How Do You Audit a Website?
Website audit reports are essential for providing a thorough examination of your site. Perhaps you've never audited your website before, or you have a redesign in the works. Use this post as your go-to website audit checklist in any situation.
What is a Website Audit?
Prior to large-scale search engine optimization (SEO) or website redesign, a website audit examines page performance. Auditing your website can determine whether or not it is optimized to achieve your traffic goals and provide insight into how you can improve it to do so.
Before we get into the things you should look out for, let's go over some of the different types of audits you can perform.
Website Audit Types
1. Competitive Website Audit
A competitive website audit looks at your competitors' websites and online strategies to see what opportunities your brand might be missing out on. A competitive audit essentially allows you to see what is working for other companies in your market and incorporate those tactics into your own strategy.
Begin by conducting a SWOT analysis of a competitor's website. You track the website's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in a SWOT analysis.
2. SEO Link Audit
This type of audit examines the links that point to your website in order to identify potential issues or opportunities in your backlink profile. This audit will assist you in optimizing your site to rank for your target keywords by evaluating your links.
Link audits examine the URL source, domain, and anchor text to determine whether or not value and equity (referred to as "link juice") are being passed on to your page. This determines how much a link helps or hurts your website's visibility in SERPs. Links from well-known websites are far more valuable than links from lesser-known sites.
3. Lead Conversion Optimization Audit
A lead conversion optimization audit examines the conversion issues and opportunities on a website. You'll need to analyze how and where traffic is coming to your website during this audit.
4. Social Media Audit
Social media can also have an impact on your brand's online performance. If your social media presence isn't driving more traffic to your website, you should conduct a social media audit.
5. SEO Website Audit
An SEO link audit examines the links associated with your website, whereas an SEO website audit examines all of the factors that can affect your site's performance in SERPs. This includes links, but it also includes keyword usage, content, metadata, page speed, user journey, and video optimization.
It is possible to conduct an SEO audit on your own, but hiring an agency will likely result in more thorough answers in less time.
Excellent! Now that you've learned about a few different audits you can perform to improve your website, let's talk about the benefits of an audit.
Website Audit Benefits
1. You can compare your website with those of your competitors.
A website audit will allow you to compare your website to that of your competitors. You can assess how well you rank against competitors for keywords and identify potential new revenue streams.
2. You can boost your SEO.
A website audit will allow you to identify any missed SEO opportunities and correct any misguided or poorly executed SEO pitfalls (e.g. keyword stuffing, exact match anchor text links, etc.) throughout your website's content.
An audit will also enable you to refocus your SEO efforts on users first, followed by search engines. This will keep you from constantly chasing changes to search ranking algorithms, which means you won't be engaging in questionable practices just to appear at the top of the SERPs.
3. You can improve conversion rates.
Website audits also allow you to re-evaluate your website's effectiveness in terms of lead generation and conversion. As a result, you'll be able to identify previously overlooked opportunities to convert visitors into leads, allowing you to add relevant CTAs, as well as identify deficiencies in your landing pages, allowing you to optimize them to boost conversions.
4. You can improve the performance of your website.
Website audits, such as the ones mentioned above, typically assess a site's content and technical performance.
As a result, an audit will allow you to examine the strength of your website's technical framework and infrastructure. It will also assess how search engine friendly your website is and how easy it is for users to navigate your website to find the content they are looking for.
5. You can detect problems early on.
Finally, a website audit identifies problems that are harming your SEO and conversions, such as broken links, hidden content, and slow page load times. Identifying these issues will assist you in addressing issues that are diverting traffic.
Assessing both the content and technical aspects of your website will reveal opportunities to significantly increase the traffic and conversions generated by your website.
Now that you understand what a website audit is and why you should perform one, let's look at how to carry one out.
How to Perform a Website Audit
1. Use a site audit tool to check the URL of your website.
Before you begin, you'll need to locate a website auditing tool that can assist you in analyzing how your website is performing. When you run your site through site audit software, you can get specific recommendations and test how your page is performing.
2. Look for technical flaws.
Technical errors, such as those related to performance, SEO, mobile, and security, can have a negative impact on your customers' online experience. If you notice that visitors aren't staying on your site for long, or if there are a lot of abandoned shopping carts, a website audit is a great way to figure out why.
3. Determine SEO issues.
You should now focus on SEO issues in order to improve your search engine ranking. This will entail reviewing meta descriptions, image alt text, and other aspects.
4. Examine the design and user experience.
How is this design working out for your clients? Some software includes heatmaps that show which parts of your design are attracting the most attention and what users are reading. This type of analysis will inform you of how your overall design and user experience affect your visitors.
5. Examine the website's content.
A website audit will assist you in evaluating website content such as blogs, website pages, and so on. You'll want to know how your current pages rank. "Does my content rank well in search engines?" and "Does my on-page SEO and performance match my traffic numbers?"
6. Make a report on your website's audit.
When you have the right tools, creating a website audit report that clearly communicates the site issues discovered (and what to do about them) is a simple task.
Whichever reporting product you choose, it should provide a clear display of important website categories, such as SEO performance and the effectiveness of your security measures, as well as a list of individual issues and recommended fixes.
With a full website audit report in hand, you can begin making improvements yourself or efficiently send the information to the appropriate teams within your organization.
Now let's get even more specific so you know what to look for in this website audit.
Evaluations to Make When Auditing Your Website
1. Website Performance Evaluation
The first stage of your website audit should concentrate on how users navigate your website — from your homepage to blog posts, landing pages, and any related content in between.
Make a list of your website's pages and ask yourself the following questions to assess their optimization potential:
Is your website designed to be as user-friendly as possible?
The more visitors you can bring to your website, the more chances you'll have of generating leads and, eventually, customers. However, this is only if your website performs well.
Having a website alone does not guarantee success. Your audit should check to ensure that your site is designed with your visitors in mind as part of determining the overall efficiency of your website.
Your website's design and overall navigability should correspond with what a visitor would come to the site to find, such as more information on a business-related topic, resources, product/pricing information, testimonials, and so on. This is largely dependent on your specific business.
The main goal here is to make it simple for people to find the information they need. As a result, conversion rates will most likely improve on their own.
Consider the following when auditing your website for usability:
- Are all of our company's main value propositions easily accessible via our main navigation/menu items?
- Is our website design and page layout simple yet intuitive? Check that pages aren't overly cluttered, littered with ads, CTAs, or links, or devoid of internal links entirely.
- Are your conversion paths, shopping carts, and checkout processes user-friendly? Are there numerous distractions along the way that may be causing friction for your site visitors?
Consider conducting user testing with members of your target audience to ensure you're effectively surfacing the content they're looking for and that they can easily navigate to the sections of your website that interest them.
How fast is your website overall?
Are there excessively large page sizes, as well as long page load and server response times? Is your website frequently down? When image files are too large, or HTML and CSS need to be cleaned up, site speed can suffer — all of which can significantly improve site speed.
In the end, faster loading and optimized pages will result in increased visitor engagement, retention, and conversions.
2. SEO Evaluation
Optimizing your website's performance is critical for retaining visitors, but the above question isn't the only one you should be asking. You should also audit the content you're publishing to ensure it's actually solving the problems of your visitors.
Is the content on your website of high quality?
Consider your target audience's perspective as you assess the quality of your content:
-
Was I satisfied with this information?
- Did it address all of my concerns?
- Does it provide me with all of the resources pertinent to this topic?
- Do I know what I should do next?
Keep in mind that quality content should appeal to your buyer personas' interests, needs, and problems. Provide them with engaging and well-written content. Always leave the reader with actionable next steps, such as calls to action or links to resources.
Is your website optimized for search engines?
Check that all of your web pages adhere to on-page SEO best practices. Conduct a keyword analysis and do the following to audit your content for on-page SEO:
- Examine your analytics for keyword performance. Which keywords are bringing you the most traffic and leads?
- Examine how well you incorporate keyword performance into your content strategy. How much content relevant to those keywords are you adding to your website?
- Examine fundamental on-page SEO elements such as URLs, page titles, meta descriptions, and copy. Make sure to include keywords where appropriate.
3. Evaluation of Conversion Rates
While high-quality, search-engine-optimized content is a great way to increase traffic, what happens once those visitors arrive on your website is what really matters.
This is where optimized calls-to-action (CTAs), marketing offers, and landing pages can make or break your website's performance. They not only allow you to collect visitor information so you can follow up with leads, but they also keep your visitors engaged with your content and brand.
To maximize the conversion potential of your website, ask yourself the following questions:
- How many marketing offers do I have hidden behind landing pages in my content arsenal?
- Do I have a diverse range of marketing offers that appeal to each of my buyer personas?
- Do I already have any landing pages/conversion forms on my website?
- How well are those landing pages optimized?
- Are there conversion opportunities for visitors at different stages of the funnel?
- Is my use of CTAs effective? Is it possible that I'm overlooking opportunities to include CTAs on various pages of my website?
4. Technical Evaluation
After you've addressed the three primary goals of a website audit, it's time to enlist the help of a developer or someone from your IT department for a technical assessment. You could also hire an outside agency if you do your research first.
Keep in mind that the three assessments discussed above — website performance, SEO, and conversion rate — may have some overlap. The technical evaluation, on the other hand, addresses all three in order to maximize the user experience (UX).
Here's what to look for during the technical assessment stage of your website audit.
Is your website design mobile-friendly?
Is your website designed to be mobile-friendly? Is it, in other words, a mobile-friendly website? Smartphone internet access is becoming increasingly popular. As a result, websites must be able to meet this growing demand.
Is there no error message on your website?
Are there response code errors all over your website that shouldn't be there? Calling out 302, 404, and 500-level response codes can help users understand that something is wrong.
However, having this happen indicates that someone isn't cleaning up broken links, which leads users to dead ends.
Are the URLs on your website optimized?
Is your website's URL overly long as a result of keyword stuffing? Do they include session IDs and/or a plethora of dynamic parameters? These URLs can be difficult for search engines to index in some cases, resulting in lower clickthrough rates from search results.
Is there too much Flash or JavaScript on your website?
Determine which parts of your navigation are entirely Flash or JavaScript. Search engines struggle to read and access these, which may prevent your site from being indexed.
These elements are also problematic in terms of usability. When they visit your website, visitors are frequently looking for a specific piece of information. You're going to have a very frustrated visitor on your hands if they have to sit through a 10-second visual introduction before they can find your hours of operation.
Is your website's structure search engine friendly?
We've already discussed site structure in terms of content access and user usability, but it's also critical to ensure your site structure is optimized for search engines. Pages on your website that are not internally linked to other pages on your website are less likely to be indexed.
Do you control how search engines crawl and index your web pages?
This can be accomplished using a variety of techniques ranging from robots files and tags to sitemaps. These tools assist you in directing search engines to the most useful content on your website.
Tags or Robots Files
The robot meta tag allows you to control how an individual page is indexed and served to users in search results in a granular, page-specific manner. These tags should be placed in the page's head> section.
The robots.txt file, on the other hand, is a text file that lets you specify how your site should be crawled. Search engine crawlers will typically request the robots.txt file from a server before crawling a website. You can include sections in the robots.txt file for specific (or all) crawlers with instructions ("directives") that tell them which parts should or should not be crawled.
Public and XML Sitemaps
You should also have public and XML sitemap files on your website. The public sitemap is one that users can access to review your site's pages, similar to a book's index.
The XML sitemap allows search engines to review all of the pages that are added to your site in one place. A sitemap.xml file is typically located at www.domainname.com/sitemap.xml.
Every website should have a sitemap in XML format. It allows you to tell Google and other search engines which pages on your site you want crawled and indexed.
While search engines cannot guarantee that they will follow your sitemap, anecdotal evidence has shown that XML sitemaps help provide assurance that your pages are found, and found faster — especially if your sitemap(s) dynamically update your new web pages.
Are you defining content canonicalization?
The final major technical consideration is the canonicalization of your website's content. You must select a canonical (preferred) URL as the preferred version of the page to gain more control over how your URLs appear in search results and to minimize issues related to duplicate content.
You can tell Google what you want in a variety of ways. One method is to include the canonical tag (rel="canonical") in a page's HTTP header. Make sure that the canonical tag is properly implemented across the site by ensuring that it points to the correct page and that not every page points to the homepage.
Completing Your Website Audit
The final step is to prioritize and then implement the changes that are most important to meeting your objectives.
You asked the crucial questions at the start of your auditing process: "How am I doing?", as well as "How does my website compare to those of my competitors?”
When you finish your audit, you'll have answers to those questions and actionable steps for improving your website and making it more competitive.
Need Further Help?
You can seek assistance or hire BizzDesign, a team of website audit experts, to perform the aforementioned tasks and achieve great results for your local business. You can reach us at