Why do I need a website audit? These days, it’s essential for businesses to have a solid online presence to meet target audiences where they are and create opportunities for growth and revenue. You likely don’t question that statement. Your website is the central hub of your digital activity, and chances are you’ve invested a lot of resources into making it what it is today.
Here’s the thing—you can’t treat your website like a print project. It’s never a one-and-done project. The online world moves fast, and your website needs to adapt and develop accordingly. That’s why it’s essential to regularly review the performance of your website to keep it up to date, reflect your current brand, improve search engine optimization, and circumvent future costly repairs. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure optimal website performance and user experience.
What is a website audit?
A website audit is a thorough examination of your website’s effectiveness. A good website audit will analyze different functionality components, providing insight into what works well and what needs improvement. Armed with these insights, you’ll be able to identify and address any issues that are negatively impacting the user experience and potentially hindering your brand’s growth and success.
Why do you need an SEO audit?
Your website copy may be the stuff of Pulitzer Prizes, your images can be worthy of a fashion magazine, and your product may be the ideal solution to your customers’ pain points. But delivering an underwhelming user experience will stagnate your conversions. Put another way, poor site health issues can reduce your organic traffic and sales.
A website audit will help you to:
- Bridge the gaps that are affecting your conversion rate and end-user experience
- Understand why your site behaves the way it does
- Diagnose optimization problems
- Spot potential issues long before they can impact your search engine rankings
- Monitor the competition and identify trends
- Understand which marketing techniques to prioritize
When should I conduct a website audit?
You have a new website or marketing strategy
As soon as (and even before) a new website goes live, it’s important to audit the website for any potential issues or improvements that can be made. Similarly, if you’re pursuing a new marketing strategy or expanded sales goals, it’s an important time to check in and make sure your site is able to support those objectives.
You’ve seen a decline in website performance
Have you noticed a poor or stagnant conversion rate? Have you received increasing complaints about a website feature or function? If so, now’s the time for a website audit to help you identify and remedy where your user experience may be lacking.
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It’s been a while since you last audited your online presence
Successful website owners regularly identify and implement website improvements. How often you conduct a website audit is based on your website niche, the nature of your business, the type of content published on the platform, and its purpose. For example, e-commerce websites benefit from more frequent auditing to track and optimize conversion rates. If you own a blog or small service business site, on the other hand, an annual audit may be sufficient.
10 often-overlooked website elements to include in a website audit
A website audit is an extensive process that looks at a wide range of on-site and off-site SEO and usability elements. Here is a sample of factors to bear in mind:
- Speed problems: Websites that take longer than a few seconds to load experience higher bounce rates, lower conversion rates, and rank lower on search engine result pages.
- Toxic backlinks: Toxic backlinks hurt your website’s reputation in Google’s eyes, so it’s important to identify and disavow them.
- Ineffective calls to action (CTAs): CTA buttons guide users through their website journeys. You need to place them strategically on your website to get your users to take the right action at the right time.
- Website accessibility: Is your website accessible to all people? Building accessibility into your website is one way to respect people with disabilities and ensure that all users have a good experience.
- Navigation: A website that is hard to navigate creates a poor user experience and frequently drives visitors away.
- Mobile-friendliness: If your site doesn’t give users a quick and seamless mobile experience, you could be missing out on valuable business opportunities.
- Security: Maintaining a strong website means keeping your customer information safe. You need to ensure that your website’s data security, integrity, and confidentiality are up to par.
- Terms of use: You may be surprised to learn that your website’s terms of use policies are just as important as the other legal documents you have in place to protect your business. A boilerplate template could land you in hot water.
- Blog audit: Do you have outdated blogs that aren’t receiving any traffic and don’t rank for any keywords? Instead of having these dead pages, you’re better off rewriting and improving the content or deleting the post and redirecting the URL.
- Search intent optimization: If you understand search intent (what your buyer is looking for), you’ll be able to create more targeted content to match your audience’s demands and increase your chances of success.
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How is your website working for you?
Our team is on hand to conduct an online presence audit for your business. We’ll address the things that are working well, identify and implement potential improvements, and help you plan for future success. Contact us to request a consultation.
