The Practical Guide to Auditing Your College’s or University’s Website
When was the last time you actually clicked through your own institution's website? Not to find something specific, just to check it? (And, keep in mind, I write this knowing that our CEO will read this blog and instantly do just that. THAT’s how much I care about helping your institution).
Whether your school has a robust team of IT professionals managing your web presence, or a plucky DIY crew with one person who got pretty good at coding back in the MySpace era (shooting stars background, scrolling quote at the top, embedded Arcade Fire song blaring the moment anyone visited your page—don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about), your website needs regular checkups.
We've written before about how your website speaks loudly, whether you intend it to or not. Today, we're getting practical. We’re walking you through what to check, why it matters, and how to actually do it without sacrificing your sanity or your weekends.
Why Website Audits Matter
Whether you're accredited, pursuing accreditation, or operating under state authorization alone, regulators expect certain information to be publicly available on your website. The specifics vary by agency, but the core categories are consistent: student achievement data, accreditation or authorization status, tuition and refund policies, complaint procedures, and, if you offer programs leading to professional licensure, disclosures about whether those programs actually meet state requirements.
Accreditors like HLC, SACSCOC, DEAC, and ACCSC publish detailed requirements—and many provide checklists. Federal regulations under 34 CFR 668.43 add another layer, particularly around professional licensure disclosures. And if you enroll students across state lines, the NC-SARA State Authorization Guide can help you understand what each state requires.
You don’t need to memorize every requirement, but you should know where to find them and to build a process for checking your website against them.
Here's how to turn "we should really look at that" into a repeatable process.
Build Your Checklist
Before you can audit anything, you need to know what you're auditing for. Start by pulling disclosure requirements from every relevant source: your accreditor's standards, your state authorization obligations, federal regulations (particularly 34 CFR 668.43), and any programmatic accreditors. Many agencies publish their own checklists. Use those! If yours doesn't, build one using their standards.
Your checklist should include not just what needs to be disclosed, but where it currently lives on your site. A disclosure that exists but can't be found isn't doing anyone any good.
Assign Ownership
A website audit that belongs to "everyone" belongs to no one. Assign a single person to own the audit process. They don’t necessarily need to be the one to fix every problem, but they should ensure the audit happens, that findings are documented, and verify that follow-up occurs. This person should have the authority (or at least the access) to coordinate across departments, because your website content almost certainly comes from admissions, academics, financial aid, student services, and marketing.
For each item on your checklist, identify who is responsible for keeping that information current. If no one knows who owns the Admissions Policy, that's a problem.
Start With Your Sitemap
Your website's sitemap is your audit roadmap. If you have an XML sitemap (usually located at yoursite.edu/sitemap.xml), it lists every page your site wants search engines to index. Export it to a spreadsheet and you've got a working inventory of pages to review.
If you don't have an XML sitemap (or if you suspect pages exist that aren't included) use a site crawler tool like Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or even a free option like XML-Sitemaps.com to generate one. These tools will show you every URL on your site, including pages you may have forgotten existed. (That 2019 landing page for a program you discontinued? It's probably still live.)
For smaller sites, a visual sitemap can help you see your site's structure at a glance, what links to what, and where content might be hiding three or four clicks deep.
Use Google to Search Your Own Site
Google's Site: Operator is one of the most useful tools for auditing your own content. In any Google search bar, type site:yourdomain.edu followed by a keyword, and Google will return only results from your website. Some searches to try:
site:yourdomain.edu "2023" or site:yourdomain.edu "2022" surfaces pages that may reference outdated years
site:yourdomain.edu "tuition" finds everywhere tuition is mentioned (and whether the amounts match)
site:yourdomain.edu "[former president's name]" checks whether old leadership names are still floating around
site:yourdomain.edu filetype:pdf — returns all PDFs indexed on your site, which are often the most neglected and outdated content
This technique is especially useful for catching inconsistencies. If your tuition page says $15,000 but a buried PDF still says $12,500, Google will help you find it.
Hunt for Outdated Content
Stale content doesn't announce itself. You have to go looking for it. Beyond Google searches, here are some reliable ways to surface outdated information:
Check "last updated" dates. If your CMS displays them, sort by oldest. If it doesn't, ask your web team whether that metadata is stored anywhere.
Search for past academic years. Any page referencing "2023-2024," "Fall 2022," or similar should be reviewed. Is that content still accurate, or is it a relic?
Look for old staff and leadership names. Search for anyone who's left the institution in the past two years. You'd be surprised how often former deans, directors, or presidents still appear on department pages, org charts, or in downloadable PDFs.
Review PDFs separately. PDFs are where outdated content goes to hide. They don't update when your website does, and they're easy to forget. Pull a list of all PDFs on your site (your sitemap or crawler will help) and review each one: Is this the current version? Is it still relevant? Should it be a webpage instead?
Check your catalog and handbook links. Are you linking to the current academic catalog, or does the link still point to 2022-2023? Is the student handbook version the one that's actually in effect?
Check for Broken Links
Nothing says "we're not paying attention" like a link that leads nowhere. Broken links frustrate users, hurt your search rankings, and signal to evaluators that your site isn't well maintained.
Free tools like Dead Link Checker, Broken Link Checker, or the Check My Links Chrome extension can scan your site and flag any URLs that return errors. Screaming Frog and other crawlers will catch broken links too. Pay special attention to:
Links to external sites (these break when other organizations move or delete content)
Links to PDFs (often moved or renamed during site updates)
Links in older blog posts or news articles (easy to forget, frequently broken)
Run an Accessibility Check
Accessibility is, of course, a great practice, but it's also a legal requirement under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. If your website isn't accessible to users with disabilities, you're excluding prospective students and potentially exposing your institution to complaints or lawsuits.
Start with an automated scan using tools like WAVE, axe DevTools, or Google Lighthouse (built into Chrome). These tools check for common issues like missing alt text on images, insufficient color contrast, missing form labels, and improper heading structure.
Automated tools won't catch everything. True accessibility testing requires manual review and, ideally, testing with actual assistive technologies, but they'll flag the most obvious problems. At minimum, check that:
All images have descriptive alt text
Videos have captions or transcripts
Links make sense out of context (not just "click here")
Forms are properly labeled
The site is navigable by keyboard alone
Color isn't the only way information is conveyed
If accessibility feels overwhelming, prioritize your highest-traffic pages and required disclosure pages first.
Walk the Site Like a Student
Don't just check whether information exists. Check whether someone can actually find it. Navigate your site the way a prospective student would. Can you find the total cost of attendance in three clicks or fewer? Is the complaint procedure buried in a 47-page PDF, or is it linked clearly from the student services page? Is your accreditation status visible from the homepage, or do you have to know exactly where to look?
Try this: pick five pieces of required information—say, your withdrawal policy, your accreditation status, your graduation rate, your complaint procedure, and your net price calculator. Time yourself finding each one. If it takes you more than 30 seconds, it's taking prospective students longer.
Check All the Versions
Your website may look different depending on how someone accesses it. Check:
Mobile vs. desktop. Content that displays correctly on a laptop may be cut off or hidden on a phone. Navigation menus often behave differently on mobile. Make sure required disclosures are accessible regardless of device.
Logged-in vs. logged-out. Some institutions hide content behind student portals. That's fine for internal resources but required public disclosures need to be visible to everyone, not just enrolled students.
Set a Schedule
At minimum, audit your website once a year. Time this to follow catalog updates or tuition changes, when information is most likely to have shifted. But once a year is the floor, not the ceiling. If you're preparing for a site visit, undergoing a substantive change, or launching new programs, audit again. Some institutions build website checks into their monthly or quarterly compliance calendar. Others assign someone to spot-check a different section each month. The method matters less than the consistency.
Document Everything
Keep a dated record of each audit: what you reviewed, what you found, and what actions were taken. If a site visitor or evaluator ever asks how you ensure your website stays current, you want to be able to hand them a file, not a shrug.
