A 15-minute website health check you can run yourself
You do not need an agency to find the obvious problems on a site. In about 15 minutes, with free tools and no logins, you can check whether a page is slow, hard for search engines to read, awkward to use with a keyboard, or missing basic security headers. This is a first-pass checklist for a site you own or have permission to test. It will not replace a full audit, a penetration test, or…
You don't need an agency to identify obvious website issues. In about 15 minutes using free tools, you can check a site's speed, SEO, accessibility, and security. This quick checklist won't replace a full audit or real-user performance data but provides a ranked list of fixes to prioritize. Focus on your homepage and one key inner page, like a pricing page or signup form. As you check each issue, note what you observed, its location, and whether it's high-impact or merely a cleanup task.
First, gather these free resources: a Chromium browser with DevTools, PageSpeed Insights, a terminal with curl, and a notes file for recording findings. Only test sites you own or have permission to analyze.
During the first 3 minutes, measure speed. Use Chrome's Lighthouse tab in an Incognito window or enter the URL into PageSpeed Insights. Lab tests provide a diagnosis, not a trophy. Google's Core Web Vitals thresholds—LCP (largest contentful paint) of 2.5 seconds or less, INP (interaction to next paint) of 200 milliseconds or less, and CLS (cumulative layout shift) of 0.1 or less—are good targets.
Look for large files, unnecessary scripts, non-blocking fonts, missing image dimensions, and slow servers or redirects. If time permits, open the Network tab in DevTools, sort by file size, and identify the biggest files to optimize first.
Next, in minutes 3-6, check basic SEO. Inspect the page source or use curl to fetch and parse the document. Confirm the presence of a concise title, meta description, single focused h1 heading that matches the page's content, a canonical URL pointing to the preferred version, and Open Graph tags for social previews. Ensure the host and protocol (www or https) match throughout.
View the image URL alone to verify it loads. Open /robots.txt and /sitemap.xml; they should return 200 OK responses. Confirm these files list the proper URLs and include important pages. Test the main navigation and footer, noting any 404 errors or redirect chains.
The following 3 minutes address accessibility. Run the Accessibility category in Lighthouse or scan the page with the axe DevTools extension. Disable the mouse and navigate using only the keyboard. Ensure each interactive element has a visible focus indicator and can be reached without getting stuck. Check informative images for descriptive alt text and ensure text remains readable when overlaid on images or colored backgrounds. Record any issues that could impede reading, navigation, or form submission.
Finally, in minutes 9-12, perform security basics. Confirm the site uses HTTPS and that no mixed content (http resources on an https page) appears. Review security headers like Strict-Transport-Security, Content-Security-Policy, X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, and X-Frame-Options or CSP frame-ancestors to mitigate common vulnerabilities. With these quick checks, you can prioritize improvements and enhance your site's performance, discoverability, and security.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.