SEO Services
Published: 17 December 2025 | 12 min read
A B2B website audit systematically evaluates your site's technical health, content effectiveness, and conversion pathways to identify what's blocking pipeline growth. With 81% of B2B buyers already having a preferred vendor before they ever contact sales, your website's ability to build trust during anonymous research directly determines whether you make the shortlist. Whitehat's audits for B2B companies typically uncover 15-25 actionable improvements that compound into measurable pipeline impact within 90 days.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: most B2B websites are actively losing deals. Not because the product isn't good or the team isn't capable—but because the website fails to do its job during the 70% of the buying journey that happens before anyone picks up the phone.
According to the 6sense 2024 Buyer Experience Report (surveying 2,509 B2B buyers globally), the average B2B buying cycle now lasts 11.3 months, involves 11 decision-makers, and buyers don't engage with sellers until they're approximately 70% through their journey. By the time they do reach out, 85% have already established their requirements. The website isn't supporting sales—it is sales, for the majority of the process.
This guide covers the 10 audit areas that actually move the needle for B2B SaaS and professional services companies. We've stripped out the generic checklist items and focused on what genuinely impacts whether buyers trust you enough to put you on their shortlist.
What we'll cover:
Google's Core Web Vitals became a ranking factor in 2021, but in 2025 they matter more than ever—not just for SEO, but for conversion rates. In March 2024, Google replaced First Input Delay (FID) with Interaction to Next Paint (INP), making responsiveness measurement more comprehensive. Sites that pass all three metrics don't just rank better; they convert better.
Portent's analysis of 100 million page views found that B2B sites loading in 1 second have 3x higher conversion rates than those loading in 5 seconds. Each additional second of load time reduces conversions by approximately 4.42%. When you're competing for buyers who are researching 4-5 vendors simultaneously, being the slow one isn't an option.
| Metric | Good Score | What It Measures |
|---|---|---|
| LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) | ≤2.5 seconds | Loading performance |
| INP (Interaction to Next Paint) | ≤200 milliseconds | Responsiveness to clicks/taps |
| CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) | ≤0.1 | Visual stability |
Whitehat's SEO audits include a full Core Web Vitals assessment using both lab data (PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse) and real-world field data from Chrome User Experience Report. We flag specific elements causing issues—whether that's unoptimised images, render-blocking JavaScript, or third-party scripts slowing things down—and prioritise fixes by impact.
Quick check: Run your site through PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev). If you're seeing red or orange on any Core Web Vital, those issues are actively costing you conversions.
"B2B is mostly desktop" is outdated thinking. While B2B websites do see approximately 65-83% desktop traffic (compared to consumer sites), 80% of B2B buyers use mobile during work hours for research. They're checking your site between meetings, during commutes, and when they can't get to their laptop.
Google completed mobile-first indexing in July 2024—meaning all sites are now crawled exclusively by Google's mobile crawler. If your mobile experience is poor, that's what Google sees. Period. For B2B sites with over 1 million pages, Google's November 2024 update specifically requires mobile versions to include all links present on desktop.
What we look for in a mobile audit:
If search engines can't properly crawl and index your content, nothing else matters. We see B2B sites accidentally blocking their best content from Google, creating duplicate content through poor URL structures, or wasting crawl budget on pages that shouldn't be indexed.
A proper crawlability audit examines:
For B2B sites using JavaScript frameworks (React, Vue, Angular), there's an additional concern: Google can render JavaScript, but it requires a "second wave" of indexing that can take days or weeks. If your critical content only appears after JavaScript execution, it may not be indexed promptly—or accurately.
AI crawlers need access too
With AI search growing rapidly, your robots.txt should also allow crawlers like GPTBot (ChatGPT), Google-Extended (Gemini/AI Overviews), Claude-Web (Anthropic), and PerplexityBot. These platforms increasingly drive B2B research—66% of UK senior B2B decision-makers now use AI tools to research suppliers.
Title tags remain one of the strongest on-page ranking factors, and meta descriptions directly impact click-through rates. Yet we consistently find B2B sites with duplicate titles, missing descriptions, or generic copy that fails to differentiate from competitors.
What good looks like:
For B2B specifically, titles and descriptions should speak to the decision-maker's priorities. "Enterprise CRM Software" is less compelling than "CRM for B2B Sales Teams | 30-Day Implementation." The latter signals speed, specificity, and understanding of what buyers actually care about.
Whitehat's audits identify every title/meta issue across your site, flag duplicates, highlight pages competing for the same keywords, and provide rewritten examples that balance SEO requirements with conversion-focused messaging.
B2B buying isn't linear, but it does follow patterns. The 6sense research shows buyers spend roughly 70% of their journey in a "Selection Phase"—gathering information, building consensus internally, creating shortlists—before ever engaging sellers in the final 30% "Validation Phase."
Your content needs to serve both phases:
| Stage | Buyer Intent | Content Needed |
|---|---|---|
| Awareness | "How do we solve this problem?" | Educational blogs, industry reports, how-to guides |
| Consideration | "What solutions exist?" | Comparison guides, case studies, feature overviews |
| Decision | "Is this the right vendor?" | ROI calculators, implementation details, pricing, demos |
A content audit maps your existing assets against these stages and identifies gaps. Most B2B sites we audit are heavy on either top-of-funnel educational content (with no path to conversion) or bottom-funnel product pages (that don't attract new visitors). The middle—where buyers are actively evaluating options—is typically underserved.
We also assess content quality signals that both search engines and buyers care about: clear authorship with expertise credentials, publication and update dates, cited sources for statistics, and depth appropriate to the topic. Semrush research found that 61% of companies succeeding most with content marketing run audits two or more times per year.
B2B buyers are risk-averse. According to G2's 2024 research, 76% of buyers turn to user reviews during evaluation, 78% highly prefer case studies, and 82% say peer experiences play a significant role in vendor selection. Security matters too—81% consider a vendor's history with data breaches when making decisions.
Trust signals a B2B website audit should evaluate:
A common mistake: burying trust signals on an "About Us" page no one visits. Your best proof points should appear throughout the site, especially on high-intent pages like pricing and service descriptions. When Whitehat runs audits, we map where trust signals appear against where conversion actions happen—and almost always find opportunities to better align them.
Forms are where B2B websites win or lose leads. Zuko's 2025 benchmark data (analysing 93+ million form sessions) shows software industry forms complete at just 50.61%—meaning nearly half of people who start a form abandon it. On mobile, that drops to 38.61%.
The top reasons for abandonment:
Form audit priorities:
Site architecture determines how authority flows through your website and how easily both users and search engines can find content. The rule of thumb: every important page should be reachable within 3-4 clicks from the homepage.
What we evaluate in an internal linking audit:
For B2B sites with extensive content libraries, we recommend implementing pillar-cluster architecture: comprehensive pillar pages on core topics, with supporting content pieces that link back to (and from) the pillar. This approach builds topical authority that both Google and AI systems recognise.
Structured data (schema markup) helps search engines understand your content and enables rich results in search. But in 2025, it's become equally important for AI visibility. Research shows that pages with schema markup are 3.7x more likely to appear in AI summaries, and products with proper schema appear in AI recommendations 3-5x more frequently.
Priority schema types for B2B websites:
A schema audit checks whether you have appropriate markup implemented, whether it's error-free (Google Search Console flags issues), and whether you're using schema types that align with your content and goals. Many B2B sites have either no schema or outdated implementations that need updating.
You can't improve what you can't measure. A surprisingly high percentage of B2B websites have broken or incomplete analytics setups—tracking pageviews but missing conversions, running GA4 without proper event configuration, or failing to connect marketing data to CRM outcomes.
An analytics audit should verify:
For HubSpot users, the integration between website analytics and CRM is a significant advantage—but only if it's properly configured. Whitehat's audits include a full HubSpot setup review to ensure tracking, attribution, and reporting are giving you the visibility you need to prove marketing's impact on pipeline.
Context matters when interpreting audit findings. These current benchmarks help you understand where your performance stands relative to B2B norms:
| Metric | B2B Average | Top Performers |
|---|---|---|
| Website conversion rate | 2.5% median | 5-10%+ |
| B2B SaaS conversion rate | 1.1% | 3%+ |
| Landing page conversion | 7.84% median | 13%+ |
| Bounce rate | 30-55% | Under 30% |
| Form completion rate | 50.61% | 65%+ |
| Desktop vs mobile traffic | 65-83% desktop | N/A (contextual) |
Website audits identify problems; the value comes from fixing them. Here's what the data shows about returns on website improvement investments:
The compounding effect matters most. Individually, fixing a slow page, improving a form, and adding trust signals might each deliver single-digit conversion improvements. Combined and sustained, these improvements compound into significant pipeline impact over quarters.
A thorough B2B website audit typically takes 2-4 weeks depending on site size and complexity. Whitehat's audits include technical analysis, content assessment, competitive review, and a prioritised action plan—not just a list of issues. Larger sites with thousands of pages or complex integrations may require additional time for complete coverage.
Most B2B companies benefit from comprehensive audits annually, with lighter technical checks quarterly. Companies in competitive markets, those launching new products, or undergoing significant website changes should audit more frequently. Semrush research shows that 61% of successful content marketing programmes run audits at least twice per year.
An SEO audit focuses specifically on search visibility—technical SEO, keyword targeting, link profile, and ranking factors. A comprehensive website audit includes SEO but extends to conversion optimisation, user experience, content effectiveness, and business alignment. For B2B companies, the broader audit typically delivers more actionable value because rankings mean nothing if visitors don't convert.
Professional B2B website audits range from £5,000 to £25,000+ depending on scope and depth. Factors affecting cost include site size, technical complexity, number of marketing integrations to review, and level of strategic recommendations required. Whitehat offers audit packages scaled to company size and needs—contact us for specific pricing.
It depends on your team's capabilities and bandwidth. Some fixes (meta descriptions, basic content updates) can be handled internally. Others (technical SEO issues, schema implementation, HubSpot configuration) often require specialist expertise. Whitehat offers both audit-only engagements where you implement recommendations and full-service options where we handle implementation.
Stop losing deals to competitors before you even know you're competing. Our audits identify the specific issues blocking your pipeline growth—with clear priorities and actionable fixes.
Request Your Website AuditWritten by
Whitehat SEO
HubSpot Diamond Solutions Partner
Whitehat is a London-based inbound marketing agency and HubSpot Diamond Partner. We help B2B companies turn their websites into revenue engines through SEO, content strategy, and HubSpot optimisation. Leaders of the world's largest HubSpot User Group.