Does your website have issues that are hampering your SEO efforts or driving your visitors away? The following website audit process will help you find out.


If you've never audited your website, in all likelihood, you should. Websites are complex beasts, and problems develop regularly-and you won't recognize them unless you audit your site consistently.

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In this post, we're going to teach you how to perform a basic website audit to  enhance your SEO , usability, and perhaps even your earnings.


However, it's essential to understand precisely what a website audit involves.
What is a website audit?


A website audit entails analyzing your website for user experience, technical, and SEO problems.
Some advantages of this process include discovering things that may be:

  • Impeding your website's traffic potential in organic search;

  • Hampering your sales or conversions;

  • Confounding your visitors;

  • Technically flawed 


Of course, locating such issues is only half the job. You then have to correct them.


Fortunately, most of the corrections to the issues mentioned in this post are straightforward. However, we will do our best to clarify the more complicated ones as we proceed


Initial Steps


1. Check your design


Design is pivotal. Nobody is going to trust a website that was designed circa 1997.


As a general rule, it's worth refreshing your website every 3-4 years-or at a minimum, making several essential design updates to keep things looking fresh.


However, this isn't just about making things attractive or staying abreast of existing trends. There are a number of things that lead to a subpar website "design."


Here are several of them:
Invasive pop-ups and ads aren't actually always a bad thing. Things like cookie warnings or exit pop-ups provide a genuine purpose.


But, there are few things more irritating than clicking on a web page in the Google search
Results, only to be struck by countless pop-ups the moment you arrive on the page.


Personally, I click the back button the very second I encounter pages like this, and I'm sure other individuals do as well. That has an adverse effect on a couple of things:

  1. Conversions. Individuals can't purchase anything without being on your site.

  2. SEO. Having visitors click the back button the moment they arrive on your page is known as "pogo-sticking." There's some indication that this tells Google there's something objectionable about your page and that it doesn't merit being ranked.

With regard to SEO, Google penalizes "pages that show intrusive interstitials" on mobile.

So for your own benefit: Bring up your site in an incognito window and watch what occurs. If there are numerous pop-ups, eliminate them.


Illegible text


If visitors can't read what's on your website, they'll once again click the back button the instant.Make a point of

  • Using a large font size. It doesn't have to be ridiculously huge, but utilizing an 8pt font isn't going to be sufficient.

  • Selecting a legible font. Many believe that sans-serif fonts are slightly more readable than serif fonts. With that said, this is probably over-analyzing things a bit. Just stay away from Comic Sans (or anything comparable).

  • Using plenty of white space. Insufficient white space makes for an awful reading experience.

  • Incorporate contrast. Yellow text on a white background? No thanks.

Vague calls to action


When determining the verb for your call to action copy, zero in on the desired action - call, buy, request, and so forth. The verbs you incorporate should offer guidance and direction to your visitors.


Be as straightforward as possible to prevent confusion. Users should be able to understand and imagine what precisely will take place after they click your CTA. Steer clear of situations when users click "Sign up" and are confronted with an endless number of fields to fill in. In this instance, it's better to be direct and use the "Fill in the form" text in place of the "Sign up."

Here are some examples of unmistakable call to action copy:

  • "Download for Windows,"

  • "Try for 30 days for FREE,"

  • "Sign up in just one click,"

  • "Register for a meeting in London,"

  • "Fill in the Google form,"

  • "Purchase the eBook."

2. Check your navigation


Picture a website without a navigation bar. Locating what you wanted would be next to impossible.
That's why it's so important to ensure that your navigation menu is not only present but also is logical to visitors. Even if your navigation menu seems straightforward to you, your visitors may not find it so intuitive.
So begin by taking a look at your homepage and analyzing your menu.

Ask yourself:

  • Is it straightforward?

  • Does it link to all my most essential pages?

  • Is it jumbled with pointless stuff?

  • Have I made it simple for visitors to reach me if they have questions?

    If the answer to even just one of those questions is no, it may be time to reconsider how your menu works.

To accomplish this, I find it advantageous to sketch out the flow of a website so I can plainly observe what's critical and what isn't. You can use an easy to use tool like Slickplan.com for this.


EXPERT TIP


Invite your family, friends, customers, or colleagues to use your website and note any issues. A fresh pair of eyes can be extremely beneficial!


Do this with various individuals and see if there are any common themes.


Bear in mind, however, that such people will frequently hesitate to mention legitimate issues with your website through fear of insulting you.


If you feel there's a high probability of that, look into hiring a freelancer to do a manual video audit.


These aren't generally very expensive, and the insights you get can glean are worth every penny.

3. Test for mobile-friendliness

Fact: Nearly 50% of people browse the web with their mobile devices.


In other words, the bulk of your visitors are most likely viewing your website on mobile.


SIDENOTE. 3-4% of people use tablets to browse; this explains why 49% is the majority.


Additionally, approximately 60% of Google searches are conducted on mobile-and that's 2016 data, it's possibly even a bigger number now.


Simply put: A mobile-friendly website is mandatory, or you're pushing away over 50% of your visitors.


EXPERT TIP


If you're wondering how many of your visitors are arriving at your website via mobile, log in to Google Analytics and follow these steps:


Audience > Mobile > Overview

Here, you will see the percentage of your visitors that come from desktop vs. tablet, vs. tablet.
Use Google's Mobile-Friendly Test tool to check how mobile-friendly your website is.


Try pasting your homepage in for the test. If your homepage is mobile-friendly, then chances are good that the balance of your website will be as well. Regardless, you may want to test several pages if you have dramatically distinct sections of your website. E.g., an eCommerce store operating on Shopify, and a blog running on WordPress.


If it's not presently mobile-friendly and you realize that many of your visitors are on mobile, you should consider hiring a developer to address that dilemma.

4. Review your robots.txt file and sitemap


Robots.txt is a basic text file that informs search engines which pages they are allowed to crawl, and those they don't have permission to. A sitemap is an XML file that helps search engines to recognize what pages you have and how your website is structured.


Have a robots.txt file? It'll be available at yourdomain.com/robots.txt.


Unable to locate your sitemap? The URL is probably in your robots.txt file. No? Look for it in the root folder of your hosting for XML files.


In summary, it's good to have both these two files, but not necessary.


If you have a small website (less than ten pages), then don't stress too much about either of these files. Although, if you're using WordPress, you can incorporate a plugin like Yoast SEO to create both a sitemap and robots.txt file simply

5. Verify that you're using HTTPs


HTTPs implies that a website is safe-i.e., data transfer to and from the site is encrypted. You can identify when a website uses HTTPs as there's a lock in the URL bar, and the URL will start with https://:
Why is HTTPs important? It boils down to security, primarily. Unencrypted (non-secure) data can be tapped into and stolen.

Plus, HTTPs is a Google ranking element.

So HTTPs is imperative if you're:

  • taking payments on your website (an outright must)

  • gathering user data (recommended)

  • attempting to elevate your ranking on Google (who isn't!?)

The great news is that this may not cost you a penny. Lets Encrypt is a non-profit organization that offers free SSL certificates, and it's supported by some of the heaviest hitters in the industry-Google included. In 2020, there is no reason to not use HTTPs.

6. Ensure that your site loads quickly


Google reports that 53% of mobile visitors abandon websites that take in excess of 3 seconds to load. Additionally, Amazon discovered that a delay of 100 milliseconds cost them 1% in sales-and that was a decade ago. In all probability, those numbers are likely even more jaw-dropping now.


In short, it's crucial that your site loads quickly. Fortunately, Google has a free tool for tracking page speed - PageSpeed Insights. Paste in a URL, and it'll give you a "speed score" for both mobile and desktop


Scroll down, and Google offers suggestions on how to boost your page speed:
Again, these are relatively technical, but any skilled developer will understand how to correct such things.


Checking your homepage in PageSpeed Insights as a starting-point will provide you an image of your total site speed. You can then review additional pages to see if there are any speed issues at the page-level (e.g., lots of large image files, etc.)


PageSpeed Insights does have it's shortcomings - you can only check pages one by one. That's more than frustrating if you have a website with tens, hundreds, or even thousands of pages

In Summary


Auditing your website is imperative to tracking the health of your website and marketing measures. This should be performed strategically and quarterly, if feasible. That will ensure you'll always have an optimized website to draw new visitors and provide them with the information they seek- and want - to persuade them you're the best option.