How to Read Your Website Audit Report and What to Fix First

Your AuditLixa report has a score, a short summary, and a list of findings in five tabs. Here’s what each part means, how to use the evidence and fix steps, and the order to work through them in.

Published September 25, 2026 · Updated October 17, 2026 · AuditLixa Team

If you haven’t run a report yet, this will make more sense with one in front of you—start a free audit (you’ll need a free account) and open your results alongside this guide.

What AuditLixa checks

AuditLixa checks the homepage of the website you enter, as our server receives it at that moment: its HTML, its HTTP response headers, its robots.txt file and its XML sitemap. If you type a longer address such as example.com/blog/post, only the homepage of example.com is checked. There are 21 checks in seven categories: On-Page SEO, Technical SEO, Performance, Mobile Usability, Content, Accessibility, and Security Basics.

1. The overall score and category scores

The number at the top (out of 100) is the average of your category scores, and each category score is based on that category’s own checks. A passed check counts in full; recommendations, warnings and issues lower the score, with confirmed issues lowering it the most. Checks that could not run are left out of the score, and the report says how many checks it is based on (for example, “Based on the 20 of 21 checks that could run”).

  • 90–100 (green): the basics we check are in good shape.
  • 70–89 (amber): the basics are mostly in place, but there are gaps worth fixing.
  • Below 70 (red): several problems, or at least one serious one. Open the Issues tab first.

The score is a quick summary of these basic checks only. It is not a complete review of your site and it does not predict search rankings. If a category shows “n/a” or “(2/3 tested)”, some of its checks could not run.

2. The summary box

Just below the score you’ll find a one-sentence summary of what we found, the number of findings at each severity level (Critical, High, Medium, Low), and a short “Fix these first” list with the three most important items. If you only have a few minutes, start there.

3. The five tabs

Every check lands in exactly one tab:

  • Issues — a confirmed problem, backed by what we actually saw on your page. Example: the page has no title, or it tells search engines not to index it.
  • Warnings — a likely problem, or a result based on a single measurement that is worth checking. Example: the homepage was slow to load in our test, or it has no meta description.
  • Recommendations — best practice rather than an error. Your site works without these, but adding them is usually worthwhile. Example: adding structured data or a security header.
  • Passed — the check ran and found nothing to fix. Click “Show evidence” to see what we looked at.
  • Not tested — the check could not run (for example, your robots.txt file did not respond, or the check does not apply because an earlier check failed). A “Not tested” result is never counted as a pass. Running the audit again later often fixes temporary problems.

4. Severity levels

Issues, Warnings and Recommendations each carry a severity label based on how much the problem is likely to affect your site:

  • Critical — can stop the page from appearing in search or from being used safely, such as a “noindex” instruction, an error page, or a broken or missing HTTPS certificate.
  • High — a significant problem for visitors or search engines, such as a missing page title, no mobile viewport tag, or many images without alt text.
  • Medium — worth fixing soon, such as a missing meta description, a missing page language, or a missing security header.
  • Low — minor improvements, such as a title that is a little too long or a missing canonical tag.

5. How each finding is laid out

Each finding card shows its category, a short title, its tab label and severity, and one sentence explaining what we found. Below that you’ll find:

  • Evidence — the actual data we collected from your site: the page address we checked, the title or description we found, the response header that was or wasn’t sent, a measured time, and so on. Evidence always comes from your site, never from an example.
  • Why it matters — the realistic effect on search engines, visitors, accessibility or security.
  • Recommended solution — what needs to change.
  • Step by step — practical instructions. When we can see that your site runs on WordPress (and uses Rank Math or Yoast SEO), the steps name the WordPress menus and settings to use.
  • Example — where it helps, a sample title, tag or server setting. Examples are clearly marked and are not taken from your site: write your own text, and back up any file before editing it by hand.
  • How to check it is fixed — how to confirm the change worked, for example by viewing your page source or your browser’s developer tools, and then running the audit again.
  • Limitations — what the check cannot tell you. If the result is less certain (for example, a page that builds its content with JavaScript), the confidence level is shown here too.

Issues and Warnings show the fix details straight away. For Recommendations, click “Show how to fix”.

What to fix first: a practical order

  1. Start with the “Fix these first” list in the summary box.
  2. Then work by severity: Critical, then High, then Medium, then Low. Within the same severity, handle Issues before Warnings, and Warnings before Recommendations.
  3. After each fix, verify it using the “How to check it is fixed” steps, then run the audit again to see the updated result. Free accounts can run 2 audits per day, so it can help to make several fixes before re-checking. Pro and Agency accounts have no daily limit.

What your report doesn’t tell you

To use your report accurately, it helps to know its limits. AuditLixa checks one page (your homepage), so it is not a whole-site crawl. It reads the HTML your server sends and does not run JavaScript, so content added by scripts may be missed. Performance is a single server-to-server timing and the size of the HTML file, not Core Web Vitals or real-visitor speed; for those, use a tool such as Google PageSpeed Insights. Security Basics checks HTTPS and a few response headers only; it is not a security scan and does not test for vulnerabilities. And the report does not measure keyword rankings, backlinks, or whether your content matches what searchers want, which need to be reviewed separately (see the manual items in our SEO Audit Checklist).

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