Did you know that 79% of web users who are dissatisfied with a site’s performance are less likely to make a purchase on that site? Marketers and business owners can prevent this outcome by conducting regular website audits.
Website audits are carried out in the same spirit as tax audits, yet the subject matter is completely different (and the results are usually more pleasant!). Here’s a quick look at what a website audit is, how to conduct a website audit, and why it’s beneficial for your business.
The Basics of Website Audits
Website audits encompass multiple opportunities for you to enhance or update your website. Specific tools are used to carry out in-depth website audits, and they provide you with a better awareness of your site’s specific shortcomings and an opportunity to take corrective actions. The actions you take after your website audit can boost traffic to your site, enhance your conversion rate, and help you improve the overall functionality of your website.
Related: 4 Surefire Signs You Need to Redesign Your Website
Embrace the Opportunity to Assess Your Website
Though website audits are fairly complex projects, they are essential to the success of your website. Audits improve the user experience and increase conversions. This assessment will reveal lengthy page load times, any broken links, latent content, and many other issues. The quickest way to conduct a website audit is to run the website URL through a site auditing tool. A site auditing tool closely examines the website’s performance and provides specific recommendations for improvement after gauging the performance of each individual page.
Check for Error Messages
Even a single page with an error message is a major problem for keeping people on your site. If those folks visiting your site come across response code errors on even one page, little is stopping them from moving on to a competitor’s site.
To conduct your audit, you can start by clicking each individual page on your site to see performance, or use a tool such as the Xenu Link Sleuth or Google’s Webmaster Tools to pinpoint error messages. Clean up all the broken links and you won’t steer your audience to dead-ends.
Analyze the Site’s Performance in the Context of SEO
A website chock-full of content will not make the impact you want unless this content is able to drive traffic to the site…and also converts visitors into paying customers. This is where the right SEO strategy comes in.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In short, your website and the rest of your online footprint should be carefully optimized for the words, phrases, and information that web sleuths are searching for on Google and other search engines.
The SEO component of your website audit will be much easier with the use of the right analytical tools. For example, BuzzSumo pinpoints the specific keywords on your site that are working and also highlights those that are not working. This tool even makes it easy to create alerts for keyword mentions and trending content.
The Ahrefs SEO site audit tool is also extremely helpful. This tool analyzes keywords, along with the site’s link-building, and compares the results to those of competitors. The Found SEO audit tool identifies SEO issues that prevent it from ranking as well as it should. Everything from link information to content SEO, metadata, and technical integration is analyzed on your behalf. For keyword research and backlink evaluation (along with many other utilities), SEMrush is a popular and extremely useful application as well.
User Experience
A comprehensive website audit will also consider the site’s utility and flow. If the site loads too slowly or displays incorrectly on mobile devices, has broken links, redirects to the wrong pages when hyperlinks are clicked, or doesn’t function as it should, those obstacles to a rewarding user experience will be identified in the audit.
Related: Making Your Website Mobile Friendly
You can check the load time of a page with MozBar. This toolbar attaches to web browsers for fast on-page analysis, ultimately empowering you to heighten visitor engagement, return visits, and conversions.
There are many ways to conduct a website audit, and many things you need to look for in the auditing process. In addition to the tools and methods we’ve listed above, there are other ways of going about it, and one way is getting experts on your side. Ironmark’s team is ready to conduct an audit for you and find ways to improve your website function, so contact our digital marketing experts about your website as soon as you can!
