A website due diligence checklist is long for a reason: a site can look healthy on every headline number and still be one algorithm update, one lost affiliate account or one departing writer away from earning nothing. The checklist below follows the areas a large marketplace sets out, then argues for the order you should work through them in, because not every check carries the same weight.
The website due diligence checklist, area by area
The most complete public list comes from Empire Flippers’ due diligence checklist, written by Vincent Wong and updated on 24 January 2025. It is a marketplace’s view, so it is written from the side of making deals happen, but the areas it covers are the right ones. The table summarises them.
| Area (Empire Flippers, Jan 2025) | What the checklist says to examine |
|---|---|
| Business model | How the site makes money |
| Content | “Quality and originality”, plagiarism, “over-optimized” material |
| Backlink profile | Quality, anchor text, possible PBN use |
| Traffic | Behaviour, trends, source distribution |
| User experience | Navigation, load time, broken links |
| Competition and niche | Longevity, checked via Google Trends |
| Revenue | “Past three years’ financial data”, P&L consistency |
| Operations | “Written standard operating procedures (SOPs)” |
| Other areas | Marketing, technology, contracts, employees, legal and licences, strategic fit |
Read as a flat list, every row looks equally important. It is not. A slow page is a weekend’s work to fix. A backlink profile built on a private network can take the whole site down. Weight your time accordingly.
Start with revenue, but do not stop there
Revenue is the natural first check because it is the number you are paying for. Empire Flippers asks for the “past three years’ financial data” where it exists and for consistency in the profit and loss statement. Ask for access to the affiliate dashboards, ad network reports and payment processor accounts themselves, not screenshots, and reconcile them month by month against the P&L.
The point of the reconciliation is not to catch a forged figure, though it will. It is to see the shape of the income. How much comes from one programme? Did a commission change halfway through the year? Is there a seasonal peak the twelve-month average hides? Those answers move the price more than the total does, which is why our guide to how much a website is worth spends more time on the multiple than on the profit. If the monetization is not obvious from the dashboards, our post on how to check if a website is monetized covers the signals to look for on the site itself.
Traffic and backlinks: where the real risk sits
The checklist asks for traffic behaviour, trends and source distribution. Get read access to the site’s analytics and Search Console rather than relying on screenshots or third-party estimates. Look at the trend across at least two years and line it up against the dates of Google updates. A site that has lost ground at each of the last few updates is a site in decline, whatever the last month shows.
Source distribution is the other half. A site with almost all of its visits from organic search has one point of failure; a site with a mix of search, email and direct visitors has several. Neither is disqualifying, but the first should cost less.
Then the links. Empire Flippers flags quality, anchor text and possible PBN use. Pull the referring domains yourself, with the method in our guide on how to check backlinks, and look for clusters of thin sites, unnatural exact-match anchors and links that appeared in a short burst. If the rankings rest on a network, read our post on private blog networks before you go any further. That risk transfers to you on completion and the seller keeps the money.
Content, user experience and the niche
The checklist asks about “quality and originality”, plagiarism and “over-optimized” material. Run a sample of articles through a plagiarism checker, including the older ones, because content bought cheaply years ago is where copied text tends to live. Read a dozen pages as a visitor would. Thin pages written around a keyword rather than a question are exactly the kind of content that recent updates have punished.
User experience is the cheaper problem: navigation, load time and broken links. Note what needs fixing and price the work in, but do not let a tidy design distract you from weak content underneath it.
Then step back from the site to its niche. The checklist suggests judging longevity with Google Trends, which is a sensible first look: a topic whose search interest has been sliding for five years will drag the site down with it, however well the pages are written. Look at who else ranks for the site’s main terms, too. If the results are filling with large publishers and forums, the room for a small site is shrinking, and the price should say so.
Operations, ownership and the model-specific checks
The question here is how much of the business leaves with the seller. Empire Flippers asks for “written standard operating procedures (SOPs)”. If there are none, ask the seller to describe a normal week and count the tasks only they know how to do. Check contracts with writers and contractors, any staff, and the licences and legal position. Confirm the seller actually controls the domain and the accounts you are buying; our guide on who owns a website covers how to verify that.
Some models need their own checks. For ecommerce, the checklist adds inventory, SKUs, suppliers, fulfilment and the split between paid and organic traffic, since a store kept alive by ad spend is a different asset from one that ranks. For SaaS, it adds code quality and churn.
Finish with a video call. Ask the seller why they are selling, what they would do next with the site, and what nearly went wrong in the last two years. Hesitation is information. For the wider picture of buying rather than building, our post on buying a site sets out what to weigh before you start.
The limitation is that due diligence works on the past. Every check above tells you what the site has done; none tells you what Google, an affiliate programme or a competitor will do next. A clean report lowers the risk, it does not remove it, so the checklist should set your price and your terms rather than reassure you into paying more. Once the accounts are in your name, keep checking that traffic and income hold up in the first months, while the seller is still easy to reach.
Frequently asked questions
What should a website due diligence checklist include?
Empire Flippers’ list covers business model, content, backlinks, traffic, user experience, niche, revenue, operations, marketing, technology, contracts, employees, legal and strategic fit.
How many years of financials should I ask for?
Empire Flippers’ checklist refers to the “past three years’ financial data”. Younger sites will have less, which is itself a risk to price in.
Which check matters most?
Revenue confirms what you are paying for, but traffic sources and backlinks usually decide whether that revenue survives. Weight your time towards them.
Are there extra checks for ecommerce or SaaS?
Yes. Ecommerce adds inventory, SKUs, suppliers, fulfilment and paid versus organic traffic. SaaS adds code quality and churn.
The takeaway Run every check, but weight them. Revenue tells you what you are buying; traffic, links and owner dependence tell you whether it lasts.
