A website audit is an analysis of page performance done before an extensive SEO (search engine optimization) or a website redesign. Auditing your website can decide whether or not it is optimized to obtain your targeted traffic, and if not, how you can adjust it to boost performance.

The website audit begins from a usual review of a website aimed at exposing the actions needed to increase search engine optimization. Many tools offer guidance on how to increase the website rankings in search that can incorporate on-page and off-page SEO audit like site speed, duplicate meta descriptions, broken links and titles, HTML validation, website statistics, error pages, indexed pages, etc. A website audit is relevant for all online trades and develops different features of the websites.

There are many causes to do a website audit, but in most cases, SEO and content marketing are the chief ones. Website audit done for SEO targets identifies vulnerable spots of a website’s SEO score and assists recognise the condition of SEO. A content audit is done to examine the functionality and what modifications have to be made to the content strategy to improve the website’s performance.

Advantages of Website Audit

Here are some of the top advantages of website audit from a retailing point of view:

Search Engine Optimization

By carrying out a website audit, you’ll be capable to recognise any overlooked SEO opportunities and correct any misled or inadequately administered SEO pitfalls. For example, a stuffed keyword or exact match anchor text links everywhere the content of your website.

It will also enable you to re-focus your SEO works on users primarily and search engines in the second place. This will protect you from continually tracking modifications to search ranking algorithms, indicating you won’t be implementing misled practices just to reach in the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Optimization of Website Performance

Website audits normally assess a website not only for its content but also for its technical performance. As a result, an audit will give you a possibility to examine the strength of your website’s technical structure and foundation, evaluate how favourable it is to search engines, and decide how simple it is for users to operate and instinctively find content on your site.

Optimization of Conversion Rate

Next in the raw is, website audits allow you to re-evaluate the effectiveness of your website in terms of lead production and growth. Consequently, you’ll be ready to spot any opportunities ignored earlier to turn visitors into leads so you can add appropriate CTAs, as well as recognise needs in your landing pages so you can optimize them to increase conversions.

As you can see, evaluating both the content and technical features of your website will open up possibilities to increase the traffic and conversions your website makes.

4 Assessments to Make While Auditing Your Website

Let’s discuss about how to have the above-mentioned benefits, and what you should particularly be checking for in this four-part website audit.

1. Website Performance Assessment

In a website audit, the first thing to consider should be its user-friendliness, that is, the navigation, and how users navigate your website from your homepage to blog posts, landing pages, and any related content within.

Maximum Usability

Is your website optimized for greatest usability? The more visitors you can bring to your website, the more chances you’ll have to create leads and, eventually, consumers. But only if your website works well.

Just possessing a website does not ensure outcomes. As part of defining the total effectiveness of your website, your audit should review to ensure your site is created with your visitors in purpose. The design and overall navigability of your website should match with how a person is going to operate and navigate. For example, more information on a business-related topic, sources, pricing information, reviews, etc. This will mostly depend on your own business.

The chief aim here is to make it simple for people to get to the spot where they wanted. As a result, you’ll probably see growth rates raise on their own. To audit your site for usability, analyse the following:

• Are all the main value propositions of our business easily available via the main navigation or menu articles?
• Do we have a unique yet effortless website design and page layout? Ensure pages aren’t too cluttered; littered with CTAs, ads, or links, etc.
• Are your conversion paths and/or shopping cart or checkout methods easy? Are there a ton of disturbances along the way that could be producing irritation for your site visitors?

You should also do some user testing with members of your target viewers to guarantee you’re completely surfacing the content they’re waiting for, and that they find it clear to operate to the parts of your website they are fascinated in.

Check out the overall speed of your website

Are there unnecessary page sizes and/or long page load and server response times? Does your site crash frequently? Site speed can be affected when image files are too large or HTML and CSS requires to be cleaned up, all of which can drastically increase your site speed. Finally, fast-loading and optimized pages will direct to higher visitor engagement, maintenance, and conversions.

2. SEO Assessment

Optimizing the performance of your website is important when it comes to keeping the visitors. Other than the above concern that you bring forth, you should also audit the content you’re publishing to guarantee it’s really answering your visitors’ queries.

Quality of the content should be high, not just above average

As you assess your content for quality, think about it from your target audience’s view. Did the information fulfil a visitor or answer all their questions, and does it provide all the resources related to this topic, etc.

Quality of the content should attract interests, requirements, and dilemmas of customers. It should be entertaining and well-written, present valuable, thorough and complete information about a special topic and give the reader with next steps. For example, calls-to-action, links to resources, etc.

Search Engine Optimised website

Ensure all your web pages are tracking on-page SEO best practices. Conduct a keyword analysis to audit your content for on-page SEO in which you need to do the below-mentioned steps:

• Discuss your analytics to reconsider keyword performance. Which keywords are providing you with the biggest increases in traffic and leads?
• Evaluate how well you are factoring keyword performance into your content strategy. How much valuable content are you adding to your website to improve those keywords?
• Interpret basic on-page SEO elements like page titles, URLs, meta description, and copy. Ensure appropriate keywords are added where appropriate.

3. Conversion Rate Evaluation

While optimized content is an excellent way to increase your traffic numbers, it’s what results on your website that really counts once those visitors make a visit and get impressed by your displayed products and/or services.

Website Optimized for Lead Generation and Conversions

This is where optimized marketing offers, calls-to-action and landing pages play a significant role in the performance of your website. Not just that, they offer opportunities to bring visitors’ information so you can catch up with leads, but they also keep your visitants involved with your content and your brand. To audit your website for best conversion potential, consider the following points:

• Number of retailing proposals in the content to gate behind landing pages
• A variety of marketing offers that appeal to all types of visitors
• Landing pages/conversion forms on my website to begin with
• Optimised landing pages
• Conversion opportunities for visitors in different stages of the navigation
• An effective call-to-action

4. Technical Evaluation

Once you’ve reviewed the three principal goals of a website audit, next is the technical evaluation which may require a technical person like a developer. Above reviews may have some leftovers to consider sometimes. The technical assessment, though, directs all the three to improve the user experience (UX). Following points should be considered while performing a technical assessment of your website audit.

Responsive website design

Does your website possess a responsive design? Is it user-friendly to mobile users? The way of smartphones to reach the internet is only increasing. Mobile devices estimate half of all web page views worldwide. Consequently, websites must be agreeable with that growing demand.

404-, 302-, and 500-level response codes can be beneficial to tell users that there is something wrong. Nevertheless, having this result is also an implication that the broken links are being corrected, thus leading users to an unexpected stop. Discover those error messages and clean up the links that are dead.

URLs also need to be optimized

Has the keyword stuffing made your site URLs long? Do they hold session IDs and/or tons of changing parameters? In some instances, these URLs are hard for search engines to list and result in lower click-through rates from search outcomes.

Optimization Site Structure for Search Engines

We already discussed the site structure as it associates to obtaining content and usability for users, but it’s also essential to make sure your site structure is optimal for search engines. If pages on your site are not linked within to or from other pages on your site, those pages are less prone to be indexed.

Define how your web pages are dragged and arranged by search engines. This can be achieved through different methods that cover everything from robots files and tags, to sitemaps. These projects are a way for you to manage search engines towards your website’s most beneficial content.

Robots Files or Tags

The robots meta tag allows you to use a granular, page-specific method to controlling how an individual page should be indexed and served to users in search results. These tags should sit in the <head> section of a provided page.

The robots.txt file, on the other hand, is a text file that enables you to define how you would like your site to be crawled. Before dragging a website, search engine crawlers will usually ask the robots.txt file from a server. Within the robots.txt file, you can incorporate sections for particular (or all) crawlers with directions (“directives”) that let them understand which parts should or should not be crawled.

XML and Public Sitemaps

Your website should also own public and XML Sitemap files. The public sitemap is one that users can obtain to examine the pages of your site, just like the index of a book.

The XML Sitemap is for search engines to analyse pages that get attached to your site, all in one place. The normal location of a sitemap.xml file is www.domainname.com/sitemap.xml. The XML Sitemap is something all website should possess; it extends a chance to tell search engines what pages on your site you need to be crawled and indexed.

Canonicalization of Content

The canonicalization of your website content is the main technical application to execute. To get more power over how your URLs seem in search results, and to reduce issues related to reproducing content, it’s suggested that you choose a canonical URL as the favoured version of the page.

You can show your choice to Google in many ways. One such way is to establish the canonical tag in an HTTP header of a page. Ensure to have someone check that the Canonical Tag is correctly performed across the site by making sure it points to the correct page, and that every page doesn’t lead to the homepage.

It’s necessary to set an audit framework as early as possible. Website audits aren’t that simple that one might expect, particularly if they are not completely tech-savvy. Check NdimensionZ Solutions’ digital marketing services in Kochi to gather related information. We have a whole list of other services as well that you can go through.