What is a website audit? A website audit is a process of evaluating a website for areas where improvements can be made. This includes evaluating factors such as website design, content, structure, and SEO. A website audit can be performed manually, or you can use a free online website auditor to help you out. Additionally, there are digital marketing agencies that offer free website audits.
Benefits of a Website Audit
If you're not already performing website audits, you should be. Among other things, an audit can help improve website performance by identifying weak points in areas such as design, content, structure, and SEO.
A website audit can help to identify any errors on your website. This could include broken links, 404 errors, and other technical issues. You can use it to work toward improving website traffic. By improving website performance and fixing website errors, an audit can also help to improve traffic. This could lead to more visitors, customers, and sales.
In addition to improving traffic, a website audit can also help to improve website conversion rates. This means more website visitors will take the desired action, such as signing up for a newsletter, downloading a PDF, or making a purchase.
A website audit can also help to optimize a website for search engines using SEO. This could lead to higher rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs), which could result in more website traffic.
Website audits have many other benefits, such as identifying opportunities for website improvements, improving website security, and more. All these benefits equal a better website for you and a better user experience for your customers and potential customers.
What Does a Website Audit Check?
A website audit looks at many different elements of your website. Here are some of the things a website auditor might check:
The website's design and user experience
The website's speed and performance
The website's mobile friendliness
The website's SEO (search engine optimization)
The website's security
The website's code
The website's backlinks
The website's content
These are just some of the things that a website audit can check. Audits can be very comprehensive and can also be tailored to focus on specific areas. It all depends on what you want to get out of the audit. For instance, if you're primarily concerned with your website's SEO, the auditor will likely spend more time on that area. They'll audit your SEO by looking at your website's title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, etc.
Audits can be performed manually or with automated software. Manual website audits can be very time-consuming, so most website owners opt for the latter option. Automated website audits are faster and more accurate than manual ones. They also often come with handy features, like website reports and recommendations.
Why Should I Do a Website Audit?
A website audit is a great way to get an overview of your website's health. It can help you identify areas that need improvement and potential problems that could be holding your website back. A website audit can also help you track your website's progress over time; by performing regularly scheduled audits, you can measure your success as you go.
A website audit can also be beneficial if you're making changes to your website. For example, let's say you're switching to a new website design. Doing an audit beforehand can help you identify any potential issues that could come up during the switchover. This way, you can ensure your new website is as smooth and successful as possible.
When Should I Do a Website Audit?
Ideally, you should do a website audit at least once a year. This will help you keep on top of any changes or problems with your website and make sure that it is always in tip-top shape. However, if you're making major changes to your website (such as a redesign), you may want to do an audit more frequently.
If you're a new business owner or first-time website owner, you should regularly perform audits. This will help you get a handle on any potential issues with your website and ensure that it runs as smoothly as possible. Once you have a good understanding of how your website works, you can then start to space out your audits.
What's an SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is a website audit that specifically looks at your website from a search engine optimization perspective. This audit will help you identify potential problems holding your website back from ranking higher in search engines.
When performing an SEO audit, the auditor will look at several components. These can include website structure, keyword usage, website speed, and mobile friendliness. By looking at all of these factors, the auditor can get a good idea of where your website stands in terms of SEO and what needs to be done to improve it.
This can also highlight any issues like keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is placing keywords in sentences where they may not make sense. For example, if your company were in the luxury travel space, you would want to use the keyword 'luxury travel' but not every sentence. You would want to ensure you use it carefully and where it fits. Often an auditor can identify these issues better than the owner. A fresh pair of eyes is sometimes all it takes.
In website audits, the auditor will also look at website design, user experience (UX), and the website's overall health. They will check to see if there are any broken links and make sure the website is easy to navigate. All these factors affect how well your website ranks on search engines.
How to Perform a Website Audit
There are a few different ways you can go about auditing your website. You can do it yourself, hire someone to do it for you, or use a website audit tool.
If you decide to do it yourself, there are a few things you'll need to look at. First, check your website's analytics to see how much traffic it's getting and where that traffic is coming from. You can find this data in your website domain or using tools like Google Analytics.
Next, take a look at your website's design and usability. Is it easy to navigate? Does it look good on all devices? Is the content well-organized and easy to read? These are all critical factors in website ranking. User experience is a significant factor in search engine ranking. The better your website looks and performs, the higher your ranking in SERPs.
Finally, check your website's code for errors. A website with clean code will load faster, perform better, and rank higher in SERPs. This can be done with tools like Wix Code Validator or Google's Page Speed Insights.
A website audit is a great way to improve your website's ranking in search engines. By looking at your website's traffic, design, usability, and code, you can identify areas that need improvement. These improvements will help your website rank higher in SERPs, providing more website visitors.
The easiest way to perform a website audit is by connecting with a digital marketing agency like Wordsmyth Creative Content. With the right tools, these professionals will give you a detailed report chock full of actionable suggestions.