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A website audit aims to monitor your website’s overall performance and functionality. Further, it also includes the ability to be found by search engines and users. The more visibility a website has in search engines, the greater its traffic and exposure to potential users. A website audit also includes key performance metrics, page speed, and user experience scores. However, this checklist also helps you to focus on what’s important.
Do you want to make a website/blog? You should perform a full website audit once it’s complete. A website audit is also necessary after making the changes to your website. Updates are best for a website, but after identifying the changes including minors too can impact the traffic and search engine visibility – a website audit ensures generating a report that guarantees 100% genuine changes without missing anything on the website.
In this article, we will share a comprehensive guide about website audits.
What is a Website Audit?
A website audit is a comprehensive checkup of your website to assess its overall health and performance. It’s like getting a full body scan for your website! The goal is to identify areas for improvement to achieve your website’s goals, which could be anything from attracting more visitors to increasing sales.
Here are some of the key things a website audit typically looks at:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): This involves checking how well your website is optimized for search engines like Google. This includes factors like your website’s content, structure, and code.
- Technical Performance: This looks at how fast your website loads, how mobile-friendly it is, and whether there are any broken links or errors.
- User Experience (UX): This assesses how easy it is for visitors to navigate your website and find what they’re looking for. It also considers how visually appealing and user-friendly your website is.
By identifying areas for improvement in each of these areas, a website audit can help you to:
- Improve your website’s ranking in search results
- Increases the website traffic
- Improve conversion rates (e.g., the percentage of visitors who take a desired action on your website)
- Enhance the overall user experience for your visitors
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Different types of website audits focus on specific aspects of your website. Some common types include:
- SEO Audit: This focuses specifically on improving your website’s SEO.
- Content Audit: This assesses the quality and effectiveness of your website’s content.
- Technical Audit: This focuses on the technical aspects of your website, such as speed and mobile-friendliness.
- Competitive Audit: This compares your website to your competitors’ websites to identify areas where you can improve.
Types of Website Audit
There are many different types of website audits, each with its own focus.
SEO Audit: An SEO audit is an analysis of a website’s search engine optimization (SEO). It identifies areas where the website can be improved to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). This type of audit typically includes an evaluation of the website’s content, keywords, meta descriptions, title tags, backlinks, and website structure.
Technical Audit: A technical audit is an assessment of a website’s technical health. It identifies issues that could be preventing the website from functioning properly or being indexed by search engines. This type of audit typically includes an evaluation of the website’s loading speed, mobile-friendliness, security, and code quality.
Content Audit: A content audit is an evaluation of a website’s content. It identifies areas where the content can be improved to be more engaging, informative, and SEO-friendly. This type of audit typically includes an evaluation of the website’s content quality, relevance, freshness, and keyword usage.
Competitor Audit: A competitor audit is an analysis of a website’s competitors. It helps businesses to understand what their competitors are doing and where they can improve. This type of audit typically includes an evaluation of the competitor’s website content, SEO strategy, and social media presence.
Link Audit: A link audit is an analysis of a website’s backlinks. Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. They are an important factor in SEO, as they can help to improve your website’s ranking in search results. A link audit typically includes an evaluation of the quality and quantity of your website’s backlinks.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Audit: A CRO audit is an analysis of a website’s conversion rate. The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to a website who take a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. A CRO audit typically includes an evaluation of the website’s user experience (UX), calls to action (CTAs), and landing pages.
Social Media Audit: A social media audit is an analysis of a website’s social media presence. It helps businesses to understand how well they are using social media to reach their target audience. This type of audit typically includes an evaluation of the website’s social media engagement, follower growth, and content strategy.
Security Audit: A security audit is an assessment of a website’s security. It identifies vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers. This type of audit typically includes an evaluation of the website’s encryption, authentication, and authorization controls.
How to run a Website Audit?
Use a Website Audit tool
Many website auditing tools can automate the process of scanning your website and identifying potential problems. These tools can save you time and effort, but they may not be as comprehensive as a manual audit. Here’s a general process to follow when using website auditing tools:
Choose a website auditing tool: There are many free and paid website auditing tools available. Select a tool that offers features relevant to your audit goals.
Enter your website URL: Once you’ve chosen a tool, simply enter your website URL and start the audit process. The tool will crawl your website and generate a report that outlines any issues it finds.
Analyze the results: The audit report will typically include a list of issues categorized by type (e.g., SEO errors, broken links, slow-loading pages). Carefully review the report and prioritize the most critical fixes.
Monitor On-page and Off-page SEO issues
The audit process generates a great opportunity to enhance the SEO of your website. It’s good to monitor your search engine optimization strategy to get maximum output:
- Use a tool to review the website’s search results rankings.
2. Take a look at how your rankings are changing from the last audit report.
3. Evaluate keyword density to use the best terms and phrases for your industry.
Both on-page and off-page SEO are important to monitor overall ranking on search engine results pages (SERP). To refine on-page SEO, you’ll optimize elements visitors typically can see. For example, blog content, graphics, meta descriptions, headers, etc. Whereas off-page SEO refers to back-end issues that visitors can’t see, like link-building campaigns that boost the authority of your website.
Assess Website Design
While auditing, you are also required to take a close look at your website design. It’s important to make sure that your visitors find your website easily to get the results.
Test your navigation menu to ensure buttons, links, fillable forms, and other design elements are working effectively.
You can also review your website’s heat map to check which segment of your website is getting the most traffic to add more CTAs and boost them.
Also, optimizing your website for mobile devices is worth to add in do-it-list. This will help to understand that the website was accessible by users on computers and mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets.
Keep an eye on Technical Errors
Don’t neglect the website’s technical errors as well. If you locate any technical error on the website then implement steps to improve the functionality and user experience. For example, fix the broken links to avoid the frustration of visitors.
Or, you may locate the outdated meta tags and descriptions that are no longer accurate and need an update. It is essential to rework this type of information because search engine finds it easy to index your website. A website that’s easy to crawl ensures that search engines have categorized it properly. This brings valuable website traffic.
Check the Quality of Content
Keeping the brand consistent is an important part of digital marketing. Don’t overlook the content part to ensure you’re publishing quality content. You have to plan your social media posting regularly. Also, assess your blog posts and technical articles to maintain the accuracy.
If you come across outdated information, simply offer more up-to-date details. Moreover, this is a chance for you to work on new ideas for your website in the future.
Study your competitors
Competitor analysis is a significant factor to include in your routine website audits. This comes with a chance to monitor your competitors, figure out how to rank in comparison, and identify the areas for improvement. If a competitor is moving ahead in SERP then start working on missing factors in your website.
It’s also a good idea to assess the top-ranking websites for a specific keyword. This is perfect if your page is not ranking in the SERP. The higher your keyword is, the higher your website will get traffic and generate more sales.
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What to do after a website audit?
Auditing a website comes with a lot of work and it also provides your business with various benefits. There are a few steps that you can opt for to make sure your efforts won’t go to waste.
- You have to make a list of things that you’ve to fix or adjust during the audit. Keep those changes on top priority to complete the most urgent tasks first.
- After developing the list, you can consult with your team.
- Check how new content is performing and see the traffic graph as well. If it’s working well then continue the work, if not then consider adding the CTAs to improve the sales.
- Take an opportunity to highlight things that are working well to continue emulating that strategy in other areas of your website.
When to perform an audit of the website?
The frequency of website audits depends on the size and complexity of your website, as well as your industry and goals. Here’s a general guideline:
- Small business websites with slow update cycles (e.g., brochure websites): Twice a year (every 6 months) is a good baseline.
- Larger websites with frequent content updates (e.g., e-commerce stores, news websites): Quarterly audits (every 3 months) are recommended to stay on top of changes and potential issues.
- Highly dynamic websites in competitive industries: Monthly or even weekly audits might be necessary to catch and address issues quickly, especially after major updates or algorithm changes.
Interpretation: Auditing Website
Overall, a website audit is a valuable tool that can help you improve the performance of your website. Taking the time to audit your website and implement the recommended changes, will help you to achieve your website’s goals.
