Why You Should Audit Your Website
Building a website for your business takes a lot of hard work and money if done properly. The last thing you want to do is drop the ball and let it fall apart because you are not staying up-to-date on technological advancements. Much like changing the oil in your car, even the best websites require maintenance from time to time. You wouldn’t let your brand new car become less functional over time because you neglected to take good care of it, and your website is no different. This is why it is so important that you audit your website.
What Is a Website Audit?
Website audits are an essential part of measuring the efficiency and visibility of your website. Auditing your website can show you whether or not you are meeting your traffic goals, how easy (or hard) it is to navigate your site, and how you can improve your website to increase efficiency. After conducting your website audit, you will learn where to improve your website’s technical performance, among many other things. Below are some of the benefits of auditing your website.
Improve Your Search Engine Optimization
It is crucial to follow good SEO practices to make your website easier to find and easier to use. By conducting a website audit, you can identify any current issues with your SEO as well as find missed SEO opportunities. The main areas and issues to look for include:
Keyword performance: Are you using the wrong keywords? Are you keyword stuffing?
Content: Are you creating the wrong type of content? Are you plagiarizing? Are you duplicating content? Is your content relevant?
Basic SEO technical elements: Are you missing meta descriptions, title tags, or backlinks?
A website audit can reveal all of these elements so you know why your website is not ranking well and where to focus your SEO efforts to fix that.
Increase Conversion Rate Optimization
While it is important to have quality content that leads users to your website, you also need to convert your visitors into warm leads (or sales!). The truth is, your site’s visitors are more likely to convert if your website is easy to use and high-performing. It takes a website audit to see if you are doing all that you can to give your visitors a great experience and encourage them to buy what you are selling. To audit your website for conversion optimization, it is important to analyze:
Marketing offers: Do you have enough marketing offers behind your landing pages? Do your marketing offers delight all of your buyer personas? Are your landing pages optimized enough?
Buyers’ Cycle: Do you have calls-to-action for each stage in the buyer’s cycle?
These assessments now lead to the final key benefit of a good website audit.
Optimal Website Performance
Most importantly, a website audit determines if your website is operating correctly. There is nothing worse than being confused by a website, so you want to keep your visitors in mind when navigating your site. The design and content of your website should reflect what your visitors want to know, whether it is more information, product and pricing information, or testimonials.
Whatever your visitors want, give it to them on a silver platter. Not only is it important that your site is easy to use, but it is crucial that your website loads quickly. The annoyance of a slow page-load time can cause many of your site’s visitors to search elsewhere.
For these reasons and many more, it is imperative to audit your website regularly. With technological advancements and changes to SEO occurring rapidly, it is more important than ever that your site is up to snuff, or you may be left in the dust.