Website audit methodology · reviewed 20 Sep 2026
Evidence before scores: how the Social Linker Website Review works.
The Website Review is designed to separate what can be observed from a public page from what requires deeper crawling, browser measurement, analytics, private access, or specialist testing. A finding should show evidence, explain why it matters, and make the next action clearer without pretending one mystery score can represent the entire website.
What the quick review measures
Public evidence grouped into six practical review lenses.
Search foundations
Title, meta description, H1 structure, canonical URL, robots/indexability signals, sitemap and robots discovery, internal-link indicators, and structured-data presence where visible.
Lead path
Visible primary actions, contact routes, forms, tap-to-call or WhatsApp links, and whether the public page exposes a practical next step.
Trust layer
Business context, visible proof signals, privacy/legal links, social/profile references, favicon, and sharing metadata where present.
Technical response
HTTPS, HTTP status, redirects, and selected public response-header signals such as HSTS, MIME protection, and frame protection.
Mobile & access signals
Viewport configuration, document language, image-alt coverage, semantic structure, and other HTML-level signals that can be checked without claiming full accessibility conformance.
Performance readiness
HTML payload size, script and stylesheet counts, image-loading hints, and other lightweight indicators that can justify deeper browser-based testing.
Severity rubric
Priority is not the same as a score.
Critical
A finding that can block an important discovery, conversion, secure-access, or essential user path and deserves immediate investigation.
High
A material weakness in search understanding, lead flow, trust, technical setup, or another high-value part of the page.
Medium
A meaningful improvement opportunity that should be addressed, but is not presented as an immediate blocker.
Info
Context, a follow-up check, or a useful observation that should not be inflated into a failure.
What the quick review deliberately does not claim
Missing data is a limitation, not permission to invent a verdict.
Field Core Web Vitals or real-user performance when browser/field data has not been measured.
A complete whole-site crawl, orphan-page inventory, or exhaustive internal-link graph from a single public URL.
WCAG certification, legal accessibility compliance, or a professional accessibility conformance statement.
Penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, application-security certification, or private infrastructure inspection.
Conversion-rate uplift, revenue impact, lead growth, or business outcomes without the relevant analytics and controlled evidence.
Guaranteed rankings, traffic, backlinks, or search-engine outcomes after a recommendation is implemented.
Collection boundaries
The quick review reads public resources. It does not act like a user or attacker.
The review can request publicly reachable pages and supporting public resources needed for the diagnostic. It does not submit contact forms, attempt logins, bypass authentication, or intentionally scan private network addresses.
Complex accessibility, analytics, security, conversion, application-state, and site-wide SEO questions require deeper methods. The report should make that boundary visible rather than converting uncertainty into an automatic failure.
Primary search references
The search checks are grounded in first-party Google documentation.
Social Linker uses third-party tools for additional diagnostics, but our search recommendations are cross-checked against primary Google Search Central guidance where Google publishes it. These references are useful if you want to verify the reasoning behind a finding yourself.
Why this methodology is public
A recommendation is easier to trust when its measurement boundary is visible.
Website audit tools can disagree because they crawl different depths, use different renderers, count content differently, or have access to different external datasets. Publishing the method makes those differences easier to interpret.
Social Linker may refine checks as the tool changes. Material changes to what is measured or claimed should be reflected on this page instead of silently changing the meaning of old findings.
FAQ
Does the Website Review measure Core Web Vitals?
The quick Website Review does not claim field Core Web Vitals such as LCP, INP, or CLS. Browser and field performance data belong in a dedicated performance test or analytics source, so the review keeps those claims separate.
Does one page scan prove that an entire website is healthy?
No. A public-page review can identify useful page-level and site-discovery signals, but it cannot honestly prove whole-site crawl depth, orphan-page coverage, every internal link, or every template state from one URL.
Is the review an accessibility certification or security audit?
No. It can surface basic accessibility and technical signals visible in public HTML and response headers, but it is not a WCAG conformance certification, penetration test, vulnerability assessment, or compliance opinion.
Does Social Linker guarantee rankings after fixing findings?
No. Technical and content fixes can remove avoidable problems, but search rankings also depend on competition, relevance, authority, links, user demand, and other signals outside a single audit.