Why you need a website audit: 6 reasons to do it now

Anastasiia Kanarska
By Anastasiia Kanarska,
19th June |
Post Views: 23
why you need a website audit

Introduction

Businesses have been shifting to online at a large scale recently. This allows for covering the widest audience worldwide and therefore achieving a significant increase in sales. Running a business online is no longer an option but a necessity these days. This brings a plenitude of benefits. However, benefits come along with challenges. Don’t get anxious now – they are all solvable. But you better be ready to tackle them. 

Rule number 1 – a robust website is the first building block of a strong online reputation. Your website performance requires a lot of attention. It’s important to make sure your site works well so any visitor can use it easily. Now users have dozens of options – regardless of what they’re looking for. They expect fast and high-quality services. If they can’t get it, they move on to an alternative. Thus you can see that seamless performance is essential for user attraction and retention. Furthermore, search engines can recognize when your website has critical issues, and they’ll direct traffic to other locations.

In order to assess the performance do a website audit. But first, learn more about it and find out how to get started.

What is a website audit?

In the most general sense, a website audit is what can help you to identify the strengths and weaknesses in terms of your website performance and solve problems before they start costing you business. 

The process of website audit involves a thorough examination of each of your website’s components for evaluating the search engine friendliness of a website in multiple areas. This helps to determine whether the site is optimized to achieve your traffic goals, locate issues, and get a sense of how to improve the site to get to the target point.

As you can see, a website audit does make sense! This is the right way to enhance user experience, produce higher search visibility, and more.

This kind of comprehensive evaluation and analysis of a website will provide you with relevant insights into the following aspects:

  • A website’s search ranking and bounce rates
  • Broken links
  • HTML and CSS errors
  • Response and loading times
  • SEO factors (meta title, descriptions, etc)
  • Conversion rate optimization
  • A website security
  • Content channels

Before we move on, here’s one more important thing to point out. If you believe that as long as your site is running you don’t need to worry about anything at all – we must disappoint you but you’re mistaken. Website audits must be conducted regularly. It doesn’t mean every time you do it you find catastrophic problems. Basically, you conduct a comprehensive website audit to make sure everything is working as it should. 

Website audie types

Testing a website fully is a complex process that requires sufficient knowledge and expertise.

Actually, a full website audit is not always necessary. Before you get started, you have to determine what type of website audit you need based on your requirements and goals. There are different types of audits performed for specific areas of a website. Take a closer look at some of the most common types and tips to help you select the right one.

SEO audit

This one is for a website’s optimization and improving its ranking on search engines. SEO audit examines factors like keyword usage, content, metadata, page speed, user journey, and overall visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). The goal is to identify areas for upgrading to enhance organic search rankings and traffic.

Design audit

This audit type determines whether your website’s design is visually appealing for the best user experience ever. It mostly focuses on the content, structure, and colors of your website. A design website audit is meant to evaluate the visual design and user interface (UI) aspects. It aims to assess the overall aesthetics, branding consistency, and user experience. 

Technical audit

If there are serious technical problems, all your efforts will be in vain. A technical audit is performed to find broken internal links and redirect chains, inconsistent XML, and more. It can help to check if your website is easy for search engines to index. Additionally, technical audits assess accessibility and reevaluate your hosting service to ensure it’s still appropriate for your website.

Content audit

A content audit focuses on evaluating the quality, relevance, and effectiveness of the website’s content. It involves reviewing all existing content, identifying outdated or irrelevant content, checking for duplicate or thin content, and assessing the overall content strategy. The goal is to ensure the content is valuable, well-optimized and resonates with the target audience’s needs and SEO goals as well as identify what content is driving conversions.

Competitive website audit

In order to get ahead of the game you should know as much about your opponents as possible. It takes analyzing your competitors’ websites to formulate effective strategies for better business performance. It’s recommended to track others’ strategies to find out the best opportunities you could be missing out on. Define the advanced tactics you can incorporate for better results. 

9 essential parameters to analyze

A website audit report includes an extensive list of parameters you should take into consideration. At first, they may seem a bit confusing but we’re here to provide you with a clear explanation. We’ve gathered some of the key parameters to analyze when auditing your website. Check them out right here!

  • Speed. According to the study, the first 5 seconds of page-load time have the highest impact on conversion rates. 
  • Responsiveness. Your website is supposed to run seamlessly across various devices. Make sure it is mobile-friendly too. 
  • User Interface. Check your overall layout and make sure your website is easy to navigate. 
  • Compliance with ADA/WCAG ensures your website is accessible to differently-abled users; moreover, it protects your business from lawsuits.
  • Content optimization. This process involves assessing the following resources: blogs, landing pages for relevant links, targeted keywords, and other SEO measures. Images should also be optimized and checked for size and compression, thumbnails, and alt attributes.
  • Conversion rate. Analyze how and from where traffic is coming to your website to define your website’s conversion issues and opportunities. 
  • Database evaluation. Inspect your website for database structure, indexing, and space utilization while identifying any outdated data.
  • Security. That’s a topical issue that must never be underrated. Your website’s data security, integrity, and confidentiality must be regularly reviewed. the audit includes inspecting security policies, security controls, and potential threats related to the IT assets of your website.
  • Third-Party Plugins and Tools. Check the performance of third-party plugins and tools and see whether any functionality upgrades are required.

6 signals to do a website audit

We’d strongly recommend conducting regular website audits just to make sure everything is ok and the site runs smoothly. This way you can prevent critical issues and solve problems as soon as they come up. But should you notice some red flags, you need to start auditing immediately. There are signals you must never ignore! 

Your website SEO needs improvements

This is an essential step in optimizing your website for search engines. A website audit identifies missing page descriptions or alt text for images that can affect your site’s performance on search engines. Unless you fix it quickly, your ranking will go down.

Besides, there are more crucial aspects to check and optimize:

  • Updating outdated content
  • Headers
  • Mobile responsiveness
  • URL structures
  • Indexability
  • Dead links

Your site cannot be navigated easily

No matter how much effort you put into your website, if it is too difficult for users to use, all you do makes no sense at all. 

Using your site every day makes it easy for you to navigate so you are likely to overlook problems a user may come across. Here is a list of the most common features of hard-to-navigate websites:

  • The poorly organized navigation bar 
  • Overlinking
  • Unclear way to return to the homepage
  • Too much information on the homepage
  • No search function
  • It’s complicated to reach out to you

Consider user testing as a part of your audit and analyze how people interact with your website and what hurdles they face. 

You see the risks of penalties from search engines

This may happen once you turn to ‘black hat’ SEO methods like link farming, keyword stuffing, cloaking, and so on. this can lead your website to increased rankings and traffic, but at what cost? Cheating never goes unpunished. There are high risks of penalization from search engines since their algorithms have become more intelligent.

A site audit can help identify potential risks and avoid penalties. But once you got hit with one, you still can put it right.

Your site loads for an eternity

If pages load for too long, users will abandon your site and move on to the next option – there are plenty of them now. But losing users is not the only consequence. This can affect your SEO too. A web page should load in milliseconds. According to Google, the probability of bounce increases by 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds; 53% of mobile website visitors will leave if a webpage doesn’t load within three seconds. 

Google has even made speed an important ranking factor – slow sites get pushed down in the SERPS. 

Source: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2020/05/evaluating-page-experience

The reasons for slow loading are multiple so it takes to do an audit to identify your problems. However, the most typical issues are as follows:

  • Image formatting and compressing
  • To many redirects
  • Overloading with JS and CSS files
  • The number of plugins

You need to track your competitors

The market is so competitive as the number of gamers is growing increasingly. You cannot succeed if you just focus on your business and isolate yourself from the opponents. Knowing what online strategies they are carrying out is essential for getting ahead. 

You should start by identifying your main competitors and then analyze their websites in terms of content, social activities, targeted keywords, backlinks, organic & paid search activity, etc.

This will provide you with a clear understanding of your position on the market as compared to others. Furthermore, you can get valuable insights on how to adjust your online strategy in order to beat your opponents. 

You have security and privacy concerns

If you deal with certain customer information, you must prioritize privacy. Your task is to make sure the data you keep is 100% secure. A security breach could do massive damage to your website and business. An audit will help you locate vulnerabilities in your security system so you will be able to take the necessary measures timely. Keeping security under permanent control and applying all the latest security patches is essential.

The benefits you will get

By now you know one thing very well – a website audit is a must-have. You will benefit from it a lot, and, what’s also important, you can avoid failures and huge losses. 

This testing process is aimed at evaluating your website for problems and suggesting efficient solutions to those problems.

To get a broader notion of what an audit is for, see what advantages you’ll get:

Better user experience

An audit helps identify problems and the most efficient way to solve them. Whether it relates to content, design, SEO, or technical structure – it affects the overall performance and user experience directly. 

Make sure your website displays all pieces of content properly, loads fast, is easy to navigate, and is mobile-friendly to enhance user experience which, in turn, drives an increase in conversions.

Enhanced SEO performance

A website audit allows you to find poorly executed SEO pitfalls so you can timely take action to improve your ranking in SEO, attract more traffic, and optimize your website for SERPs and users.

Higher conversion rates

Generating more leads and reaching high conversion rates must be your ultimate goal. After all, the point is to sell as much as possible. What should you start with? Eliminate issues that affect user experience first. A thorough audit will open up multiple previously overlooked opportunities to convert a random visitor into a customer. Add relevant CTAs and enjoy boosted conversions.

High-quality content

The role of content is crucial. It not only attracts or repels users but also impacts SEO ranking. That is why every single piece of content must be flawless. Remember that customers as well as search engines do not forgive critical mistakes. Make sure you have none. 

Following ever-changing Google algorithms 

Keeping pace with Google algorithms can be a challenging task as they are continually evolving. It’s highly important, though. This will help you achieve better website visibility, user experience, and long-term sustainability in search engine rankings. By staying informed and adapting your SEO strategies accordingly, you can optimize your website as per the ever-changing requirements of Google’s algorithms and therefore achieve better organic search results.

Remember that Google’s algorithms are complex and involve multiple factors. It’s crucial to maintain a holistic approach to SEO, considering various aspects such as technical optimization, content quality, user experience, and relevance to search queries.

Keeping an eye on your competitors

What does it take to win a game? – To know your competitors well and be informed about what they’re doing. It’s very beneficial to compare your website to your main competitors from time to time. This way you can identify issues you have, discover new efficient tactics, and get valuable insights. Learn how others attract users and gain conversions and consider following similar practices. 

How to audit your site: a checklist

how to do a website audit

Understanding your website’s current performance, identifying areas for improvement, and optimizing it for better search engine rankings and user experience must be prioritized.

As long as you have figured out what a website audit is along with its main types, explored the signs to start an audit immediately, and the perks you will enjoy afterward, it’s high time we moved on to the last yet important section and learned how to do a website audit. 

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to audit your site seamlessly.

Select a website audit tool

A proper tool can identify problematic areas in a matter of minutes so you can save time while being sure you don’t overlook anything and your audit is successful. 

Check for technical errors

Once there are technical issues, you should address them asap in order to improve functionality and user experience. Technical errors include broken links, outdated meta tags and descriptions, and similar. These should be fixed promptly to not make users frustrated.

Evaluate SEO

Identify SEO-related issues early to not let them impact your ranking on search engines negatively. Take time to complete the following steps:

  • Review your site’s search results rankings
  • Compare it with the previous results to see what has changed since the last audit
  • Analyze keyword density

It’s necessary to optimize both on-page and off-page SEO. Here’s the difference between the two in simple terms:

  • On-page SEO is what users can see (various pieces of content, graphics, meta descriptions, headers, alt text for images, etc).
  • Off-page SEO deals with back-end aspects like link-building campaigns. It’s not visible yet crucial for overall success.

Audit design and UX

Make sure your website is visually appealing and easy to navigate. Customers don’t want to waste time figuring out how your website works – they expect their journey to be simple and smooth. If it is complex, they’re more likely to abandon it rather than spend hours looking for what they need. 

Test your navigation menu to ensure there are no problems with buttons, links, fillable forms, and other design elements. Review your website’s heatmap to identify the parts of your design that are getting the most traffic. This way you know where to add more CTAs for better results.

Do a content quality checkup

The content you publish must be regular and high-quality. There should be no outdated information. make sure all your publications are accurate and relevant. Furthermore, try to make your content ever-evolving. This means constantly generating new ideas and refreshing your site so it’s interesting for users. 

Prepare a website audit report

Once the audit is complete, it takes you to sum everything up. This means creating a comprehensive website audit report that clearly communicates all the detected issues along with recommended fixes. A report is generated easily and quickly provided you use the right tool. Luckily, there’s an extensive range of options now so you can choose the most suitable one. And good news – it’s not necessary to pay for them – there are numerous free tools available. 

As long as you have a full report, you finally can get down to business and start eliminating issues. Do it yourself or send the gathered information to the team responsible for the site improvement. 

Summary

We wouldn’t repeat a thousand times that a website audit is important. You’ve seen enough proof, right? What we want to highlight here is that audits should be regular and scheduled. This way you can locate and rectify any issues that may bring about problems down the line.

You must be curious about how frequently an audit should take place. It depends on multiple factors including your business scale but according to experts, it’s recommended to get a website audited annually or bi-annually. 

Consider doing an audit right after a website is released to solve any minor problems immediately. 

We suggest mixing various audit types to get a comprehensive list of required improvements so that you can be sure your website occupies the most successful position.