Merely building the website is not enough as you also need to make out if your website is running properly or not. After all, it is your website only that defines how your user experience will be.
Consequently, checking the functioning of your website as per the market standards is crucial and should not be missed out. Most businesses keep on wondering about ways to check the functioning of their website.
Fortunately, no more wondering as we have got you back. A website audit is the best way to evaluate the effectiveness of your website and also identify the areas that need improvement. But what is included in a website audit?
Let us learn more about website audits and give you a website audit checklist in the post outlined below.
Website Audit
Website audit refers to evaluating the page’s performance before starting with search engine optimization or website designing. The main reason behind this is to figure out whether it is optimized or not to drive traffic toward your website and let you know how you can achieve those goals.
Steps To Conduct A Website Audit
Despite years of experience, not many marketers know how to conduct a website audit. So, here are the steps outlined below to conduct a website audit.
Check your website
The first thing you need to do is check your website with a site audit tool. But for this, you need to find a website audit tool that can help you to analyze your website and identify the problem areas in your website.
By using the website audit software, not only your website gets evaluated but the software also gives you specific recommendations and tests how your website is performing.
Look for technical errors
The next step in performing a website audit is to look for technical errors. Technical errors are the ones related to the performance of the website like SEO, mobile, and security as these can negatively impact your customer’s experience.
So, if you are noticing that visitors are not spending much time on your website or abandoning the shopping carts, then the best way forward would be to opt for the website audit and get the issues fixed.
Identify issues
The next step is to identify SEO problems. There is no point in having a website if it is not SEO-friendly. Fixing the SEO-related issues in your website is crucial as it will help you to improve rankings on search engines.
The things which you need to check in SEO are meta descriptions, alt tags, meta tags, and the list goes on.
Check design and UX
Whether your website design is working well for your customers or not also needs to be checked. Some software has heatmaps of what parts of the design are drawing your attention and what the users are reading.
By doing this type of analysis, you’ll come to know how the overall design and user experience are impacting your visitors and what you need to improve.
Analyze the website’s content
Analyzing the website’s content is the next step in performing the website audit of your website. You need to analyze the website’s content such as blogs, landing pages, and other content to know how your current content is stacking up.
Check whether your content is ranking well in the search engines or not. Besides this, check if your on-page SEO and performance are aligned with your traffic numbers.
Make a website audit report
Once you are done with conducting the website audit, the last step is to make a website report. When making the website report, make sure it communicates the issues found on the website.
Creating the website audit report becomes all the easier when you use the right tools to do so. The tool automatically generates the website audit report. You can choose from the plenty of tools available such as Hubspot’s website grader or Semrush’s site audit tool.
Make sure to choose the tool which provides a clear display of the major website categories such as SEO performance and the effectiveness of your security measures. Once you are done with this, list the individual issues along with the fixes.
Benefits Of Website Audit
After learning about the website audit and the steps to conduct the same, here are some of the benefits of a website audit.
Enables comparison
The foremost benefit of conducting a website audit is that it enables you to compare your website with your competitors. You can analyze how you are ranking compared to your competitors.
You can make use of widely available tools to perform the website audit of your competitors. Accordingly, you can brainstorm new tactics and strategies for the new website.
Improves SEO
Performing the website audit also improves your SEO. The website audit helps you to identify missed SEO opportunities throughout your website content. Besides this, the website audit also safeguards you from constant changes.
The website audit not only lets you know the pitfalls in your website but also gives you remedies to show at the top of the SERPs.
Optimize conversion rates
The next benefit of a website audit is that it optimizes conversion rates. Website audit enables you to evaluate the effectiveness of your website by taking into account the leads. Consequently, if there’ll be any inconsistencies, you can consider adding CTA’s and identifying the deficiencies in your landing pages so that you can optimize landing pages to boost conversions.
Identify issues in advance
Another benefit of a website audit is that it helps to identify the issues in advance. You’ll come to learn about the issues that are causing harm to your SEO and conversions such as hidden content, broken links, or page load speed.
Fortunately, you can assess both the content and technical aspects of your website by performing the website audit and accordingly improve your traffic and conversions.
Final Thoughts
By now, you have learned the importance of the website audit and how to conduct a website audit. By doing so, you can easily implement the website changes that are most critical to meeting your goals. Perform the website audit now and increase your conversions.