What is a Website Audit?
A thorough evaluation of every element influencing a website’s search engine visibility is a website audit. This accepted technique provides thorough insight into any website, general traffic, and specific pages. The main goal of a website audit is marketing.
An audit identifies technical and tactical components that should be prioritised to enhance SEO positioning. In other words, it seeks out problems that could hinder a website from turning up in search engine results (SERPs).
Why is it needed?
A thorough website audit enables digital marketers—whether SEO experts or not—to evaluate and analyse issues before addressing and rectifying them.
A site audit specifically assists digital marketers in isolating site errors, identifying areas of potential, comprehending the strengths and weaknesses of competitors, doing keyword research, and developing a workback timetable that is practical and essential.
Any company looking to increase both the amount and quality of web visitors should conduct a thorough website assessment.
How to do a Website Audit?
Step 1: Site Health Evaluation
Reviewing the website’s general “health,” or the amount of vulnerabilities it has, is the first stage in performing a website audit. Accessing 4XX problems, 5XX errors, broken links, URL structure, duplicate content, and page performance are some of the most prevalent (and highest priority) concerns (especially mobile page speed).
Step 2: Evaluating Technical SEO
Our Site Health and Technical SEO Assessments overlap significantly. However, we make a little distinction between the two while performing an audit. The crawlability and indexability of a website are considered to be technical SEO in this context.
Step 3: Website Security Evaluation
Ranking high in Google requires HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure). User data is encrypted over HTTPS, a privacy feature that Google’s algorithm emphasises heavily and is becoming increasingly crucial.
Step 4: Examine Keyword Performance and Perform Fresh Keyword Research
A site audit will examine the keywords and search queries that the website is already performing for after analysing all of the preceding technical factors.
Once we understand the present performance of the site, we must undertake additional keyword research to identify new areas of opportunity. Looking for keywords that are related to the website, have a high monthly search traffic, and have a low keyword difficulty score.
Step 5: Examine Off-Site Visibility: Backlinks, Reviews, and Social Media Presence
We need to evaluate the site’s off-site presence at this point. Examine the amount and quality of backlinks and reviews on third-party sites in particular. Examine the brand’s associated social media profiles during the off-page SEO audit. Most digital marketing plans now include social media marketing as a fundamental component. Google’s algorithm will take social media performance into account when evaluating websites in 2022.
Step 6: Analyse Conversions and Conversion Rate
The majority of our audit up to this point has been centred on elements that influence digital traffic and visibility. However, conversion rate optimization is the final stage of the digital growth cycle, and will spend substantial time examining the website’s targeted conversion, checking the quality of CTAs, lead forms, checkout flow, and so on.
Step 7: Competitor Analysis
Our website audit method concludes with a SWOT analysis of digital counterparts. Now, our attention will be on websites that are contending for the same target audience and search queries. These might be well-known business rivals or not, depending on the website.
A comprehensive website audit uncovers weak points that may result in Google penalties. Penalties have an impact on Google’s search engine ranking page (SERP). The assessment also determines the website’s vulnerability to security breaches.
