Spring Website Audit: 12 Things to Fix Before Q2
Spring cleaning checklist for your business website. Twelve technical, content, and performance items to audit and fix before Q2 begins, using the Starfish Substrate framework.
Spring is the right moment to run a complete website audit before Q2 campaigns drive paid traffic to a site that has accumulated technical debt over the winter. The Starfish Substrate framework, built on five pillars: Structure, Speed, Schema, Signal, and Shipboard, provides the organizing principle. The 12-item checklist below covers broken links, outdated schema, page speed, mobile usability, SSL and security headers, crawl errors, sitemap freshness, 404 pages, accessibility basics, image alt text, and old blog posts that are hurting more than helping.
The first day of spring is tomorrow. Before Q2 campaigns go live and paid traffic starts hitting your site, spend two hours running this audit.
Technical debt accumulates quietly. A link breaks in November and nobody notices until a paid campaign sends 400 people to a 404 page in April. A schema update was installed incorrectly and has been generating errors in Google Search Console for three months. An image was uploaded at 4MB and has been slowing your homepage load time since last summer.
The 12 items below cover everything that matters. Fix them before Q2.
What a Website Audit Is
A website audit is a systematic check of your website’s technical health, content quality, and search performance. It is not a redesign project. It is maintenance, the digital equivalent of the HVAC tune-up you schedule before summer.
The Starfish Substrate framework organizes this work across five pillars: Structure, Speed, Schema, Signal, and Shipboard. The 12 audit items below map onto these pillars. Fixing them in order moves from foundational (Structure) to operational (Shipboard).
Why This Matters Right Now
Q2 traditionally brings higher marketing activity: spring campaigns, annual planning launches, local events. Businesses that drive paid traffic to an unhealthy site pay twice: once for the traffic and once for the lower conversion rate that technical problems create.
Google’s Core Web Vitals continue to influence rankings. The March 2025 algorithm update weighted page experience signals more aggressively for mobile results. Sites that fail the CWV assessment are competing at a structural disadvantage in mobile search, where more than 60 percent of local search queries originate.
Run this audit now, before the Q2 spending begins.
The 12-Item Spring Website Checklist
1. Broken Links
Starfish Substrate Pillar: Structure
Use Screaming Frog (free for under 500 URLs) to crawl your site. Export the “Response Codes” report and filter for 4XX errors. Fix every internal link pointing to a 404 page by updating the URL or redirecting the dead page to its best available replacement.
Pass: Zero internal 4XX links. Fail: Any internal link returning a 404 or 410.
2. Outdated Schema Markup
Pillar: Schema
Open Google Search Console. Go to Enhancements and check for structured data errors in FAQ, LocalBusiness, Person, Product, or any other schema types your site uses. Fix flagged errors by correcting the JSON-LD in your page templates.
Also check whether your schema is current. If you have LocalBusiness schema with last year’s hours, an outdated phone number, or a missing service category, update it.
Pass: Zero schema errors in Search Console. Core schema types implemented and accurate. Fail: Open errors in Search Console, or schema not implemented at all on service pages.
3. Page Speed
Pillar: Speed
Run your homepage, your top service page, and your contact page through Google PageSpeed Insights. Check both mobile and desktop scores. Mobile is the priority.
Core Web Vitals to pass: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) under 2.5 seconds, INP (Interaction to Next Paint) under 200ms, CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) under 0.1.
Pass: All three CWV metrics in the green range on mobile. Fail: Any CWV metric in the red or orange range on mobile.
Common fixes: compress and serve images in WebP format, defer non-critical JavaScript, enable browser caching, use a CDN, reduce server response time.
4. Mobile Usability
Pillar: Structure
Go to Google Search Console, then Experience, then Mobile Usability. Check for flagged issues: text too small to read, clickable elements too close together, content wider than screen.
Also manually test your site on a phone. Try submitting your contact form. Try clicking your phone number. Try navigating your menu. Issues that are invisible on desktop appear immediately on mobile testing.
Pass: Zero Mobile Usability errors in Search Console. Manual mobile test passes. Fail: Flagged errors present, or any key conversion action fails on mobile.
5. SSL Certificate Status
Pillar: Shipboard
Check that your SSL certificate is valid and not expiring within 30 days. Go to your site in Chrome and click the padlock icon. If it shows “Certificate valid” with a date more than 30 days in the future, you are fine. If it shows any warning or an expiration within 30 days, renew it immediately.
Pass: SSL valid with more than 30 days remaining. Fail: SSL expired, expiring within 30 days, or mixed content warnings present.
6. Security Headers
Pillar: Shipboard
Visit securityheaders.com and enter your domain. The tool grades your current security header implementation from A to F. Any grade below C indicates missing headers that should be addressed.
Priority headers: Strict-Transport-Security, X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, Content-Security-Policy.
Pass: Grade B or higher. Fail: Grade D or F.
7. Crawl Errors
Pillar: Structure
Go to Google Search Console, then Coverage (or Indexing, then Pages, depending on your GSC view). Review the list of pages with crawl errors: server errors, redirect errors, submitted URLs not indexed.
Investigate any pattern. Systematic crawl errors on a page type indicate a template problem that needs developer attention.
Pass: No server errors (5XX) or redirect errors. Submitted pages indexed. Fail: Active server errors, redirect loops, or submitted pages marked “Crawled - currently not indexed” without explanation.
8. Sitemap Freshness
Pillar: Signal
Go to Search Console, then Sitemaps. Check the date your sitemap was last submitted and read. If your sitemap was last submitted more than 30 days ago and you have added new content since then, submit an updated sitemap now.
Also verify that your sitemap URL returns a valid XML file when you visit it directly in a browser (typically yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml or yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml).
Pass: Sitemap submitted within 30 days, no errors flagged, all important pages included. Fail: Sitemap not submitted, older than 30 days with new content added, or returning errors.
9. 404 Page Audit
Pillar: Structure
Go to your 404 page intentionally (type a non-existent URL on your domain). Evaluate whether it:
- Acknowledges the error clearly
- Includes your main navigation
- Offers a path back to the homepage or a search function
- Does not make the visitor feel they have hit a dead end
A well-designed 404 page retains traffic. A default server 404 page loses it.
Pass: Custom 404 page with navigation and clear next-step options. Fail: Default server error page or a blank page.
10. Accessibility Basics
Pillar: Structure
Open Chrome DevTools (right-click, Inspect), go to the Lighthouse tab, and run an Accessibility audit. Review the flagged items.
Priority fixes: all images have descriptive alt text, all form fields have labels, color contrast ratios pass (4.5:1 for normal text), keyboard navigation works throughout the site.
Pass: Lighthouse Accessibility score above 85. Fail: Lighthouse Accessibility score below 70, or critical errors in any of the four priority areas.
11. Image Alt Text
Pillar: Signal
Run Screaming Frog and export the Images report. Filter for images with missing alt text. Every meaningful image on your site, meaning images that convey information rather than purely decorative spacers, should have descriptive alt text.
Alt text serves two purposes: accessibility for screen reader users and an additional signal for search engines about image content and page context.
Pass: Every meaningful image has descriptive alt text. Fail: More than 5 percent of images have missing or empty alt text.
12. Old Blog Posts
Pillar: Signal
Pull your top 20 blog posts by traffic in Google Analytics. Then pull your bottom 20 by traffic, filtered for posts more than 12 months old.
For the top 20: check whether they have outdated information, dead links, or pre-2025 statistics. Update what needs updating. Add a “Last Updated” date to the top of any refreshed post.
For the bottom 20: evaluate each one. Posts with zero traffic for 12 months and low word counts, meaning under 600 words, should either be expanded substantially or redirected to a more comprehensive page and removed. Thin content that attracts no traffic can drag down overall site quality scores.
Pass: Top posts updated within 12 months. Bottom posts either improved or redirected and removed. Fail: Multiple low-quality, low-traffic posts with no update plan.
The Starfish Substrate in Practice
The Starfish Substrate organizes these 12 items across five pillars because technical debt tends to cluster by type. Structure issues (1, 4, 7, 9, 10) require code or template fixes. Speed issues (3) require asset optimization. Schema issues (2) require structured data work. Signal issues (11, 12) require content decisions. Shipboard issues (5, 6, 8) require hosting and infrastructure checks.
Working through the pillars in order ensures that foundational problems are fixed before signal and performance work is layered on top.
Two hours of audit work in March prevents two months of underperforming Q2 campaigns.
If you want Starfish to run this audit for your site, our GEO and technical audits cover all 12 items plus the deeper performance analysis. Call (903) 508-2576 or visit 140 E Tyler St Suite 200, Longview TX 75601.
Questions
worth answering.
What is a website audit and why should I do one every spring? +
A website audit is a systematic review of a website's technical health, content quality, and search performance. Running one in late March gives you a clean baseline before Q2 campaigns begin. Issues discovered now can be fixed before paid ad traffic arrives in April. A website with crawl errors, slow page speed, or outdated schema underperforms paid campaigns because conversion rates suffer from the technical problems, not the ad quality.
What tools do I need to run a website audit? +
Free tools cover most of what a small business needs. Google Search Console shows crawl errors, coverage issues, and mobile usability problems. Google PageSpeed Insights measures page speed. The W3C CSS Validator and the Chrome Accessibility Audit in DevTools cover technical standards. Screaming Frog has a free tier for sites under 500 URLs that finds broken links, redirect chains, and missing metadata. Ahrefs or Semrush are worth the cost for sites with more serious SEO needs.
How do I check for broken links on my website? +
Screaming Frog's free tier crawls your site and flags all 404 errors and redirect chains. Run a full crawl, export the results, and fix every internal link pointing to a dead URL. Google Search Console's Coverage report also surfaces crawl errors that Google has already encountered. Fix broken internal links before running any paid campaigns, because sending traffic to a 404 page wastes ad spend completely.
What security headers should my website have in 2026? +
The baseline security headers every business website should have are: HTTPS (SSL certificate active), Content Security Policy, X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, and Strict-Transport-Security. Check your current header status for free at securityheaders.com. Most of these can be added through your hosting platform's server configuration or a WordPress security plugin. Missing headers do not directly hurt SEO but they signal technical negligence to sophisticated visitors and can create liability exposure.
How often should I update my sitemap? +
Your sitemap should update automatically every time you add or modify a page if your CMS is properly configured. If you are on WordPress, the Yoast or Rank Math SEO plugin generates and auto-submits your sitemap. If your sitemap was last modified more than 30 days ago and you have added new content, it is stale. Submit your updated sitemap through Google Search Console's Sitemaps report to prompt a fresh crawl.
What accessibility basics should every business website meet? +
The minimum accessibility standard for business websites is WCAG 2.1 Level AA. The four most commonly failing areas on small business sites are: images without alt text, form inputs without labels, insufficient color contrast between text and background, and keyboard navigation that does not work without a mouse. Fix these four areas first. Beyond legal risk reduction, accessible websites rank better because many accessibility signals overlap with SEO quality signals.
When should I redirect or delete old blog posts? +
Delete or redirect a blog post when it has zero traffic for 12 months, is factually outdated and could mislead a reader, is duplicating content covered better in a newer post, or is too thin to add value relative to what you currently produce. Update a blog post when it has traffic but outdated information, when you can substantially improve its quality, or when it targets a keyword that has become more competitive and needs better structure to defend its rank.
Abel Sanchez · Founder, COO, Partner
Abel founded Starfish Ad Age in Longview, Texas in 2017 and has been building AI-driven marketing systems for East Texas and Shreveport-Bossier small businesses ever since. Now based in Shreveport-Bossier, Louisiana, where he leads the agency's expanded Louisiana territory.
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