Pre-launch HTML audits.
Audit pages before they go live. The HTML mode lets you paste source code directly, catching SEO issues in staging — instead of after your rankings drop in production.
Why pre-launch auditing matters
Most SEO problems are caught after they're live — after the page has been deployed, after it's been indexed, after you notice a ranking drop. By then, fixing it is expensive: rankings are lost, traffic is missing, and you're playing catch-up.
Pre-launch auditing flips that. You audit the page while it's still in staging, still in a Git branch, still a design mockup in HTML. Every issue you find and fix at that point never makes it into production. No ranking loss, no damage control.
Smart SEO Audit's HTML mode is designed specifically for this workflow. You paste the HTML source code, we audit it like any other page, and you get the same 50+ checks you'd get on a live URL.
How HTML mode works
The HTML mode has two input fields:
🔗URL (optional)
A live URL for the site or domain. Used for checks that require a real HTTP response: response headers, 404 handling, robots.txt, SSL certificate.
</>HTML source (required)
The full HTML source code of the page you want to audit. Used for every content, structure and on-page SEO check.
If you provide only HTML (no URL), you get the full content audit — titles, meta descriptions, H1, canonical, content quality, images, links, Open Graph. This covers roughly 80% of the checks.
If you provide both HTML and a URL, we additionally run the network-level checks against that URL. This gives you a more complete picture — useful when the staging URL exists but the content doesn't match what you'll ship.
If your staging site is publicly reachable, yes — use Single webpage mode with the staging URL. HTML mode is specifically for when the page isn't reachable: it's behind a login, on localhost, in a branch that hasn't been deployed, or still in a design tool.
Step-by-step walkthrough
- Go to the Dashboard and click the 🔧 Settings button next to the URL input
- Select HTML from the four mode tiles
- (Optional) Enter a live URL in the top input — typically your production domain so we can check its headers, robots, SSL
- Paste your full HTML source code into the larger textarea. Copy it from your browser's View Source, your code editor, or wherever the HTML lives
- Click Start audit
Within about 10 seconds, you get the same audit report as for a live page — score, severity breakdown, checks, AI summary, the works.
Common pre-launch patterns
New landing page before publishing
You've built a new landing page in your CMS or static site generator. Before pushing to production, copy the generated HTML (either from your staging environment's View Source, or from your local dev server) and audit it in HTML mode. Fix the issues, then publish.
Template changes
You're updating a site template. Generate sample HTML for a page using the new template, audit it in HTML mode. If the new template broke the canonical tag, removed the meta description, or added a rogue noindex, you catch it before rolling out to all pages.
Auditing a draft in a CMS
Your team has a blog post in draft state. Copy the draft's generated HTML from the CMS preview, audit it, send the author back the findings before publishing. Saves an awkward "we need to fix the title" conversation after launch.
Client-side rendered pages
If your site is heavily JavaScript-based (React, Vue, Svelte SPA), the server returns nearly-empty HTML and the real content is built client-side. For pre-launch auditing, render the page locally, copy the generated HTML (after JavaScript has run — often via DevTools → Copy → Copy outer HTML on the <html> element), and audit that.
Combine pre-launch HTML audits with scheduled audits of the same page after launch. Pre-launch catches structural issues; scheduled audits catch regressions introduced by later deploys. Together, they close the feedback loop.
What HTML mode can't check
A handful of checks require a real network response and can't be run from HTML source alone. These are skipped in pure HTML mode (no URL provided) or require the optional URL input to work:
- Response time and TTFB — require a real HTTP request
- HTTP headers — including security headers, compression, caching
- HTTP/2 and HTTPS — protocol and encryption checks
- SSL certificate — validity, issuer, expiry
- robots.txt — fetched separately from the domain
- 404 page — requires hitting a non-existent URL on the domain
- Redirects — follows actual HTTP 301/302 responses
Providing the optional URL field re-enables all of the above for the corresponding live domain. You'll audit your staging HTML for content quality while getting technical checks against the live production site.