Understanding the Importance of Website Auditing

A website is a business, and like all businesses, an audit should be conducted every so often to determine the state of your site. Without proper servicing, the condition of your website will deteriorate and become obsolete. A website audit is an analytic process done to improve any shortcomings on the site. Getting a clear picture of how efficient your website is will guide your actions in the future.

You can then take the necessary steps to restore or improve the health of your site. A website audit can include a full-scale audit or an audit of various elements of the site like a technical audit, a content audit, or an SEO audit.

Site Navigability

Your site needs to be as easily navigable as possible if you are to attract traffic and turn those leads into paying customers. If your site is challenging to navigate, you can be sure that people will look for other sites that are.

A website audit can help you determine how navigable your site. Things that an audit will evaluate in this regard include overlinking, the number of items in the navigation bar, information overload, and the presence of a search function among others.

A significant part of making your website user friendly is ensuring that it is easy to navigate. Based on the results of the audit, you can take steps to make your site more navigable.

Search Engine Optimization

Given the importance of search engine optimization, it is essential to ensure that a site is as optimized as possible. Search engine optimization covers a wide range of issues that a website audit should reveal.

One of the most critical audits to search engine optimization is a content audit. Not only does your website's content need to be optimized for search engines, but you also need to ensure that no content is similar to that you can find on other sites.

Tagging of images, headers, indexability of site pages, meta issues, URL structures, and links are all issues a website audit will reveal. Optimizing your site for search engines will improve its condition.

Website Security

The security of a website is paramount, particularly if you are receiving and sending payments through your site. It is also vital that you protect user information submitted to your site by clients.

A website security audit will expose the vulnerabilities the site has to a wide variety of breaches. Your website may be compromised in ways that you had no idea it could be.

A security audit is one of the essential parts of a website audit. You should do it more often than other audits as hackers are always coming up with new ways to breach website security.

Relevance of Content

The content of your website needs to be updated for a variety of reasons. One important one is to rank high on search engine results, which as we have seen, is terribly important.

It is also important to have relevant content to drive traffic to your site. As stated at https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/reviews/semrush/, a site audit will reveal which of your pages are outdated. To make content relevant, you may have to change sections of your website. In some cases, you may have to rewrite entire articles to ensure that they are not obsolete.

Social Media Presence

Social media is by far the most used platform by websites to drive traffic. With sites like Facebook and Twitter having billions of users, it is not a surprise.

A website audit will reveal your website’s social media presence and whether it is beneficial or detrimental to your website. It will also reveal which social media channels are most effective in helping you achieve your goals.

Social media is a great platform to judge how users respond to your content and marketing strategy. Based on the results of the website audit, you can go about improving your social media presence and making it more efficient.

Conversion Rate Optimization

Driving traffic to your website is not enough. You need to convert visitors into paying customers, which is the ultimate goal of a website.

An audit of your website’s conversion rate will assess how optimized your website is to convert visitors to customers. You will get a detailed report on which areas of your site have high conversion rates and which have low which you can proceed to address.

A sales funnel is vital in optimizing your website's conversion rate. If you have one, an audit will reveal the effectiveness of the channel, and if you don't, you will see if it can help you increase your site's conversion rate.

Get Information on Competitors

All websites are businesses and belong to a particular industry. If you want to get to the top of your industry or stay there, you need to know what online strategies your competitors are implementing and their success rates.

A good site audit should consist of competitor analysis. The audit should start by identifying who the main competitors in your industry are.

The audit should also assess the factors of their business, including their content, social media activities, search engine optimization, and paid search activity, among others.

To paraphrase the Art of War, 'know yourself and know your enemy and you will never lose a single battle.' Therefore, the more you know about your competitors, the higher the chances of your website being the best in your industry.

Website Speed

With high-speed internet, the speed with which your website loads significantly matters. Users will always choose a fast site over a slow one, and if your site is not fast enough; it means you are losing potential customers.

A website audit should evaluate the speed of your site. Google, in particular, is ardent about site speed, and the higher your site speed, the higher your website will appear on search engine results.

A site speed audit will reveal which features of your site increase or decrease its speed. Such features will include web page formatting, image compression, number of redirects, and plugins on your site.

Website Responsiveness

The responsiveness of a website pertains to how easily accessible and usable it is across a variety of devices. If you want your site to perform better on all accounts, you need to make it as responsive as possible.

A website audit will show you how responsive your site is. It will also show you elements of your site that impede or improve its responsiveness.

Site responsiveness has an inextricable link with site speed and user-friendliness. The ease of navigation on your site also adds to its responsiveness.

More responsive websites are not only ranked higher in search engine results, but they also have higher conversion rates. You should use a website audit to ensure that your site is as responsive as possible.

Link Assessment

Links are crucial to the success of any website and are what is commonly referred to as off-site visibility. Links are the primary way of redirecting traffic from other sites or online platforms to yours.

A link assessment is a vital element of any good website audit. It should reveal how effective links you have placed on various sites have been performing.

You can then proceed to fix issues such as broken links. It can also help you eradicate duplicate content from your site as the audit will reveal links with similar types of content.

Software Inspection

Every website runs on a particular type of software. The software determines a lot of features about the website.

CMS systems and plugins significantly affect the functioning of a website. They need to be up to date for your website to function optimally.

A website audit will clearly tell you if the software is obsolete and if updates are necessary or available. It will also evaluate how effective the software is in the running of your site.

Return of Investment (ROI)

All businesses need to evaluate their return on investment, including websites. A return on investment determines how efficient expenditure on various aspects have impacted the business.

There are many paid online services that you will contract to improve various aspects of your website. Such elements may include advertising, search engine optimization, and data analytics, among others.

A website audit will reveal the return on investment of various expenditures. You will then know which strategies are paying off and which ones are costing you money. You can then invest in strategies that have the highest return on investment.

As you can see, there are many essential things that an audit of your website can reveal as it pertains to business. The above items are only the tip of the iceberg as there are many more metrics a website audit measures. Many website owners regularly ask how often they should conduct an audit of their business. Many experts recommend an annual audit for a small website and a bi-annual audit for larger websites. However, you should conduct a site audit as often as you feel necessary. It will only improve the health of your business.