As a business owner, you know that your website is an important marketing tool for your business. So, how do you ensure it’s working for you and driving traffic to your business through search engine optimization? Well, that’s where a website audit comes in!
A website audit is a comprehensive review of your website’s current state and potential. A thorough website audit will evaluate your content, design, tech, and SEO.
If you want to improve your website’s overall effectiveness and make sure your website reaches your intended audience, you need to complete a website audit!
By doing so, you can unlock the potential of your website, drive more traffic to your business, and increase your bottom line.
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What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO is about improving your website’s content and user experience to increase its visibility in Google (and other search engines people use, but Google dominates the search engine market!).
Including SEO as part of your marketing strategy can generate leads, increase traffic to your site, and boost your brand visibility!
However, your efforts may not be worthwhile if you don’t have a proper SEO strategy or understanding of your website’s current performance.
Importance of a Website Audit
There is no question that a strong website SEO strategy is essential for any business looking to leverage online digital marketing.
However, many businesses don’t necessarily have the time, resources, or SEO knowledge to audit their websites comprehensively.
That’s where I come in!
As your SEO Consultant and Website Strategist, I will identify any deficiencies in your online presence and develop a strategy to improve it.
With my website audit, you’ll receive a detailed analysis of your website and probably learn a thing or two about SEO and online marketing that you didn’t know before!
I’ll talk through how you can strategically improve your website for maximum SEO benefits. This will help you identify immediate action items that you need to adjust on your website for better visibility on search engines.
The information within the website audit is invaluable for making informed decisions about optimizing your website for search engines.
Benefits of a Website Audit
If you’ve read this far, you know a website audit is essential. But what are the specific benefits of an audit, and how will it help you reach your full potential as an online entrepreneur?
The biggest benefit of conducting a website audit, whether you DIY your audit or work with a consultant, is that you’ll comprehensively understand your website’s strengths and weaknesses.
That knowledge is key – by understanding where your site is falling short, especially when it comes to tech and SEO, you can address these deficiencies and improve your chances of successfully optimizing your website!
Enhanced User Experience
A significant aspect of SEO that is overlooked is user experience. How fast your website loads and whether it is mobile-friendly makes a huge impact on how Google experiences your website, and how your target audience experiences it!
User experience can be the difference between someone browsing your website, page after page, or someone visiting your website and immediately clicking out due to poor loading times or the screen size not adjusting to their phone.
You can use Google Analytics to check blog metrics that may give insight into your website’s user experience and how it’s impacting your traffic and conversion rates. You can also check out Google’s mobile-friendly test to see how your website performs on mobile!
A website audit is checking for broken links. Broken links can damage a website’s rank in search engines and lead to lost traffic. A broken link checker can help you identify and fix any broken links.
Another important part of a website audit is ensuring your site is secure. Your customers should be able to trust that their personal information will remain safe no matter where they are on your site. Security features such as SSL/TLS encryption can help protect your site from cyberattacks.
Understand Search Engine Rankings
The number of times I’ve done a website audit for someone and they tell me – “OMG Mikayla, I had no idea I was ranking for [keyword]!”.
If you’re new to SEO or haven’t had the time to fully learn it for your business, that may be you too! If you’ve been blogging or sharing content through your website – you may be ranking for some keywords and not know it.
With an SEO website audit, you’ll receive a list of your current keyword rankings, which gives great insight into how you can optimize your website for the future.
All of these benefits of a website audit can compound into the dream end result – improved search engine rankings! There’s no doubt that ranking on the top pages of search engines helps boost your brand’s visibility. And by learning all these areas of improvement and taking action on them with a website audit, you can help improve your search engine ranking!
Better Website Design
Website audits can expose a lackluster website design, especially if your website is difficult to navigate. If users cannot find what they are looking for on your site easily or are met with frustrating 404 errors, they will likely abandon your site entirely. Good website design is key for better engagement on your website and SEO.
Most people think about SEO and keyword research regarding website marketing. But what about a website’s design? Redesigning your website can have a significant impact on your conversion rates. Here are five ways to improve your website’s conversion rate:
1. Improve Your Navigation
It’s no secret that improving your navigation can make it easier. This means creating simple, intuitive menus and ensuring each link leads directly to the desired page.
2. Use Images Well
Images are one of the best ways to capture attention and communicate your message. Ensure you use images effectively throughout your site, including in your header, footer, and main content areas. Also, include relevant keywords in your image titles and descriptions.
3. Focus on Mobile Conversion Rates
More and more consumers are turning to mobile devices to access information online. And while desktop websites typically perform better than mobile sites, conversions from mobile devices tend to be higher overall. That’s because mobile screens are typically smaller and more cluttered than desktop screens, which makes it harder for users to find what they’re looking for quickly. To ensure high-conversion mobile sites, consider using clear text instead of images for buttons and other user interface elements, building simplified layouts that load quickly, designing for touch devices specifically, and targeting specific mobile platforms (like Android or iOS).
Improved Website Security
Are you someone that created a website for your organization and never looked back? Your website may be outdated, which could mean your website security is at risk.
I once had a client who had not updated their website in YEARS… Including their WordPress plug-ins. Not only did this cause their website to run horribly slow, but they were also more susceptible to malware and other security breaches by keeping it out of date.
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Types of SEO Website Audits
There are different types of website audits out there, but at the core, they all offer similar benefits. A comprehensive website audit will help you better understand your current SEO metrics and changes that could be made to improve your user experience and conversions.
A professional SEO website audit will help you determine where your site is performing well, where you need to improve and identify any potential issues causing rank loss or poor organic search traffic. Here’s what’s broken down in this type of audit:
On-page audit
This type of audit looks at your site’s title tags, meta descriptions, images, and other on-page elements. It assesses how well these elements are optimized for search engine visibility and how effectively they drive clicks and conversions.
Squarespace Website Audit
Websites created with Squarespace are easy to manage and customize, making them a popular choice for small businesses or personal blogs. But just like any website platform, SquareSpace sites need to be audited to ensure optimal performance. Although SquareSpace’s platform has great built-in features for tracking website metrics and performance, having Google Analytics installed on your site is still helpful. When you work with a professional on your SquareSpace website audit, you’ll analyze the site’s design, navigation, user experience, and mobile responsiveness.
We’ll also check for technical issues that may be affecting your website’s performance, such as broken links or slow loading times.
E-commerce Website Audit
Do you have an online shop or e-commerce business? You can benefit from a website audit as well!
An e-commerce website audit optimizes the user experience to drive conversions for your online store. Your site’s design, layout, and pages are all considered for how to drive user engagement and conversions. Your audit also covers your e-commerce website’s search engine visibility and how well it ranks for relevant keywords – which is important if you want to drive organic search traffic to your products.
Shopify Website Audit
Shopify is an extremely popular platform for entrepreneurs wanting to create online stores. It is very easy to use with tons of built-in features. But it’s important not to overlook SEO when building your Shopify website. Your design, navigation, product pages, and checkout process are important for user experience, but so is your site’s technical performance, including site speed, mobile responsiveness, and security.
A Shopify website audit will help you evaluate your site’s layout and identify areas for improvement that can increase sales and revenue.
WordPress Website Audit
I am a WordPress girlie, through and through! Many claim WordPress is complicated, but I believe that depends on who or how you build your website. You want to keep your WordPress website build as simple as possible and use plug-ins only when necessary.
With a WordPress website audit, I pay particular attention to your functionality and performance. These areas have a big impact on user experience and search engine rankings. Oftentimes, it’s the use of too many or duplicative plug-ins that seriously slows down your WordPress website.
Showit Website Audit
ShowIt is an amazing platform that provides a beautiful drag-and-drop page-builder for your landing pages and then offers the power of WordPress (and WordPress SEO plug-ins like RankMath SEO) for your blog.
Even with the drag-and-drop page builder, you still want to ensure your site has a great, user-friendly design without any technical issues that could impact your site’s performance.
It’s time to book your website audit!
If you learned anything from this blog post, I hope it’s that you need a periodic website audit incorporated into your SEO and digital marketing strategy. Auditing your marketing online provides valuable insights to drive more traffic, engagement, and conversions to your business!
No matter whether you use SquareSpace, Shopify, ShowIt, WordPress, or any other platform, a comprehensive website audit can help you optimize for maximum performance and improve your search engine rankings!
Wondering how you can DIY your website audit? Hop on the waitlist for the next round of the Search Engine Success Challenge!
But if you’re seriously ready to get expert feedback to completely level up your website’s search engine optimization, go ahead and book your website audit today!