5 Essential Areas for an Effective Website Audit

When it comes down to internet marketing, your website audit is one of the most important tools that can detail opportunities and challenges that your website is encountering. Evaluating the current performance of your website is very important when trying to make your brand stand out. A website audit will specify the pitfalls that may be doing serious damage to your online reputation and will also outline the success of your website. This type of audit covers topics of important components of a website such as, search engine optimization (SEO), website traffic, mobile, content audit, and social media management. Here are the five key components you should take into consideration when conducting a website audit.

• SEO: When trying to make your website rank higher, you have to take into consideration the titles, links, and subtitles that your website includes. This becomes very important when creating meaningful content for your audience. Meaningful content is what differentiates our brand from one another when using a search engine tool.

• Content audit: A content audit is a qualitative analysis of all of the content your website has ever published. It exposes where your content is actually meaningful for your audience, how it is performing, and where the thematic gaps are. This strategy will also help you create visible and meaningful content for your audience. A content audit is the key to driving more leads, traffic and revenue because it identifies the holes in your content deliverables. When performing a content audit, you will be able to highlight which content is poorly resourced, access historical performance data, and identify what content should be edited or removed entirely.

• Website traffic: Every website owner should take a look at their website performance from a traffic standpoint because it will lead them to better understand their user behavior, where their referral traffic comes from, how long users browse on specific pages, and how conversions are being tracked. This information further helps to identify your website’s advantages and disadvantages. Looking at these key performance indicators helps you understand which channels on your website convert better and evaluate which content generates the most traffic.

• Mobile: Mobile is one of the major elements when conducting a website audit. Having your website be mobile-friendly is not just a passing trend, it is something that has a very real impact and has become a must. On average almost 46% of a website’s total traffic comes from mobile devices, including tablets. It is important to have your website mobile-friendly and responsive because it makes your website more visible to your audience. Since April 21st, Google stated that it could penalize sites that are not mobile-friendly in mobile search results. In this case a mobile audit will provide you with data regarding mobile visits and friendliness, mobile speed, and mobile compatibility.

• Social Media Management: In this day and age social media is a must! Your website and brand should embrace social media because it provides assistance in reaching out to your audience in a different manner. When including social media on your website you have to make sure your social media is accessible directly from your website’s home page is part and parcel of for your online marketing strategy. A website audit will take a deeper look at the demographic profile of your audience, your posts’ performance, and your conversion rates stemming from social campaigns.

Conducting a website audit and evaluating these five key components of your website will provide you with business intelligence when making marketing decisions with proper data measured over time. Improving your website with a website audit will not only help you identify your threats and opportunities, but it will also help you reach to your audience in the best possible way.