can check your website for free

We built a free website audit tool at CorgenX that checks these 21 areas on your homepage.

It gives you:

A score out of 100
Every finding in plain English
The evidence behind each finding
No signup
No credit card
Results in about 20 seconds

Run the free audit:
https://www.corgenx.com/tools/free-website-audit

The audit scans your homepage only. It reads the HTML rather than judging a screenshot, and checks that cannot be verified are marked as not checked instead of being treated as failures.

The speed and health section also uses page size and script counts as technical proxies. It does not claim to replace real Core Web Vitals or a full-site crawl.

What happens after the audit?

The audit gives you a starting point.

Once you know which areas need attention, you can investigate the underlying problem and decide what actually needs fixing.

For example, you may also find these CorgenX resources useful:

Signs Your Website Is Losing You Leads
https://www.corgenx.com/blog/signs-your-website-is-losing-you-leads

How Core Web Vitals Affect Your Search Rankings
https://www.corgenx.com/blog/core-web-vitals-impact-search-rankings

On-Page SEO vs Off-Page SEO: The Complete Guide
https://www.corgenx.com/blog/on-page-off-page-seo-complete-guide

Start with your homepage

A website audit doesn't have to be complicated.

Start with the page most first-time visitors see.

Check the headline, action, contact options, trust signals, basic SEO elements, mobile setup, and technical health.

Then fix the problems that matter most.

Run your free website audit:
https://www.corgenx.com/tools/free-website-audit

Stop Building Invoices in Word — Here's a Better Way for Freelancers

CorgenX — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 12:34:05 +0000

If you're still copy-pasting last month's invoice into a Word doc, renaming it, and manually recalculating tax — this post is for you.

I got tired of watching freelancers lose hours every month to this exact workflow. So we built a free, browser-based invoice generator — and in this post I'll share the one insight that changed how I think about freelance billing.

Most freelancers use the wrong billing format

Here's something most invoice tools ignore: not all freelance work is billed the same way.

There are actually three fundamentally different billing models — and using the wrong one for your project type is quietly costing you money and creating payment delays.

Phase-wise billing in particular is the most underused model among freelancers, and the most powerful for protecting cash flow on long projects. Most tools don't even support it.

I cover all three in detail — with a breakdown of when each one works best — in the full guide:

📖 Free Invoice Generator for Freelancers — Complete Guide

The one calculation mistake that can create compliance issues

Quick quiz: when you apply both a discount and a tax on an invoice, which comes first?

A surprising number of freelancers — and invoicing tools — get this wrong. The correct professional order has a real impact on tax filings in many jurisdictions. The full guide explains exactly why it matters and what the right order is.

The tool we built

We put all of this into a free tool — no signup, no watermark, no data ever sent to any server. Everything runs in your browser.

👉 Free Invoice Generator — CorgenX

Supports all 3 billing modes, 50+ currencies, logo upload, tax + discount, and instant PDF download.

What billing format do you default to — hourly, fixed, or milestone? Curious what the dev community uses most. Drop it in the comments.ShareContentfree-invoice-generator-for-freelancers.mdxmdx

How to Find and Fix Broken Links on Your Website (Complete Guide)

CorgenX — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:02:03 +0000

Broken links are one of the most common technical SEO issues that websites face.

They occur when a page links to a URL that no longer exists, leading to a 404 error. While a few broken links might seem harmless, too many can negatively affect user experience, search engine crawling, and SEO performance.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to find and fix broken links on your website efficiently.

Originally published on CorgenX.

What Are Broken Links?

A broken link (also called a dead link) is a hyperlink that points to a webpage that no longer exists or cannot be accessed.

When users click these links, they usually see errors such as:

404 Not Found
410 Gone
Server errors

Broken links often occur when:

A page is deleted
A URL structure changes
A website moves to a new domain
Internal links are updated incorrectly

Why Broken Links Are Bad for SEO

Broken links can negatively impact your website in several ways.

Poor User Experience

Users clicking links that lead to error pages can quickly lose trust in your website.

Loss of Link Equity

If external backlinks point to pages that no longer exist, valuable link equity can be lost.

Crawl Inefficiency

Search engine bots waste crawl budget on dead pages instead of indexing important content.

How to Find Broken Links on Your Website

There are several methods to identify broken links.

1. Manual Checking

You can manually check links, but this is time-consuming and impractical for larger websites.

2. SEO Crawling Tools

SEO tools can scan your website and detect broken links automatically.

3. Online Broken Link Checkers

One of the easiest methods is using an online scanner.

You can use this Free Broken Link Checker Tool to scan your website:

https://www.corgenx.com/tools/broken-link-checker

Simply enter your website URL and the tool will scan pages to detect broken or dead links.

How to Fix Broken Links

Once you identify broken links, there are several ways to fix them.

Update the Link

If the page still exists under a different URL, update the link to the correct location.

Use 301 Redirects

If a page has permanently moved, implement a 301 redirect to point users and search engines to the correct page.

Remove the Link

If the linked resource no longer exists and cannot be replaced, removing the link may be the best option.

Best Practices to Prevent Broken Links

To maintain a healthy website structure, follow these practices:

Perform regular link audits
Monitor your website after migrations
Avoid unnecessary URL structure changes
Use redirects when deleting pages

Regular maintenance ensures your website remains user-friendly and search engine optimized.

Bonus Tool for Developers

If you frequently work with APIs or structured data, formatting JSON quickly can be extremely useful.

You can try this free JSON Formatter Tool:

https://www.corgenx.com/tools/json-formatter

It helps you beautify and validate JSON instantly.

Final Thoughts

Broken links can harm both your SEO performance and your users’ experience. Regularly scanning your website for broken links helps maintain a healthy website structure and ensures visitors always reach the content they expect.

Running periodic audits using automated tools can save time and prevent SEO issues before they affect your rankings.