Website copy audit: what a good one hands you, with a real one to compare

A website copy audit reads your page the way a stranger does, sentence by sentence, and asks what each sentence makes the reader do. Copywriters sell them as a service, some studios fold them into a wider website audit, and tools promise them in minutes. What you get back can be anything from general tips to a line-by-line rewrite.

This post is about what you should get back. It lists seven things a good copy audit hands you and the red flags in a weak one. You can use it to judge an audit before you pay for one, or to check your own before you sell it. The example throughout is real: Klarnio, our website audit, run on our own homepage on 28 September 2026. It read 65 sentences, passed 30, and scored the copy 42 out of 100 and the customer journey 67 out of 100. Every quote below comes word for word from that page and that audit.

If you want the method to run one yourself, it's in Part 2 of how to audit a website. This post is about the result.

What a copy audit is, and what it isn't

A page can pass the first three and still fail the fourth. Fast, well indexed and good looking says nothing about whether the words give a visitor a reason to get in touch.

Seven things a good copy audit hands you

1. Your own sentences, quoted

Not a summary of "your messaging". The sentences themselves, each with where it sits: headline, section heading, body, button. Where a sentence sits decides how much it matters. Ours read 65 of them.

2. A reason for each one, tied to a test you can rerun

"This could be stronger" is an opinion. A reason names the test the sentence failed, so you can check the rewrite against the same test. Klarnio uses three: can the reader picture it, could it be proven wrong, and could only you say it.

Our homepage failed its own tests. This line sits in the section that explains the three tests:

The audit listed "Most pages fail all three" among the page's "unprovable quantifiers". It's still on our homepage as we write this. We had no count behind it, and a reader can tell.

3. What the page never says

Sentences are half of it. A good audit also lists what's missing, because a visitor can't act on an answer that isn't there. Our audit found five gaps. This one is easy to miss, because no single sentence causes it:

"Four audiences in one page. Site owners, freelancers handing a PDF to a client, LinkedIn posters and agencies preparing sales calls all read the same first screen, so nobody sees a page built for them."

Every sentence can pass its own tests and the page can still fail this one.

4. An order

Fourteen fixes with no order is a to-do list nobody finishes. Where a sentence sits sets its place in the queue: a failing headline before a failing footnote, the first screen before the pricing table. A good audit tells you which fix is first.

5. Replacement text you can paste, with nothing invented

Advice says "add proof". A replacement says what to put there, in a sentence you could publish today. Here is one from our audit, for the last heading on the page:

And when a replacement needs a fact the page doesn't give, a good audit leaves a visible blank instead of making the fact up:

An audit that fills that blank with a confident number has written a claim you can't defend.

6. Questions for the owner

Every blank is a question only the business can answer: how many, since when, for whom. A good audit makes those questions easy to find, so they get asked at the start of the work, not discovered halfway through it.

7. A baseline to measure against

A score is useful for one thing: running the same audit on the same page after the changes and comparing. Our 42 and 67 are the baseline for our own homepage. A score with nothing to compare it to, and no list of what to change, is a grade, not an audit.

Red flags in a copy audit

1. Advice that fits any website. "Make your headline clearer" could be written without opening your page.
2. No quotes from your page. If you can't find the sentence being discussed, you can't fix it.
3. Claims about what "most visitors" do, with no source. That's the same mistake the audit should be catching in your copy.
4. Rewrites with facts you never gave. A number, a client name or a guarantee that isn't yours is a liability once it's published.
5. A score with no list of changes.
6. A promise of more leads. Too much else changes at the same time to promise that honestly. What an audit can promise is a before and after on the same page.

Hire someone, do it yourself, or use a tool

Do it yourself if you have an afternoon and can read your own page as a stranger would, which is harder than it sounds. The method is in how to audit a website.

Hire a copywriter if you want someone to rewrite with you, talk to your customers and own the result. Ask to see a sample audit first, and hold it against the seven points above.

Use a tool if you want the same tests on every page, fast, and the same tests again after the changes. Check every rewrite against your own page before you publish it.

If you sell copy audits

The seven points work as a deliverable. Quote the client's sentences, give each one a reason, list the gaps, put the fixes in order, write the replacements, and turn every blank into a question for your kickoff call. The web design proposal template shows how those findings become the scope of the work.

Frequently asked questions

Get one for your page

Paste your URL into Klarnio's website grader and it runs the audit described above on your page. It quotes your sentences back to you, marks the ones that fail and why, lists what the page never says, and writes one replacement in full for free. Where a replacement needs a fact your page doesn't state, it leaves a visible blank.

It's free, needs no account, just your email, and takes two to three minutes.