---
title: "Website Audit: What It Covers, and the Link Checks Most Audits Skip"
description: "A website audit reviews crawling and indexing, speed, on-page content and links. The links part usually stops at a backlink count. bklink's audits of 4,447 placed links on 3,001 publications found 31% followed, 83% still on the page, and only 11% in an article that ran on one site alone."
canonical: "https://bklink.uk/blog/website-audit"
publishedAt: "2026-10-23T12:48:37.697Z"
updatedAt: "2026-10-23T12:48:37.697Z"
author: "Palash Bagchi"
category: "Research"
tags: ["research","website-audit","backlink-audit","link-audit"]
series: "bklink Research"
image: null
---

# Website Audit: What It Covers, and the Link Checks Most Audits Skip

A website audit reviews crawling and indexing, speed, on-page content and links. The links part usually stops at a backlink count. bklink's audits of 4,447 placed links on 3,001 publications found 31% followed, 83% still on the page, and only 11% in an article that ran on one site alone.

## What is a website audit?

A website audit is a review of how well a site can be found and used: whether search engines can crawl and index it, how fast its pages load, whether each page answers the search it targets, and which links point to it. Most audit tools crawl your own site and report on the first three. The links part often stops at a backlink tool's count of who links to you, without reading the pages the links sit on.

## What a website audit covers

| Area | What it checks | Free place to start |
|---|---|---|
| Crawling and indexing | Pages answer 200, aren't blocked or noindexed, name the right canonical, are in the sitemap and in Google's index | Search Console's Page indexing report; bklink's [Google index checker](/google-index-checker) |
| Speed and page experience | Core Web Vitals: loading, responsiveness and layout shift, from real visitors | Search Console's Core Web Vitals report; PageSpeed Insights |
| On-page | Titles, meta descriptions, headings, content that answers the search, internal links | A crawler of your own site |
| Links to the site | Who links to you, how, and whether the links you placed are still there and followed | Search Console's Links report; a backlink checker; an audit of placed links |

Google's own tools cover a lot of it for free: [Page indexing](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7440203), [Core Web Vitals](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520) and [Links](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9049606) are all reports in Search Console.

## The link checks most audits skip

A backlink count tells you a link was seen once. It does not tell you whether a link you placed is still on the page, still followed, in the article, or on a page anyone reads. bklink audits read each page for that. Across every account's audits of placed links, as mxverify's /audits page showed them on 23 October 2026 — 4,447 links on 3,001 publications, 14,487 checks:

| What the audit checked on each placed link | Share | Of |
|---|---:|---:|
| The link was followed (of links whose page could be read) | 31% | 3,173 |
| The link was still on the page | 83% | 3,173 |
| Still there at a later check, if there at the first | 95% | 1,186 |
| It sat in the article, not a sidebar or footer | 97% | 1,909 |
| The article ran on that site alone, not republished | 11% | 4,447 |

- **Fewer than a third were followed.** 31% of the placed links whose page could be read were followed; the rest were nofollow or sponsored, or no longer on the page.
- **Most stayed put once they were there.** 83% were still on the page at the latest check, and of links read twice, 95% were still there the second time.
- **Few articles were originals.** Only 11% of placed links sat in an article that ran on one site alone; the rest were in copies republished on other sites.
- **Most read as low-value links.** Of the 1,909 links whose page our model read, 97% read as press-release, syndicated, profile or network links (levels C and D), and 3% as editorial or guest-post links (A and B).

The full record, with every publication, is on mxverify's [audited backlinks](https://mxverify.uk/audits) page.

## How to audit the links you placed

1. **Keep the list:** every placement, its page address and what you paid or agreed.
2. **Open each page signed out.** Is your link there, an `<a href>` to your site, and what does its `rel` say?
3. **Note where it sits** — in the article, or in a sidebar, footer or author box — and whether the article ran anywhere else.
4. **Check the page is indexed.** A link on a page Google never indexed passes nothing.
5. **Read it again in a month.** Links are removed and edited after they are placed.

A [bklink audit](/) does these reads for a whole list and re-checks them over time.

## Method and limits

- **Placed links only.** Links a backlink scan found (mentions nobody arranged) are counted apart: 1,808 links on 319 publications, none of them in the figures above.
- **These are placements our users chose to audit,** including our own accounts', not a random sample of the web. They describe those links, not every link on the sites.
- **Each share is over the links it could be read on:** a page that blocked the reader is left out of "followed" and "still on the page", and "in the article" and the levels need the page read by our model.
- **Same totals as mxverify's [/audits](https://mxverify.uk/audits) page,** read on 23 October 2026.


## Key Takeaways
- A website audit covers crawling and indexing, speed, on-page content and links; Search Console covers much of it for free.
- Of 3,173 placed links read, 31% were followed.
- 83% were still on the page; of links read twice, 95% were still there the second time.
- Only 11% sat in an article that ran on one site alone.

## Frequently Asked Questions

### What is a website audit?

A review of how well a site can be found and used: crawling and indexing, page speed, on-page content and the links pointing to it.

### What does a website audit include?

Crawling and indexing checks, Core Web Vitals, titles, descriptions and content on each page, internal links, and the links pointing to the site. Search Console's Page indexing, Core Web Vitals and Links reports cover much of it for free.

### How do I audit my backlinks?

For your own site, start with Search Console's Links report. For links you placed, open each page, check the link is there and how its rel is marked, note where it sits, check the page is indexed, and read it again later.

### How often should I audit a website?

Read the links you place again within a month: in our audits, 95% of links found at a first check were still there at a later one, so most losses are small but real.

## Sources
1. [Google Search Console Help – Page indexing report](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7440203)
2. [Google Search Console Help – Core Web Vitals report](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520)
3. [Google Search Console Help – Links report](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9049606)
4. [mxverify.uk – Audited backlinks](https://mxverify.uk/audits)