Breaking It Down and Building It Up: How To Conduct a Website Audit

If you are looking to improve your SEO strategy a website audit can be an invaluable tool that gives you insight into a number of components. Let’s show you what it is and why it is important. 

What Is a Website Audit? 

A website audit is essentially an examination of any web page’s performance before undertaking large-scale SEO or website alteration. It can help you to understand if it is helping you achieve your traffic goals. 

What Are the Benefits of a Website Audit? 

Some of the key benefits include optimizing your website for search engine optimization, which will help you stay at the top of the search engine results page. Additionally, it helps you evaluate the website for its technical performance, such as speed and accessibility, as well as navigation. It also can help you to identify any issues that are hurting your abilities to convert visitors into sales, such as broken links or overly long loading times. 

How Do You Conduct a Website Audit? 

You can break this down into a few key areas:

• Use a site audit tool: Many businesses use a site audit tool that can help them understand how well their website is performing. There’s also site audit software you can purchase. When you use this software, it can give you insight and will provide recommendations for optimizing your website URL. 
• Identifying SEO issues: There are a number of SEO-related issues that could need fixing. Some common SEO problems can relate to meta descriptions, images that are not search-friendly, and also a poor mobile experience. A lot of newer businesses focus on their website but without making it mobile-friendly. 
• Finding technical errors: Technical errors can relate to performance, but also the security of the site. The technical audit makes sure the website will play a significant role in how the website performs for users. Remember, if a website doesn’t load in 5 seconds, this will result in a lot of people clicking away. 
• Addressing the website content: Website content such as blogs and website pages are pivotal to helping you understand if your business website is ranking well within search engines. Additionally, if any SEO components such as on-page SEO actually align with your traffic numbers. 
• User experience and design: UX is a very important component, especially for businesses who are used to their website. User experience analysis provides insight into the design of the website and the user experience and if it is having an impact on your visitors. 
• Checking for any other site issues: One of the key components of conducting a website audit is looking for site issues and making recommended fixes so you can address the call problems. 

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What Are Some of the Key Assessments You Need to Make? 

Some of the most important assessments of your website will include the following:

• SEO assessments: When you are conducting an SEO assessment, you will need to look at a number of components such as keyword performance, how keyword performance factors into your content strategy, and other basic on-page SEO elements. You should also look to see if your website content is high-quality. Quality is subjective, but you need to be aware that the content needs to appeal to the target market while also providing valuable and detailed information. 
• Website performance assessment: This assessment takes into account if the website is optimized for high-quality performance. This means taking into account components such as the layout, accessibility, and if the website is too cluttered or distracting. 
• Conversion rate assessment: If you have done everything to the book so far, you will need to focus on boosting your traffic. Therefore, looking at lead generation in terms of your offers, the conversion forms, and call-to-actions are being used effectively. 
• A technical assessment: This final assessment involves a lot of deep diving, including optimizing the website URL, how the web pages are indexed, and if the canonical tag is properly implemented across the site. 

It is so important to establish a framework for auditing. It allows you insights into your performance, and if you are making any basic errors. Any business needs to address the website as it is such a vital component of marketing in the modern age. It’s not enough to have a website, but also remember that it isn’t the be-all and end-all. That being said, with any successful business, they will conduct regular audits across every aspect of the company. But if you want to nail your marketing down, it’s important to audit your website effectively.