You are buying the website too, whether you audit it or not
When a business is acquired, its website arrives with the deal: its rankings, its debts, its licenses, its half-finished migrations, and, occasionally, its malware. The balance sheet prices none of this. The due-diligence audit exists so the website's true state is part of the negotiation, not a post-close surprise. The free checklist version lives at the due-diligence checklist; this guide covers what the professional audit runs, what it typically finds, and what it costs.
What the audit covers
- Access and ownership verification: every asset (domain, hosting, email, repository, SaaS), who holds it, is it transferable, is anything hostage-shaped. The finding that changes deals: assets in a departed contractor's name.
- Technical debt assessment: platform versions, update history, code quality, infrastructure fit, graded as "runs fine," "needs a budget," or "needs a rebuild," each with numbers.
- SEO health: penalties and manual actions, index coverage sanity, backlink profile quality, thin/duplicate content, because inherited rankings can be inherited liabilities.
- Analytics truth-check: does the claimed traffic exist, is it human, does it reconcile with the revenue claims. The finding that reprices deals: bots and branded-only traffic wearing growth makeup.
- Security posture: compromise scan, TLS, patch state, and the feasibility of rotating every credential on day one.
- License audit: themes, plugins, SaaS, expiry, cost, and whose name they lapse under.
What audits typically find
The pattern library, from real audits: backups that were never tested (or never existed), analytics counting bots as growth, core software years behind security patches, critical assets registered to a former employee, and license lapses that have silently disabled paid features. None of these are deal-breakers, they are negotiation facts. The audit's value is converting unknowns into a remediation budget, which either adjusts the price or becomes your first 90-day plan.
Fee structure and timing
Fixed-fee, scoped from what you can describe about the target site; delivered as a written report with findings graded by severity and a remediation estimate attached. Run it before close, findings move deals, and "we'll audit after" is how buyers inherit problems at full price. The checklist is the free version you can start tonight; the professional audit is a brief away.