A website is the center of your business. It’s where people go to learn about who you are and what you do. They’ll also decide whether or not they should buy from you or not.
You want to make sure that your site is functioning properly. You may be losing users and you may not rank in search engines.
A website audit will help you understand what your site’s performance is now and where you need to improve it.
Read on to learn why you need to regularly audit your site and how to perform one.
Why Are Website Audits Necessary?
Do you know that the vast majority of websites have a security flaw? A security flaw can be devastating to your business.
A website audit could help you uncover some security risks so you can patch them up immediately.
Another reason why audits are necessary is that your users expect a great site experience. If you don’t understand what that experience is, then there’s a good chance that you’re losing traffic and money.
An important part of the website experience is speed. An audit will uncover ways you can take control of your site’s speed and improve performance.
Those things will lead to better search results. Ranking higher in search engines can result in more traffic to your site, and the right kind of traffic.
How to Conduct Your Own Website Audit
Do you understand what a website audit can do for your site? Here are some basic steps to perform a website audit on your site.
Look at Search Console and Google Analytics
These two tools with give you a baseline measurement as to how your site appears in search results and how much traffic you have. You’ll know where your traffic is coming from too.
Your first step is to find out where your site is now, so you can track your site’s progress regularly.
Update Plugins
If you use WordPress, a simple way to keep your site secure is to update plugins. Plugins are updated often with security patches. Not installing these updates could put your site at risk to an attack.
Delete Old User Accounts
If you use WordPress, you’ll want to take a quick look at your site’s user accounts. You want to make sure that there aren’t users that have access to your site that shouldn’t be there.
If there are old users, such as old employees, still listed, you can delete those accounts.
Look at Your Site Like a User
Pick up your phone and go to your website like it’s your first time visiting. You want to make sure that the user experience is top-notch. Note how your site performs and if it’s easy to find information.
Check Site Speed
Performance is huge for your website and you need to make sure that it’s fast. It’s what users and search engines want from websites.
Perform speed tests on your site using Google’s Page Speed Insights to learn if your site is fast or slow on desktop and mobile devices.
You’ll also find out what you can do to fix your site or make adjustments to improve the speed.
Find Out If Your Site is Blacklisted
Your site may be blacklisted from Google and you don’t know it. That could cost your business a lot in potential traffic.
There are a number of reasons why sites get blacklisted. You may have purchased your domain which was previously use for spam.
You may have content that’s duplicated from other sites or stuffed your site with a bunch of keywords. All of these things can cause your site to be penalized.
You can use a tool like MX Toolbox and check your site’s IP address and domain.
On-Page SEO Audit
You should conduct an on-page SEO audit. On-page SEO involves the SEO ranking factors that you have control of on your pages.
You want to make sure that each page has a title, meta description, and the appropriate keywords. You can use a plugin like Yoast SEO for WordPress sites.
That will help you write your descriptions and places the appropriate code to tell search engines what your pages are about.
When you look at your keywords, you want to make sure that you use different keywords for each page. Duplicating keywords can confuse search engines and make it difficult to tell which page should appear for what search result.
Check Your Site’s Backlinks
Backlinks are a huge part of SEO. A backlink is a link to your site from another site. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but for SEO, they’re huge.
Search engines view backlinks like votes for quality content. These votes are also weighted by the quality of sites that link to your site.
You’ll want to use the best backlink checker tool to see what sites are linking to your site. If you see any low-quality sites or spam sites listed, they could be hurting your SEO.
You can disavow those links in Search Console to preserve your site’s SEO reputation.
How Often Should You Have a Website Audit?
There are some activities that you can do weekly, monthly, and every several months. For example, you can update your website every week. That will help with security.
Other activities like checking search console and analytics can be done once a month. You can also check your backlinks monthly.
You may want to check backlinks more often if you’re producing a lot of content for your site. It’s best to look at the various steps to audit your site and set regular appointments in your calendar to do the audit tasks.
Fortunately, each audit step takes only a few minutes. Fixing things like a slow website are going to take a bit longer.
A Website Audit Can Save Your Business
Your business could be losing money due to your website and you don’t even know it. You want to make sure that you have a website that performs well for search engines and users.
A website audit ensures that your site is performing to retain users and appear high in search results. You want to focus on your site’s security, on-page SEO and off-page SEO when you do your own audits.
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